Whattup my peeps!
Sorry I disappeared last week – it was not intentional. To catch you up to speed with the Freq-train… I (Nate) am producing a really cool record for a band near Detroit, Michigan. Last week I went there to work, and like I usually do, put in a slew of 10 – 14 hour days. This shouldn’t have been a problem, except that the building we are recording in doesn’t have internet – and I was staying with friends that I haven’t seen in a while – so it became practically impossible to write a blog last week. And just to put this out in advance – it is quite likely the same thing will happen again. I would like to find a better solution, but I also know that I will be sweating it out with this band to create their first record.
So back to the deep stuff… I have been thinking a lot about the challenge my friend Jon put to me a while back – I have blogged a bit about it in the past, but today I feel like I have a moment of clarity. The challenge he put to me is that I have to identify why I am a musician – the part that makes me weep when I talk about it, and then bring that into my music. That challenge has really stuck with me – to the point where I found myself praying for my audience last Saturday night. It was a silent, private prayer – on the stage during a musical interlude.
So what the heck am I doing “praying” during a concert? This isn’t necessarily an overtly spiritual band, and I am certainly not out trying to proselytize anybody. In fact that idea is repulsive to me – so what’s the deal?
Well, from my perspective – our country, the people who live here are entering a truly dark time. Am I nuts? Maybe. Maybe I am one of those paranoid fear mongers. Or maybe our country is standing on the precipice of a financial and social calamity that no one in our generation has ever dealt with. I believe to face it is going to take courage, creativity, and a belief that one can rise to greatness in the face of intense adversity.
As for me, I have believed very strongly ever since I was a little kid that I am supposed to be here, at this time, in this place to use music as a way to call people to be courageous, blind to fear, full of love and generosity, and a refusal to surrender to people who say that you should give up. People, we must find more dignity within ourselves than to live a skulking, cringing life.
It doesn’t always make sense to my mind, this mission that I feel. Personally, I just want freedom. I want to pay my house off. I want to make a screened in porch for my wife. I want to raise children and have a nice car. I don’t want to owe anyone anything, and I generally just want to enjoy my life.
Being a musician ruins a lot of that (at least at this point). I mean my story is so damn typical musician it’s frightening! And yet, I cannot stop. In fact, I feel even more compelled than ever to continue this path. Believe me, it’s not because I have a messiah complex. The world doesn’t necessarily need me to be a musician. But the world does need a lot of good people in all callings of life to step out and prove that a life lived courageously and honorably is better that one lived otherwise. Godspeed, -Nate

 Hey hey! I am blogging early in the week!
This is the wrap up of my foray into the Music Success in Nine Weeks book. I have to say, I am feeling pretty positive at this point. Ariel, I will recommend this book now as one of my top three most important books a professional musician should own. MSINW will be keeping company now with The Real Deal and Tour:Smart. There is no hierarchy to these books, they all shed light on different aspects of the music business, any artist who wants to move forward with their career MUST pay attention to these aspects.

So why is my dog-eared copy of MSINW so darned important? “Without press, a terrible thing happens: Nothing”. That quote (or something like it) was attributed to P.T. Barnum on a website I came across the other day, and it has stuck with me, especially as I am wrapping Ariel’s book.
Before I get too far down that path, let me review some of what has taken place. First lets review some of the goals I outlined in one of my earlier blogs:

1. Book a minimum of 2 significant gigs a week for the next 52 weeks, including at least 2 festivals.
2. Get mentioned positively in at least 40 blogs.
3. Get an agent.
4. Get a licensing placement (movie/tv/game)

