Author: Seth Werkheiser

Learn Your Lessons Each Step of the Way

It was my junior year of high school. Though I grew up in a musical family, I didn’t pick up instrument until my freshman year because suddenly my friends were all learning how to play guitar and be in bands!

So I’m playing my first show ever in front of people. Actually it’s my first time playing, and singing. I never set out to sing, just play bass. But I was the singer now in our band.

This is 1993, so no internet really. Nothing else going on in town. It felt like everyone from my high school was there. Over 500 people, I think.

A few songs in, a buddy of mine yells to me in between songs. Tells me the vocals are too low, they need to get turned up.

So I say to the sound guy, over the microphone, “hey, can you turn up the vocals?”

He replied, over the PA system, in front of everyone, “try singing.”

To which I replied, “fuck you!”

We all laughed, and launched into our next song.

All I remember, after our set, was him coming up to me as I was packing up my bass, and saying something about shoving my heart down my throat or something for telling him off.

Lesson learned.

Looking back, I’m a third generation musician in my family. I’ve been on some recordings, played a bunch of shows. I never toured, or been part of a big release, but here I am now, some 30 years later, still messing around in music.

That’s the thing, though. Making music doesn’t have to be about reaching #1 on the charts, getting 10,000 viewers on some stream, a million subscribers on YouTube.

Create something that you like, and share it. For everyone person who says they enjoy it, there’s probably 20 that will never let you know.

That’s the trick; you can’t get 10 fans until you get one.
You can’t run 10 miles until you can run one.
You can’t put out a book if you can’t write a chapter.
You can’t release an album until you finish one song.

So don’t look too far into the distance. Make your mistakes now, get your bad stuff out of the way this year. Your work today is to keep piling up your art, your work, your magic.

Photo by Anthony from Pexels

Bandcamp Roulette Christmas Edition

Photo by Kaique Rocha from Pexels

Ever set out to do something, and then everything falls to pieces? That was me today, which is very fitting for this wretched 2020. Found the energy to set up my camera, route the audio, and set out to do another one of my Bandcamp Roulette videos, but then my video editing software decided to lay waste to my efforts, and here we are.

This year has left me short-tempered. I know it’s messed with lots of people, in lots of ways. Pick your poison, this year has been rough. That’s why I set out to find some Christmas music on Bandcamp today, to find some refuge in wonderful voices singing familiar melodies. Most of these came out in the last few days. What I found took me for a ride.

First is ÝRÝ, delicate and serene. Instrumentation is sparse, which is fine because it makes way for the vocals, which is are oh-so-good.

Next is Tenneson, which is “seven incarcerated musicians at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility.” Musically not my thing, but the people behind it are. We all make mistakes in life, but there’s still beauty in our tragedy.

Two traditional tunes, but it’s always nice to hear someone new doing them, in this case Sasha Samara. Super smooth.

‘Hello Christmas’ from Guy Capecelatro III is soft and gentle, pretty stripped down. “A week ago none of these songs were written,” says Guy.

This one from Death Hags is sweet and airy, and perfect for a dreary, snow-less Christmas 2020.

Not usually one for very-specific lyrics, but as my roomie pointed out we’ll be talking about 2020 and COVID-19 for the next 100 years. Kathryn Hoss does a great job with this.

This one is soft and warm, with vocals by Katie Danielson.

“Wrap me in your arms Like a Christmas present / I’ll tuck you inside of my sleeve / I never liked this season, but I love those lights we hang / And the good things we choose to believe”

Without my computer mishap today I would have never heard ‘Like a Christmas Present’ by Tanbark (Chloe Nelson and James Jannicelli from Brooklyn, New York). Something things just happen for reasons we don’t get at the time.

All that to say, there’s a lot of amazing music on Bandcamp. There are so many artists out there releasing such good music, and it’s easy for them to get lost in the fray. Seek it out, it’s there. Hopefully you find something sweet from this little collection I put together.

Make Without a Map

Photo by Kerimli Temkin from Pexels

Saw this today from ‘That which is unique, breaks,’ via @hundredrabbits.

If you commoditize toys, you remove the toymaker. If you remove the toymaker, the toy is only an object of consumption. It ceases to be an object of wonder.

When tasked in 2009 to “fill up the search engines,” during my time at AOL Music, we published 20+ posts a day. Anything that people might search for, let’s have something written and published.

Here we had a stable of competent, knowledgeable writers – all uniquely qualified individuals – cranking out SEO-friendly “content” to be read and indexed by machines.

As an editor this pained me.

Throw away posts about band members getting arrested got more traffic than finely written interviews with notable artists.

Therefore, feed the machine. Find the drama. Find the bleeding story in the ocean of content, attract the swarm of sharks.

At this point, the inmates run the asylum. The child screams for a cookie, so feed them cookies.

“That which is unique, breaks.”

A unique offering, built with editorial discernment, breaks.

I do not need to spoil your view with visions of this architecture, I only wonder, what have their creators ever repaired?

Who has turned the ship around? Rebuilt the damaged hull? Fixed a site? Started from scratch?

As Seth Godin says, “If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”

Showing Up is the Secret

From one of my recent emails from The Soft Run:

As I approached this house a kid (maybe 10 or 11) came running around a corner today, and yelled, asking to use my phone.

Then as I got closer, I realized he wasn’t wearing socks or shoes!

