Woo! We’re Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival official photos page. Wait for it and you’ll see Anna and me both! Front page! 😀 We’re in fact in several photos here – one where I’m performing solo (my extended version of Ten Finger Johnny) and later with Anna in session. 😀

(Sadly, the photos – by Rick West – were taken down in when they redid their website)

Newfoundland music on Newfoundland soil. That’s called the correct way Even if I do have an uncanny ability to blink just in time for the photo. XD

But now, back to business.

Last time, we talked about monitor speakers; what to look for when you have no money, characteristics to seek out, simple mods to improve their behaviour, and so on.

But unless you went with powered monitors, you’re going to need amplifiers to drive those monitor speakers. Since you’re reading this, you probably aren’t going to just go out and pay full retail for some very nice new equipment; let’s talk DIY!

First, I need to repeat something I said last time:

The cheap but rebuildable equipment you want mostly comes from the 1970s… There are a couple of key reasons for this: 1. By this time, transistor audio technology had settled down, and no longer sounded like ass. 2. The state of the art was finally good enough (in transistors) that the then-goal of broad and equal frequency handling – meaning, flat audio reproduction curves – became realistically attainable, and people were still trying really hard for it.

This is true in amplifiers, too. Some would argue that in amps, you want to stick to the early 70s. I don’t particularly agree, but be careful when you get into the early 80s, just because of audio fashion trends being what they were.

You can also step back a bit into the 1960s, if you’re willing to learn vacuum-tube equipment. In some ways, that’s easier to work on, and you’ll get fantastic bang-per-buck. Look for EICO, Dynaco, Harmon-Kardon, just for examples; and research tubes first, to see what’s back in production.

Tube equipment has downsides, though: you can’t tip them on the side, they use a lot more electricity, need more ventilation space, generate a lot more heat, and most importantly of all, the power rail tends to be hanging out in the 450 volt range. Careful with those pliers!

Think of it as the advanced class

So unless you’re okay with that, stick to the transistor era.

If you poke around, you can find a pretty good number of old 70s component-stereo-system amplifiers for very little money. Don’t buy the combined units, with turntables and tape decks built in; those were junk then, and are junk now. You’ll see nostalgia for some of that era, and entertaining tho’ that might be, it’s not our goal. Look for something that’s just amplifier and pre-amp – preferably a unit without even a radio.

Undeniably groovy, but still kinda terrible

Pioneer is usually a good, safe bet, as brands of the era go; it’s right in that sweet spot of quality and commonality. So is Harmon Kardon. Sansui, Kenwood, and Marantz are often excellent, but tend to cost more even now. My general approach is to keep an eye open and when I see something of the right sort, then search the web for it and see what people have to say. AudioKarma and Gearsluts are both pretty good data sources in this regard.

My current studio monitor amp is a Pioneer SA-5200. It was made for all of three years (1972-1975) and I picked it up at a thrift shop for all of $5. They go for under $35 on eBay, working to various degrees.

Not mine, but same model. Not so groovy, but far more competent.

It has no power to speak of (20w), but you don’t need it for this application; most importantly, it’s noted for being a very clean amp; very low distortion and very low noise, at least as it shipped from the factory. And it has enough power to drive all my mains, and reference headphones.

That said, it sounded pretty terrible when I bought it, and got worse over time. This is where you need to know something which may and may not make any sense to you, depending upon how much you know about electronics: electrolytic capacitors age and die. And every audio chain you’ll find in any of these amps uses lots of them.

You’ll have to rip out and replace every one.

I’ve talked often about how the most important item in your studio toolkit is the soldering iron. Amps of these vintage can be rebuilt, without complex tools. The parts are large and relatively easy to access. You’ll want a low-wattage soldering iron, so you don’t damage the board with too much heat. You’ll want direct-value replacement swaps on those capacitors, in terms of uF rating. (You can go higher in voltage if you want; that’s a matter of how much the capacitor will tolerate, so replacing with higher voltage is safe.)

The electrolytic capacitors look like this, on the circuit board:

Or Doctor Who. Are you The Doctor? No? Don’t reverse polarity.

Coming out of the bottom of each of those cylinders are a pair of metal wires. Those go through the circuit board and are soldered into place, making contact with the printed circuit on the other side of that board. You’ll need to de-solder those connections, pull up the capacitor, and replace it with caps of the same capacity.

As a side note, these are not the only kinds of capacitors. You’ll see many flat discs; those are ceramic capacitors. Barring physical damage, you’ll never need to replace one. Similarly, you’ll occasionally find flattish rectangular capacitors. Those are usually film, and again, leave them alone, they’re fine.