Now – have any of these things happened? Nope. Am I happy about it? Nope. Am I still making more progress than I would have? Yep.  And I have learned a lot? Yep. Will any of those goals change? A little… the first one especially. I have been talking to quite a few industry folks over the last 5-6 weeks and I am starting to get a slightly different picture of things. First of all, apparently I have picked exactly the worst time in recent history to book shows! Even a couple seasoned pros I have been talking to are pulling off the road for a bit. But, (hehe) their new strategy is to push out their web presence! Well! I guess I am on the right track. So, I am starting to worry less about the number of shows I book, and more about finding reasons to get everybody talking about Frequency Theater!
Another thing is I have really had shift in my perception of how important it is to somehow get attention, whether through blogs, traditional press, or word of mouth. Want some proof? Friday, Ariel posted some of the people who are participating in the blog contest. Guess what? I went to all of their sites. I commented. And then I realized what she had done. Whether this was Ariel’s intent or not, (I am guessing it was) I did the same thing piles of other people who read her posts did – and all of those sites saw a spike in traffic! Point taken Ariel, point taken.
So – instead of trying to flog more and more downloads and t-shirt sales and concert tickets out of my incredibly small (although incredibly loyal) fan base (thank you, thank you!), I am going to conduct an experiment – a completely insane experiment. I am going to take on MUSE on Youtube. I am going to do my best to learn and record all of the drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals to the song “Stockholm Syndrome”. Then I am going to mix it down and post a video of the final outcome. Can I do it? I hope so! It will probably make me mad and frustrate the crap out of me, but I am sure I will learn some new things in the process, but most of all, I hope a lot of people get excited by watching the process. After all, the point is more to try things, and get everybody interested. I hope you will follow along! Godspeed, -Nate

As the pundits prattle on my internet radio, a lot of thoughts are floating in my head. I am munching on pretzel sticks while the snow continues to blanket my gloomy Indiana town, thinking about my last blog post.

I grew up in church, and mostly church music until high school. Even until my early 20’s the majority of the music I listened to was religious in nature, and I participated in many debates on the topic of the “message in the music”. One of the huge factors that really began to change my perspective was sometime in 1998 when a guy named Doug Pinnick sent out an official release to the Christian music community that he was coming out of the closet, and (the part that actually bothered me) he felt that he had lost any hope for his faith to provide answers to his questions – or for people of the Christian faith to extend an sense of understanding to him.

Doug’s band King’s X was very influential to me at the time – I was going through my own piles of shit – and their 1993 Dogman record was really connecting with me. Little did I know that part of the reason the record was so potent was that lyrically Doug was wrestling with his own monsters, and being very honest about it.

So why am I bringing all this up now? Because last weeks blog puts me in a wrestling match with some of the conclusions I came to a decade ago. At the time it was pretty earth-shattering to realize that the ideology driven music I was so invested in was missing the mark pretty badly – it was not bringing much hope to me, and it certainly wasn’t giving Doug any peace of mind.

As I explored the topic further, I sat in on a songwriters workshop hosted by Linford and Karin of Over The Rhine. During that workshop Linford proposed that agenda driven art was historically one of the most dangerous ideas possible – he placed all such art categorically under the label “propaganda” and suggested that “a lot of blood had been shed over that idea”.

This felt oddly comfortable to me. I was reaching a point in my own musical path where I was more than ready to start making a real income from music, and was ready to hear that the quickest path to musical success was to be as innocuous as possible. Examples abounded to prove to me that this was the case – the most glaring of the time was the Dixie Chicks tirade against former president Bush. I didn’t agree with them at all, but I certainly didn’t want to say so, for fear that my fans would react the same way, burning my cds in the streets and physically confronting me at concerts.

So here is my crossroads now: on the one hand, I have largely adopted the 90’s U2 approach of saying what I mean, but sounding like I may not mean it (or using sarcasm to say the exact opposite of what I mean – ala “The Charismatic”). On the other hand, I have been a Glenn Beck fan for about 5 years, and whether you agree with him or not, his ratings reveal that his way of being open about his views is connecting very strongly with his audience, and it continues to grow rapidly. So which path do I choose? Emerging thoughts of my own are at least leading me to re-consider the role of the artist in society. But what does it look like? On the one hand, I NEED MONEY! On the other hand, does art mean anything if it’s not speaking to the social issues of the day?

