I am full of events
I’m very pleased to note that demand for Coulton is high over at Eventful – thank you all for the support and the love. Last I checked there were 43 places where people want me to come play, admittedly some of them only represent one or two people so far, but there are some larger ones there too (but I’m no Wil Wheaton: THAT guy is famous). A few people have been asking what the threshold is, how many people need to sign up before I’ll go to a city and play. The answer is I don’t really know, it’s complicated, it depends. I had an interesting conversation last night with someone from Eventful in which we talked about this stuff and tossed around some ideas on how the whole thing might actually work. I think it’s a compelling idea, and I’d love to make something happen.
So, I think that in order to move some of these things forward we need to discuss a couple of things all of us. If the city is particularly driveable and I have friends I can stay with (I’m looking at you Boston and DC), then my costs are minimal. If I have to fly there and rent a car and get a hotel it’s a whole new ball game – as much as I love each and every one of you, it doesn’t seem right for me to lose money by putting on shows. Either way, an event is more interesting to me if 1) it’s profitable, 2) it’s for a lot of people, 3) you locals put me in touch with a suitable venue or host a house concert. Keep in mind that no matter how many shows I do in Ohio I only need to fly there once, so we can also think about combining shows into little mini tours, that’s another way to make it work financially.
I’m really excited about it though, if we can pull one of these off we’ll be creating a totally new thing in the world. But until those demands get up into the quintuple digits, it will help if you guys drive the process a little – instead of just asking me to play in Cleveland, figure out where I should play and how I can make it financially viable. Make me an offer I can’t refuse.
I told you I was lazy.
Visual TAW
Len and Nora over at the Jawbone podcast have been big Coulton supporters – always with the airplay and the plugging (Len frequently states that he believes this to be The Year of Coulton). And they’ve recently started making Thing a Week a regular feature of the podcast, with a song from the series and a little phoned in explanation from yours truly. But Len has just upped the ante in the poker game that is our symbiotic relationship by offering to do a weekly visual interpretation of Thing a Week. Below is his first installment, which he seems to have done immediately after the song was posted, and with little difficulty. Or maybe he has access to the same secret audio feed that the New York Times uses to spy on me and steal my ideas.
Thing a Week 28 – When You Go
The creative process is a funny thing. This week I was convinced that I was completely out of songs, that I would never write again, that all the ideas in my head were really just the same lame idea that I’d been using over and over again all along. And I had this piece of something, I knew it was a sad song because I was feeling frustrated and blocked and that’s when the sad ones usually come. I hated it, but I kept smashing it against the wall because I didn’t have any other options and it was Thursday morning already, and I have Paying Subscribers for goodness sake. But then something shook loose and by 3 PM I had a new song. Where did it come from? Why did it take all week to show up? Why can’t I remember how it feels to write when I’m trying to do it and can’t? After 28 of these you’d think I would have found the magic button in my brain that makes a song happen. Still looking.
Anyway, this is an a cappella breakup song (not necessarily about the end of a romance). It didn’t start out a cappella, but there were so many vocals that I decided to take all the instruments away and I liked how it sounded enough to finish it up that way. You don’t hear a lot of really sad a cappella songs, they’re mostly about putting limes in coconuts and zombie jamborees and that sort of thing. At least that’s how we did it at Yale. Ahem. Full disclosure: it is almost certainly a distant relative of Todd Rundgren’s “Pretending to Care.” Also, I realized too late that I had stolen a little chord change/melody line thing from a Jim Boggia song. I hope he either doesn’t mind or doesn’t notice.
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DC Plugs
I usually avoid this kind of thing, but in this case I can’t help myself. If you live in Washington DC, there are two things that you must do right away. One is to make plans to go see the first installment of the F.W. Thomas Performances, a new monthly literary variety show created and hosted by my friend Adam Mazmanian. Adam is a great writer and a very funny fellow – he read something when John Hodgman, David Rees and I performed there a few months ago, and he absolutely killed. This Monday April 10 at the Warehouse Theater, he may kill again.
The second thing: maybe you’re hungry. Maybe you like delicious food. Maybe you want to eat duck prepared in THREE DIFFERENT WAYS! If so, you should head to David Craig Bethesda and eat there. It is good. I am telling you. Plus, my cousin is the co-owner (and undisputed master of the air guitar), and if you make nice with him he may tell you funny family stories about me. Ask for Johnny Bigpants, and tell him Yale Boy sent you.
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