Doing all this is kind of a pain in the ass, but you generally need to do it in equipment of this vintage. Here’s a bit of a map:

It’s dangerous to go to Toshi Station alone! Take this.

Any stereo amplifier is really two amplifiers combined together into a single box, one for the left channel, one for the right channel. You can see above how this results in symmetrical layout of components! Anywhere you have that kind of symmetry, you’re dealing with the left and right channels, duplicated. Anywhere you’re not seeing symmetry, you’re probably looking at power circuits.

Advanced students will want to bypass the tone controls. There’s no single way to do that, so I’m not going to post pictures. But I will explain why: it’s because, as with the monitor speakers, you don’t want help. You want flat response, or as close as you can get to it. The ideal studio monitor amplifier would be a wire, with gain – that is, a wire that magically changed nothing about your sound other than volume.

Tone adjustment knobs and systems, by definition, deviate from flatness. They’ll also add noise, so just bypass them. It’s also one less set of components to rebuild, so saves you time!

And that’s how to get a quality monitor amplifier on the smallest budget – at least, that I’ve found so far. Next week: I dunno! Microphones, or possibly digital audio workstation software and computers to run it on. One of those. Happy rewiring! ^_^

ps: Let the kitty help!

No, no, not wire snips – can opener! Here, I’ll get it.

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, on building out a home recording studio.

And so we left beautiful Montréal!

G’bye, island! G’bye, Montréal!

We took viaRail overnight to Moncton, and had a sleeping room, which is actually a room, which means we had a room on a train, which is kind of amazing – like, there was enough floorspace to pace if you wanted to – but sadly I was not able to photograph it well.

But seriously, floor space and a closet and our own washroom and AC power and a fold-out desk. And two bunk beds. And a door. With keys. ♥

The Quebec countryside is pretty and mostly farms. Here’s one:

And then the sun set, prettily:

So we watched that for a while, and I wrote a little in my paper journal (but not as much as I’d meant to) and we went to dinner, which was fantastic, and where I discovered I’m rather fond of ice wine, which would also be fantastic if it wasn’t $90 a bottle.

Yikes.

Back in the room, Anna wrote into the night.

…while I headed back up to the lounge car to – well, my plan was just rehearse. But I picked up an audience, and it turned into a little late-night concert! Small but enthusiastic, which seems to be kind of a theme for my shows this trip. Hopefully I can turn that into larger and enthusiastic at some point, but small crowds are great if they’re actually involved and paying attention.

Right after the show, the train stopped and a chunk of it separated off to go to Gasbé, which is where everyone in Quebec goes for vacation. Seriously, everybody. But we kept going, after dropping them off, and awoke to the low forests of New Brunswick!

Facing east, difficult to photograph

We went up to get breakfast (and found we’d missed it, thanks to our phones not picking up the timezone change – hello, Atlantic Time!) but got something in the lounge car instead. And a surprise concert by someone else!

Joanna Barker

After her show, we chatted and traded CDs. She was also playing her way across Canada, but doing it entirely on the train! She’d started on Vancouver Island and was heading back home to St. John’s. Guys, I so need to do this. Seriously.

It took me a while to figure out this name:

Not みらみち. Mir-ra-ma-shee, as in “where you’re tied up to a tree.”

Around noon, we arrived in Moncton and were met by our gracious hosts, Pauline and Neil and the adorable Miss B! Who totally looks and sounds like Boo from Monsters, Inc. They took us home, then out to THE FOOD OF THEIR PEOPLE! Poutine Rapeé.

I have to admit my first thought with the rapeé was that it was a sweet, and that the outer coating was sugar? But it’s a savoury – the outer layer is potato, and on the inside, smoked meats! It’s very much like hombow, only because it’s boiled (very traditional, you say?) it kind of has a slime layer. Which you scrape off, and then it’s actually pretty good!

Miss B and Dad, Neil

Seriously, she’s Boo incarnate. We kept waiting for her to shout KITTY!

We had a whole day, so Pauline and Neil drove us around to show us the countryside. New Brunswick is unsurprisingly also lovely countryside:

Click here for closeup

Click to enlarge

…albeit infested by GIANT LOBSTERS:

Acadian! Lobsters! Of! Unusual! Size!

She’s Et, Jim

Et too, Anna?

And then back to town and off to do a house concert! Again, small but enthusiastic; there were some last-minute cancellations due to the best weather of the last two years and impromptu camping and other outdoors excursions. But, again, enthusiastic. It’s a theme, really. At least one person took some video, hopefully I can get it from him! I need to get off my ass and ask about that… XD

Right about here I started figuring something about the differences between cultures and how much they do or do not value music.