All the same, it really bothers me the way that our society talks about the issues of the day… I do not want my art to be reduced to some didactic monologue. I feel like I have avoided that tendency so far, and I would like to continue down that road. My friend Paul has this saying: “We are born human beings, we die Democtracts, Republicans, Conservatives, Liberals, Doctors, Lawyers, Musicians, Pastors…” We reduce our own human dignity when we assign ourselves these titles. My aim is to be honest, but to honor our humanity, let people have dignity.

I want to wrap this up now, but I need to mention a bit about my blogging contest (since that is one of the qualifying elements!) The chapter I just finished was designed to help artists be more effective with managing their e-mail lists. I will spare you the details (if you want to buy the book yourself, check out Music Success In Nine Weeks), but it was a helpful chapter. One thing that was at the beginning of the book that I want to pass on to you now though is what I am calling my “Triumph List”. All you do is take a moment at the end of the day to write down 5 things you accomplished (kicked ass at) each day. It sounds simple, but I have not yet regretted doing it! So I guess take that with you, and try it out. Godspeed, -Nate

 Hiya blog-o’s!
Right this very minute I am in a fancy Hilton in Washington DC. My wife is doing some very cool work here, and I had the opportunity to accompany her on this trip. What a head trip – I literally was conversing with an ambassador from Norway a few minutes ago, and then met a lady named Ruby in the elevator who lives in the Bahamas. She told me that she loved my hair and that I should enjoy my youth. She was such a beautiful soul, I didn’t have the heart to point out to her that I am in my 30’s and that my hair is only half as awesome as it used to be, because that much has fallen out!
She did say something that I found quite intriguing though – “people should not give youth too hard of a time, youth is like the sunrise, beautiful. Most of life is like the daytime, long and hot!”
So, DC. Yeah, this brings me to an interesting topic. Politics. A good friend of mine, Jonathan, a fellow musician and coach, and I were discussing the current state of my musical trajectory the other day. He really put the screws to me, challenging me to be more honest with my audience about the true nature of my heart and that the reasons I play music should be reflected better in the music that I write. It’s not that I haven’t been honest, in fact a lot of my material scares the crap out of me to perform, because it’s so personal. I just kind of veiled it a little and used a good dose of sarcasm.

(Side note – well dressed men who get their cell phones stuck on speakerphone, but still hold it up to their ears… hysterical! Maybe I should start a facebook group called this?)

OK, back to the topic at hand: politics, world events, interpersonal relationships, religion – these are the hot button issues of the world, and all things I am intrigued by and things I contemplate and study daily. To me, the axis that the world truly spins on does not have the north and south poles at the end: rather people are at the endpoints.

(Side note two: in my hometown one of the local priests comes into my favorite coffee shop in his robes, but I never expected to see one dressed like that here in the same place as a bunch of politicians!)

People are the endpoints… it’s been a little shocking to discover as I have entered adulthood that people rarely change. The entire world is full of 5 year olds in huge bodies, usually using their adulthood to get away with most of the things they weren’t allowed to as a kid – with no one to really question it! The amazing thing to me is that since the human race operates on relationships, you would tend to think we would be masters of relating, but the contrary is true, we are atrocious at it!
In the songwriters world, relationships dominate the conversation. I think the vast majority of pop music can be broken down into two categories, one being the category of hope in a relationship, or two, the loss or brokenness of a relationship. Even my own first EP can really be understood by looking at it through that lens, broken relationships from people to their governments, broken relationships between people and their faiths, broken relationships between persons, whether caused by death, domestic violence or divorce.

So, as I am contemplating the next record, I am hoping to push these things into a clearer focus, and challenge myself to be more honest about where I stand in relation to these things. This is scary territory to me, for the last decade I have made a lot of friends who sharply disagree with my personal ideologies by hiding them and keeping things to myself. This feels very nice, safe, and agreeable – but it really is robbing people of knowing who I really am, and me of the opportunity to have my ideas confronted and tested by those who disagree with me. As a result, my first effort to push this out is a new song with a working title of godsexpolitics. Will it appear on the next record? Not if it stinks – but I feel like this is a path I have to walk down. I hope you all can bear with me on the journey. I am sure I will make a mess of things along the way, but frankly, I haven’t done anything that was worthwhile didn’t have some mess involved.