Just another day, just another run, right? Nope. One run out of almost 300 this year, and never once did I see a jeep set-up like the one above, nor did I help a kid get back into his house after being locked out in the middle of winter with no shoes or socks. BRRR.

I keep getting lost in the binary thinking of success, of making it. Either you’re a popular YouTube star with a million subscribers, or you’ve only got 13 and it feels like a waste of time.

You want to be this “thing,” but you don’t have the “social evidence” that you are the thing.

Are you a musician if no one buys your music? Are you a writer if no one replies to your pitches? Are you a photographer if you’re images aren’t on magazine covers?

Again, permission. Waiting for permission is the killer.

I am 44 years old – what right do I have to wear gaudy purple sneakers and tights and a cool jacket and run around the backroads here?

I work in music – what right do I have to make “dark ambient” mixes? What, do I think I’m going to MAKE IT?!?!

Wait, I thought I made dark ambient mixes – why am I making smooth chill jams with funky stock video footage?

Because I choose to.

Am I now locked into that identity? Must I now maintain a weekly music mix? Set up a live stream? Do a daily tune and post on every social network?

Well, if I choose to, sure.

Just go be everything you want to be. Doesn’t matter if it looks right, sounds right, has the right presentation – just make a little bit of magic each day.

This post partially inspired by Seth Godin’s ‘The Practice: Ship creative work‘ book.

Spending Some Time with Circle

In keeping Metal Bandcamp Gift Club going over the years (and sometimes not going, oops), it’s been a struggle to match the sense of community we had on Twitter back in 2016. As you know, quite a bit of things changed back in 2016.

I’ve resisted going all-in on Twitter again, mostly because a lot of people I know that were once involved don’t even do Twitter much anymore, for some pretty obvious reasons: their inaction against dangerous jerks, their inaction against harassment except when it might happen to men, nazi stuff – the list goes on and on.

I don’t want to tell my friends to come visit me at a dangerous bar filled with sexist creeps, jerks, and nazis, so why would I do so online?

So, Metal Bandcamp Gift Club has mostly been an email newsletter, and it’s been working well. Each day that there’s a birthday, we send out an email to about 120 people and a handful of those people buy music for someone they don’t know from their Bandcamp wishlist. It’s wonderful.

People feel good, they discover music, and artists and musicians and label make money.

But, that’s pretty much where it ends.

Yes, some members thank each other on Twitter, but blink and you’ll miss it. And heck, Twitter might not even let all that many people see that post, either.

Now a post on Circle (like above) is a post for every member to see. And if you blink, you can find it a day or a week later. Many times someone on Twitter will talk about a new album, or some gem they found, but if you’re not on Twitter right then and there, it could be gone forever. Same with year end album talk – there could be a great thread happening in real time on a Thursday night, but if you’re doing something else, and you check back in on Saturday, it’s probably gone.

I don’t know for sure if Circle is the solution, but I know for sure the current state of Twitter (and all of social media) is a big problem, and I’m trying to fix it for our little corner of the internet.

First Big Snowy Day of Fall

Crawling back into bed would have been more cozy. I had some tea, which was nice bit of warmth in the morning, but for some reason I threw on my jacket and shoveled our walk paths. It was nice to stop, take a breather, and enjoy a scene like you see above.

Later in the day I got in my daily run. This was day #25, at least a mile a day since November 23rd. The roads were trashed still, so todays run wasn’t a breeze, but if running has taught me anything it’s that crummy conditions don’t last forever. In a few days this crummy run won’t even register, but getting it done was still a piece of the foundation to where I wanna go in 2021.

We’ll Never Join the Galactic Federation

The delivery, the snark, the attitude – god, I love this so much.

I love that in a second, in just a few thumb-swipes on social media, you can come across a video so well done that you’re saying the lines to yourself while you’re making coffee.

“Logistics? You want me to write… logistics?”

“Oh, you still have prisons!”

Like, growing up with Star Wars, Ghost Busters, Air Plane – there’s just random movie quotes that we all know from our years of watching movies. Then of course Key & Peele (“I said bisssshhhhhh”), or “it is you!” Then Vine, and videos like this; the videos get shorter, but the quotes are just as strong.

Start Your Own Thing and Do It Soon

Randomly discovered this video with bassist Juan Alderete from a recent email blast from Abelton (for this post). Jaun played in The Mars Volta, and started a website at one point called Pedals and Effects, because he hated pedal review websites.

He just… made his own.

He bought a domain name and started doing it like he wanted.

Such a theme in life, right?

Don’t like your job, find a new one.
Don’t like the music you hear, start a band.
Don’t like podcasts that are out there, go make one.

You don’t need permission.

“Do you think people would like this sort of music?
“Should I start this podcast about weird horror movies?”
“If I made more of these, do you think people would buy them?”

Stop asking for permission and make your shit.

Can you walk around like Jaun here everyday and hang out with the dude from Nine Inch Nails? No, but I’m sure 20 years ago neither could Jaun.

And, holy shit, in digging more into this, Jaun was in a serious bicycle accident back in January 2020 and had to learn to fucking walk again.

Time is short, life is fleeting, start your shit now. Today.

Buy that domain name, shoot your first episode, upload your three song demo to Bandcamp today – tomorrow ain’t a promise.

Fell Hard for Beach Riot

Heavy, poppy, catchy – hell yes, I love this. Discovered by random on the Bandcamp front page, on the “Selling Right Now” scroller. Click, click, bang. Fell in love, listened to it twice, and had to buy it.