Cascadia’s not particularly music-hostile. Some places genuinely are, and not just fundamentalist environments either. (Singapore is, from what I’m told, rather music-hostile. Just as an example.)

But it’s not a thing that people do, in general. And it’s a little weird if someone does do it; it’s a little spooky, or a little magical, and a bit discouraged, socially. Recorded music is everywhere, but performers are… not generally welcome. I’ve been treated very roughly at farmer’s markets where I’m supposed to be playing, because the farmers – as one put it, too my face – think I’m a “parasite” for not being, well, a farmer.

For not being productive, really, because what I make isn’t important. And it’s socially okay to make that very clear. I’ve had people ask what I was happy about, and when I tell them about it and it’s some music thing, they abruptly changed the subject.

That’s not the norm – in that it’s not the most common reaction – but it normal, in that it happens often enough to be unremarkable. It’s not worth noting.

Unless, of course, I’m explaining the differences between places, like I am now.

So it’s not suppressed – and classical is outright approved of – so there are instrument stores here, and some very good ones! (Dusty Strings in Fremont, Seattle; American Music in Bellevue both come to mind.) But, well, they’re niche. They’re quirky. In a positive sense, absolutely! But… quirky. Off-beat. Off-path. Certainly not something you’d find sharing a big-box store parking lot with Costco or, oh, Home Depot.

…oh.

Yeah. It’s like that.

Every instrument store I went into starting with Montréal and heading east had more variety – not necessarily total stock, but overall variety – than anything I’ve ever seen before this trip. Even the small ones.

That only happens if you have economic demand. And that economic demand tells you, as clearly as can be told without being there, how far down that difference goes. Music is productive; music is something people do.

I’ll talk more about this later. Thank you again, Pauline and Neil, for having us in – and next up: St. John’s!

ps: I bought a xaphoon in Moncton. I’d never seen one before. The first noise I got out of it sounded like a moose call but it really sounds like a hybrid of oboe and sax.

Also in Moncton:

OMG DO WANT. Godin. Particularly the A5 (5-string) version. Droooooooool.

So we got on a train from Toronto and went to Montréal! I hate airplane travel but love train travel, and this was quite a bit like the Cascadian rail that I take from Seattle to Vancouver all the time, with two minor differences: 1. the foot was much better, but 2. no lounge or separate dining car, which means I was essentially just in a seat for those hours.

For most people, they’d take the better food – and it was fabulous – but I’d rather have the ability to get up and walk to another car. I hate sitting that long.

Taking pictures from the train didn’t work very well because the sunlight was on the wrong side. But we saw this:

hi lake!

And this:

seems familiar

Which reminded me of this:

oooooh rite

And then once we got there we saw this:

unf

…and I went Hel-LO, Montréal! And then we went to dinner with Vicka and Pywaket! And I determined that in fact, rabbit is super tasty, as was the gelato and chocolate at Suite 88 up on the Plateau, which is where we spent most of our time.

Montreal looks a lot like this!

And also has this, which is where Anna and I would buy all the things if we lived there:

home of the bass ukelele, which I desperately want

Next day was up early for Festival Mémoire et Racines in Joliette! And Em picked us up from Hotel Lord Berri and took us to her favourite Quebec poutine-and-steamed-bun-hot-dog place on the way. I realised I’d forgot my phone so most of this are sadly just off my phone. But!

Anna was particularly happy to see these guys:

Les Charbonniers de l’enfer

…because they never travel all the way out to Cascadia! So she got to see them live. In a tent! And sang along like this:

i did not understand the lyrics

The big OMG SQUEE for me was that some of the musicians were having little pickup sessions, and they’d get together and play at this one building outside the green room, and other people could sit in on this ring of tables around them if you wanted, and play along. So of course I did that, briefly playing with the new spoons I’d just bought:

Picture courtesy Em F

…and then with my zouk, which I had of course brought up from Montréal.

And that went over so well that I got called up to the main circle to play.

O.o

Honestly, it was one of those, “…me?” and “is this really happening?” moments, because this is one of those bullshit daydream fantasy events that doesn’t ever actually happen in real life, except hi, it was happening right then.

It was epic. I played along for a while and eventually introduced a set that featured my Mystery Tune and got a round of applause from the core group over that. They liked both the tune and the whole set! But didn’t know it either – until now, anyway. 😀

Anyway, once that broke up, we went over to the crafts area and bought dinner and I had a kind of hilarious language fail moment. Apparently there’s a thing in bilingual people where your main language is Language A and the second language you speak is Language B and All Other Languages become Language B.