One last detail I need to mention – I am still participating in Ariel Hyatt’s blogging contest based on working through the Music Success in Nine Weeks book. One of the coolest things that the book has me excited about is that there can be an ongoing dialogue between us… it used to drive me crazy when I would go see a concert, and then there was no access to the musicians on the stage beyond maybe shaking their hand in the autograph line. I am thrilled at the idea that the conversation can now continue. Thanks for sticking around! –Nate

 Hi everybody!
Just touching base – I am thinking a lot about negativity… how it is really unhelpful, but really easy to slip into. There are a lot of real and perceived pressures surrounding the development of this project, but always finding areas where we are defeated is no way to fight these battles.
Thanks Carla (comment on the last blog entry) for reminding me about baby steps. I think it is hard to remember that just because I have learned to physically walk, or become proficient at playing an instrument does not mean that I am able to “walk” in all aspects of this journey.
Admittedly, I am learning to crawl in the area of self-promotion and growing this band – it’s frustrating and difficult to keep in perspective because I have been “paying my dues” for so long (20 years and counting). Sometimes I feel like I am somehow entitled to a lucky break just for having stayed in the game for so long. Even if that were true, there are so few people who are aware of this things existence that it is simply unrealistic that I could desire some sort of respect or credibility from people who don’t even know I’m here, let alone what I am capable of.
On the daunting side of this whole thing – I use a service called ReverbNation to help with the administration of this band: they are really great at accumulating and aggregating information about bands. This led me to learn a couple things in the last week.
First of all, I am the #2 Alternative act in the region. Cool! Well, maybe. There are only 9 acts who call themselves “alternative” within a 50 mile radius, and I am the only one who is active. Hmmm… ok, so another number – I am also the 25th most popular act regionally. Hey – I am super happy to break into the top 25, because there are a jillion bands around. (I don’t really trust the number either, because I know of at least 3 very popular local bands that aren’t on the list – but I will take what I can get!)
But here is where it gets ugly – the most popular regional act is Half-Pint Jones. I think this number is right… those guys are getting to be a pretty big deal. Number two is my friends in The Great Escape. Well now! I know those guys, that’s cool – they are pretty nice to me, and even had me open a show with them a couple weeks back. That seems within reach… oh crap. The difference between #25 and #2? 20,000 fans. Oh boy!
So I have my work cut out for me. But, I am actually very encouraged by things like this at the moment… A lot of you who DO know about this have been very encouraging and helpful, even (dah-da-duh-duh-dat-duhduh-DAH) loyal! SO THERE! My fans are more awesome that those other guys fans any day! I went through my facebook friends this morning, and got a big ole grin… I think I need to do this more often.
On to another topic – I am sorting through demos and working on some new stuff… and getting VERY excited. I am not making any kind of prediction as to when this material may appear, just know it out there.
Blog readers – you are the first to be in on this info… I redesigned the website, and there are a couple of significant changes. First of all, I will be moving most of my show pictures to flickr, this will make it easier to manage and give me more room for exclusive content on the website. Also, the Geekery page is now linked off of the little speaker in the lower right corner of the website – and you have to be an e-team member to access it. BUT!!!! There is a ton of new info there, the entire Fly Gallery release concert has been mixed and is available for free download along with a radio interview on WGCS, handwritten lyrics and of course all kinds of info on how the technical side of the band works. Hurry up and join, because soon this portion of the website will soon move to being an annual subscription, and anyone who is a member of the e-team before that date will get the first year free!
Last thing… I am still definitely working through the Music Success in Nine Weeks book – and of course, more changes are afoot… this weeks focus was the newsletter. A new one will be sent out on Friday that will explain the changes to that in more detail.

