Welcome to day two of the CD release party festival, or as I call it around here, the hype construction zone. Whoever decided that hype-building was a bad thing? It wasn’t me, I can assure you.

You’ll notice I’ve finally decorated things a bit. It feels much more party-ish to me now.

My dancing bears have called in sick, but I did manage to find this video of a guy eating fire. Well, one match, to be specific.

[flv width=”400″ height=”300″]/video/fireeater.flv[/flv]

DOOR PRIZE WINNERS: Congratulations to Dan S. and Alicia S., the day 1 winners of the Door Prizes. Dan gets a $10 Chipotle gift card and Alicia gets a Okay T-shirt. I’ll contact you guys via email after the party.

AMIE STREET UPDATE: I’m excited about the results of day 1 on Amie Street. Almost Flew is the #12 song on their new release chart. My whole cd represents the top 11 best-selling songs of today and this week, if you check those charts.

Even cooler is the fact that I have had my songs downloaded over 400 times at the site. I’m very happy about that. Thanks!

Right now, I’m planning to do a short set of live music online tomorrow afternoon at 5pm MT. I don’t know how to do a live web cam online, so that could be an issue. Guess I need to figure it out.

Don’t forget to sign the guestbook and let me know what you think of the CD. Here are some quotes from people who have listened and responded via email or other online communities. To protect their identities, I’ve replaced each name with the name of a celebrity I think they sort of resemble.

Absolutely killer. You do a such a good job song-writing, catching emotion. Sounds great too.
- William Shatner

You have a great voice! Congratulations and thank you for sharing!
- Cameron Diaz

Nice work on the CD release. I’ll tell everyone I can. Is it available on Cassette or 8 track?
- Tom Brady

Popularity: 12% [?]

As of right now, you can get my new CD “Okay” at www.amiestreet.com for free. You should also be able to purchase it from my site. Check the store.

Release Party: It’s all online. BYOI. Whether you’re in Colorado Springs or China, you can still participate.

Play: I’ll have a game room later today or tonight.

Talk: There’s a shoutbox on the sidebar of each site. You can also use the Meebo box to chat with me individually if I’m online this weekend.

Door Prizes: Go to the guestbook and sign it. If you sign today, Saturday or Sunday, you’ll be eligible to win one of 6 awesome prizes. Two in the category “food,” two in the category “thrift” and two in the category “officially Okay t-shirt.” I’m giving away two each day, so sign early and often.

Online concert: I’ve never done anyting like this, but on Sunday afternoon, I’m planning to do about 30 minutes of music. It may just be me, my cat and my computer. But we’re going to have a great LIVE time together. Webcam and all.

I think that covers it. I’ll try to update this post throughout the weekend with any other significant news or announcements. Please check the credits page for info on who helped me put this CD together. I’m extremely grateful to all of you! And if you’re into remixes, go here for Garage Band and raw track files of “Almost Flew.” Post a link to your creations in the comments there.

Popularity: 12% [?]

How long till police arrive at the scene of an accident to discover that the driver was Twittering when he crashed? I found this little search to be fascnating:

SEARCH TWITTER FOR THE WORD DRIVING

Twitter is a social media tool that basically helps people write really short blogs. Most people post from their phones answering the question: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?”, which makes the above search that much more concerning.

Don’t Tweet and drive, folks.

technorati tags: twitter, driving

Popularity: 9% [?]

I love to write songs. I am a passionate person and I live intentionally. I don’t like to waste time, even though I do it from time to time.

I lead music at my church. I play the piano and try to play the guitar. Until a few years ago, I didn’t consider myself to be a singer. Maybe you still don’t.

I am a fan of technology and I’m a student of everything. Consequently, I tend to try to do everything myself. This CD release is an example of this. I am writer, producer, instrumentalist, marketer, website designer, publicist and street team leader. That isn’t to say that I have done this whole project without any help from anyone else–I have had lots of help. I’m just a consummate DIY’er. Perhaps to a fault. Perhaps.

I’ve created a CD that has a bunch of honest songs that I’ve written these last couple years. The point of putting them together on a CD called Okay was simply to send a message to people who are in that place–where everything seems to be falling apart–and you don’t know if it’s all going to be okay. I’m here to tell you that it will be. Somehow, it will be. If anything you hear touches you or resonates, I hope you’ll pass it along to someone else. I’ve been hanging out with these songs too long now. I’m excited that they have other, more interesting people to meet now.

Here’s some details about what’s going to happen over the next 3 months for those who are keeping score. Call it a marketing plan, if you want. It is what it is.

Phase 1 - I’m releasing the music digitally. I’m going to do this in as many places as possible.

Phase 2 - I’m releasing the music on CD. This will happen a little further down the road.

Phase 3 - I’ll be mailing CD’s to people who have never heard of me and hopefully encouraging them to share the music with others. This will include, but not necessarily be limited to, magazines, indie radio stations, local newspapers, web radio and music podcasters. If you think of someone who might be willing to share this music with an audience, let me know. I’ll also be playing out more. I’ve got dates in Colorado and even Minnesota lined up right now. I have a full-time job so I won’t tour right now, but I am entertaining some travel.

Tomorrow is the ONLINE RELEASE OF “OKAY.” A few people I have emailed seem to be confused about whether there’s actually a local event. There’s not. Just the internet. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you can join me. I’m setting up a chat room and I’m going to give away at least 5 door prizes to people who sign the guest book between Friday and Sunday. All the details will be posted tomorrow morning.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Okay, this Friday’s the day. If you know me very well, you’re going to get a couple emails this week. One announcing this event, and one reminding you on Friday morning to download my CD. I’m planning some kind of virtual CD Release Party at my web site all weekend. There will be clowns and door prizes and a chat room. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a short set of tunes on a web cam just for fun, but I’ll confirm if that’s going to happen for sure.

Forthcoming: a full blog post explaining more details. For now, you might want to go over to Amiestreet.com and set up an account. You’ll be able to download the album for free, but I think you have to be registered. Also, unless 100 people download this project right away, there’s a good chance you’ll get it for free or close to free. It’s a unique digital music model they’ve got over there and one that I think favors both the artist and the music lover.

Also, you’ll be able to pre-order the cd on my site pretty soon this week. This will help fund the hard costs of duplicating 1000 copies. You can listen to some of the tracks on the little, ugly, yellow and black music player on the right side of your screen there.

Finally, put May 25 on your calendar for the official CD release party. I’ll do a set at a venue here in Colorado Springs of all the new stuff with a full band. It’s going to be a blast.

I’m so excited about finally releasing this music. It’s been a long time coming.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I turned on my clock radio when I awoke this morning. A familiar song that I like for a lot of reasons was playing. The line that was on at that moment was this one:

Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you’ve told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

In case you’ve not had a radio or television on for some time, it’s “How to Save a Life” by the Fray. For some reason, it hit me differently and I started to listen to the song in its own context. I started to stop thinking about the melodrama of Grey’s Anatomy, where I first heard the song, and I started to think about it as a story.

I love songs and songwriting and the song has always appealed to me because of it’s poetic phrasing and hooky melody. I also like the piano part. But I started to realize that the song is about suicide prevention. Looking around online, I realize that I’ve come the party pretty late, but I still think it’s great when you sort of re-discover a song like this. So much pop music is so vague and cryptic that it’s often easy to overlook the blatant stuff like this.

I won’t post the whole lyric here, but if you Google “fray how to save a life lyrics” you’ll find it easily. This wikipedia entry confirmed my guess.

technorati tags: fray, songwriting

Popularity: 11% [?]