Any feedback on the new website design would be more than welcome.

Thanks for tuning in – don’t do things that destroy your soul! Godspeed, -Nate

 I was feeling pretty depressed when I first started writing this. I have been warned about blogging in this condition (similar to drunk driving except on the internet). I ended up holding off for a couple days, a decision I am not regretting!
I think I am starting to have a toxic reaction to trying to keep things on the up and up, when in reality, here at home it feels a lot like going backwards. Maybe it’s not, but it is very hard to tell right now.
In any case, I did a show Saturday night, and I have to put out my thanks to Jonathan of Whore in Babalon (yes, it really is misspelled that way), Jeff from Structural Interference, and the ladies of Surrender Your Innocence. All three of these bands are super-underground, but I admire their determination, and I am nearly in tears with the way that they all surrounded me and affirmed what I was doing, on a night that felt like a waste to me.
All of these bands are far more aggressive than I am, but they really seem ok with having a guy open for them who is musically a lot more closely related to Coldplay than what they are doing.
Anyways, one of things I am trying to reconcile in my own mind is how I can call attention to what needs to happen for this band to succeed and rally people to this cause without whining or throwing down a pity party. I don’t want to succeed on pity, I want to succeed on success!
For now, I will just tell you – the thing that has me down the most is that I apparently suck at booking, and this really has gotten to me. I crave live shows like nothing else. I love the lights, the fog, the sweat, the dancing, the bass shaking your bones, the buzz of the crowd after the show, all of those wires and gadgets and frankly, getting off on knowing what to do with them!
I don’t really have a good plan for how to deal with this, my plan was to book shows, and go find my audience. I am not sure what to do, but I know I cannot surrender to the temptation to quit. I have been here too many times to be fooled by that.

I wanted to touch base on my progress with the Music Success in Nine Weeks book, this weeks focus is on bloggers (I was working ahead a little, which is why I got that wonderful review from Steven Smyth). The simple part of it is done, I have done a lot of logistical stuff with my blog so that even more people have access to it. The next phase however is getting mentioned in a pile of other blogs, which is not going to happen over-night – but I am already hard at work on it.

Last, I wanted to refocus on a couple of things that have inspired me in the last week. First of all, I am just perpetually blown away by the creativity of Trent Reznor. This week, portions of the fan-filmed movie that has been made about Nine Inch Nails last couple of tours are showing at Pitchfork.tv, and it is awesome! Everything about these shows is just top notch, and frankly, I think a testament to what creative people are truly capable of when they get off of drugs! I don’t want to dig into it too much, but even the way the film was made, and how it is being promoted are testaments to the creative coolness that is at play in the face of an industry that is just being gutted by a refusal to acknowledge the changing times and adapt.

Conan O’Brien is finally hitting his stride in his last week on NBC. This is the Conan I used to watch back in the 90’s… do what you do best, and you will always come out on top!

And… kudos to my friend David Troyer, and my former neighbor Brandon Owens for getting into a band and going out on the road… I am jealous, (it's the only thing I have ever wanted to do with my life) and proud!

Ok everybody, pray none of my equipment breaks, that some of the outstanding money that is owed me comes in, and most of all that we start getting some shows! Thanks for lending me your ears. Godspeed -Nate

 Ok, I am eating my words…
I have been working through the “Music Success In Nine Weeks” book, and for the last two weeks I have complained about the book not being challenging enough, or bringing enough new info my way. Well… I just got my moneys worth! HOLY COW! I have put in close to 50 hours since my last blog on chapter 4 alone.

That’s a LOT of hours, up until this point in my life this chapter would have taken me weeks to hammer out! My wife and I have done something completely crazy which is enabling this much effort… I quit taking construction bids in October to focus on getting Frequency Theater off the ground for six months and Amber has been paying all of the bills. This time is winding down, and I am very anxious to make some real progress.

Some of the changes you may notice right away, like the addition of Flickr, purevolume, and ReverbNation accounts. Some very cool things are happening out of this, for instance, on the videos page there is now a player that allows you scroll through all of our videos in one player, or the fact that you can now see and access all of the same info regarding our shows at our website, facebook, myspace, and reverbnation pages!

Another really cool thing I am excited about is the addition of the My Band tab on our facebook page – this shows a ton of information that I was not able to show previously on facebook. The coolest feature about this is that you can add a mini version of this to your own facebook page if you want to help us spread the word. In the My Band tab, there is a button that says “add to my profile”. Just click away my friends – this will be a huge help!

Something that has been really encouraging to me is that my new ReverbNation account aggregates our “fans” from facebook and myspace. According to that, Frequency Theater has over 500 fans online! Granted, a lot of the myspace ones are fake, we have a lot of “bands” that are counting us as one of their “friends” that have never listened to a note of our music – all the same, we do have some pretty loyal fans there also.

Anyways, it’s good to get this kind of encouragement, otherwise it’s being quite the rough road. I am getting really sick of booking people not calling me back. Apparently some people’s mothers neglected to teach them common courtesy. Oh well, thicker skin…

I hope you all are having a good week, wish me luck as I try to book more shows. I hope you find success in whatever you are trying to accomplish with your life as well: Godspeed, Nate

 I begin this blog with a confession of being a bit of a fool. Foolishness is often born out of stubbornness, and I get the stubborn award today. Two blogs ago I complained about losing a blog, was given advice about how not to do it again, blew off the advice, and then did it again today. In fact, not two minutes before it happened, my wife came through the room and asked if I had it saved. I did not, and her asking about it irritated me. So, instead of hearing her attempt to be helpful, I dug in my heels. After all, I was nearly done.
So, now that I have really embarrassed myself, I am writing this in Word, and saving it. I would have probably saved myself a good hour today by doing it in the first place. Sorry Amber, sorry audience, you didn’t get my best today, because I insisted on being a jackass.

So yeah, Elvis died almost exactly a year after I was born. I guess it’s his birthday today, and the hot topic on twitter and google searches. On another random topic, my version of Word still doesn’t recognize “google” as a word. Bill Gates, are you stubborn too?

I have three shows coming up in the next two weeks. Tomorrow I am playing at The Loftt in Bristol, IN. It will be our first time there, and I am really curious to see how it goes. We are opening for three MUCH heavier bands. It should be amusing in any case… and hopefully we will still get people to dance and have a good time! I should mention that Jason from The Great Escape opened the door for me to get in on this show, and I am grateful to him.
Sunday we play at the legendary Elbo Room in Chicago. I am very excited to play here, a lot of great bands have played here in the past, and again, this is out first time to play there, hopefully the first of many!

As many of you know, I am working my way through Ariel Hyatt’s “Music Success In Nine Weeks” and participating in a blogging challenge. I am a little behind writing about it because I was gone a lot over Christmas/New Years. The section I just completed is about improving my website and incorporating my little slogan (the one about being stuck in a triangle – if you aren’t sure what I talking about, click HERE) into all of my social media stuff.

These aren’t necessarily huge changes, and I have been struggling a little bit with that for weeks two and three as I am working through the book. I mean, Ariel is a nice person (she even asked to have her picture taken with me when I attended the New Music Seminar back in November), but the darn book is not cheap, and I have been really close already to what the book is suggesting. I have only been making little changes so far.

As I was struggling through what I thought about this, I recalled the concept of Kaizen. This was a huge corporate buzzword back when I worked a lot in factories, Toyota had introduced the idea to the western world, and corporations the world over were trying to capitalize on the idea. I have linked to the Wikipedia page about Kaizen HERE, and it gets at the basic idea, but lacks the nuance of the way the idea was introduced to me: Small, steady, disciplined change is more effective and manageable than a massive overhaul and is much more likely to have a long lasting effect. So I am trying to keep my mind and heart open to the idea that the little changes may be the ones that make the big difference, like the little snowflakes that cover the earth.

I got into a new blog! A band I follow (loosely) called Kill The Drama posted on myspace that they had appeared in a blog called “Left Unsigned”. I checked it out, and I really appreciated what Stephen Smyth had to say, so I wrote him and asked him if he would be willing to review the Fly Gallery EP. He was very generous with me, and I am happy to say, he liked the record to! I would encourage you to go to his blog and check out what he had to say.

Well… this next week will be fun, I love shows! I will be writing again soon, thanks for listening, and as always, Godspeed. -Nate

 Hi! sorry I am so late for my next post... the holidays have really been great, but the have wrecked my routine! I also did some construction work on a friends house today, which ran over - so, I promise I will do a proper blog in the next day or two! Hang in there! :) Hope you are having a great week, and don't forget about the shows this weekend... if you don't know about them, go HERE! -Nate

 No really, it did.

I had a nice long bloggety-blog written up and then one of those unfortunate keystroke dealys where you accidentally hit down-up-down-up-left-right-left-right in the perfect sequence and the browser page moves forward one to a magical never-before-existing page and when you click the back arrow: BAM!!! everything you just spent the last hour perfecting is magically gone. I didn't even get a power-up or any bonus points out of the deal! I guess there is no point whining over letters under the browser, so we will just move on other things.

Christmas is over. If you are reading this right now and did not get my newsletter... it had a christmas song in it. If you do not mind hearing one more christmas song, you can download it here. 

Christmas may be over technically, but I am only about halfway through family festivities. My wife's extended family is very connected and so we have (almost literally) the full blown 12 days of christmas. Some part of this almost always entails a drive from here (northern Indiana) to eastern Iowa. I really enjoy this, but it has made blogging a bit of a challenge - especially since I had to surrender my beloved SpeedyMac to Apple so that they could fix my screen.

As you may recall from the last blog, I am currently working through Ariel Hyatt's "Music Business Success in Nine Weeks" which may become a victim of the holiday's and become "Music Business Success in Ten Weeks". I am trying to stay on track but I am starting to fall behind a little. Anyways... week two is supposed to help me be able to communicate concisely what my band is/sounds like to to someone who has never heard of us. Which would be almost everybody at this point.

Those of you who have been checking out the website since the early days know that it has changed a lot, the most recent being the addition of the big banner on the homepage which reads "Frequency Theater: Alternative Music for The Masses". Yes I am shamelessly associating myself with Depeche Mode. Underneath is this slogan... "If you drew a triangle with Muse, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails at the corners, Frequency Theater would be somewhere in the middle"

I felt pretty cool that this was the project for week two, because I have already had this up on my website for over a month. So - week two was a breeze, right? Eh, I still have some room for improvement. For instance, after working through the chapter, I realized that this slogan should be on everything... so I have to update all of my social media stuff, as well as my press kit and posters for up coming shows. 

This created a dilemma for me. While I feel perfectly comfortable saying this phrase out loud, looking at it in print makes me feel about as comfortable as walking around in a hospital gown. But I have to put something out there that lets someone new know what to expect if they are considering whether or not to spend their hard earned money on one of my concerts.

For this handbill for an upcoming show I chose to include a quote from a local radio personality instead - for some reason this feels way more comfortable to me, and I think it communicates nearly the same basic idea.

I haven't completely settled on the idea yet, so if anyone else has a thought or opinion - I am open to hearing what you might think. Do these phrases make sense to you? Think you can do better? Feel free to add your comments to the blog.

Other than that... I have a LOT of peppermints from my christmas stocking - does anybody want some? I will seriously laugh if you do. I will also mail them to you! 

I think I am going to wrap this up now... hang around though, next week is supposed to be about making my internet presence work better. I don't know why this would be interesting yet, but if it ends up being only interesting to me I will regale you stories about my imaginary cat that I just thought of or how I think Lizard-People have taken over all positions of authority in the world. In any case it should be entertaining!  -Nate