So if you walk up to a vendor you discover is Francophone-only but you didn’t know they were Francophone-only you might just panic and spew, “chotto matte gozaimasu, atashino tomodachi furansugo hanashima ANNA-CHAN!”

And then they ask if you have any English and you go O.O and “…I have some English” and you ignore the question about your native language like you don’t understand it and run away.

so embarrassing XD

The evening concerts were great! I wish I’d had my proper camera; the iPhone doesn’t do well in low and evening light. But this is what Bernard Simard et compagnie looked like:

only, you know, larger

And this is what … I think these are still they, anyway, I’ll edit this when I’m sure… Belzebuth sounded like, recorded on an iPhone!

you can hear Anna in this next to me 😀

And that’s a whole lot of photos! Next: MOAR TRAINS! Only with better photographs, and a surprise concert ON A TRAIN, and Moncton!

…and we’re back! Hiya! Back from St. John’s and Torbay and Shediac and Moncton and Joliette and Montreal and Toronto! Working backwards, more or less. There is far too much, and I’m still updating my written old-school journal, but there are things! And I have proof!

I stood in a Great Lake in Beaches:

Yes, my feet are in the water, even if it doesn’t look like it.

And The Mighty If, who was at the house concert later, posted video he took with his camera from the show, which is probably the first recording anywhere of “Get Out”:

Not you, you can stay

We hiked all over Toronto, or at least, downtown parts. This was an Eyesore of the Month building in the drawing stages some years ago and I looked at the drawings and totally agreed, but this is one of those cases where the drawings – and also what it looks like from a distance – are totally wrong, because on the ground once you’re nearby? It works great:

Look at this insanity. LOOK AT IT!

Holy Shit, Bay Street!

No left turns, indeed

Also for some reason some of their street cars have Elfquest pr0n names:

Intersects with Softsheath

And we found out where Cabbages Guy went after he left CabbageCorp:

My Cabbagetown!

And apparently:

Inspector Spacetime got a double-wide

Okay, okay, enough fandom crap. XD Toronto was awesome. How awesome? This awesome:

Canada Doesn’t Hate You

Thanks again so much again to Cow for having me in for a show (and for crash space!), and to both Cow and If for posting videos and pictures and everything! 😀

Next up: Montréal! This is already too many pictures, so I’ll post about that on Friday.

Tomorrow, the first of the studio build-out posts! I’ve got a lot of catching up to do – in everything – but that’s okay. Time to get busy!

Hello from St. John’s, Newfoundland! Everything this tour has been such a whirlwind and awesome and I’m not even going to try to catch up for right now. But the last couple of weeks have been epic and there’s still more to come!

I’ll have some great pictures next week, and some stories, as well as getting back to regular schedule, but for right now it’s just this HI I’M STILL ALIVE AND ON TOUR post. Back to Seattle late on Monday!

If you aren’t following my twitter account (username solarbirdy), that’s the thing I’m most likely to update on the road, for obvious reasons. Say hi there!

Last call for tonight’s show! Toronto! Leslieville! Show page for details! C’mon out!

Also, a tidbit I didn’t include in Touring, parts one and two: this article on electronica shows. Notice the value here of event.

“That’s flowers. That’s become flowers now. Is that a drink?” – me, a few minutes ago, looking in the refrigerator.

Airplanes hurt my brain.

Clearly, I am in no shape this morning to summarise the post-scarcity series, outline or no. I will write that later, instead. Hopefully tomorrow.

I’m not sure what to say when a series intended to be two parts runs over five long and some of those parts have two parts on their own. Probably, it means I must learn to write shorter posts.

To recap: the old touring model became a problem, particularly for bands, which are are expensive. We talked about the instaband/hive band model in response; go here to refresh your memory.

Of course, all that said, you still shouldn’t turn down paying old-school gigs when they pencil out. Take those! Money matters!

I’m rich! I’m wealthy! I’m comfortably well-off!

But building a career that way is much more difficult than it used to be. Concert culture is really kind of at a nadir right now. It’s not that there aren’t standalone concerts in traditional venues – of course there are! I go to some! But it’s not a thing, like it once was, and more importantly, it’s not a way to build fans like it once was.

I don’t know what killed that culture – the reputation for expense, the hassle venues and labels put you through in the 80s and 90s to prevent bootlegging¹, cowardice over “terrorism” and crime – despite crime declining steadily for three decades people talk about “how bad it is” out there – or maybe it’s all this woman:

Or maybe it’s the industry again, with their crackdowns on unlicensed venues, and the cost involved in being one. I know venues around here who were shut down over licensing issues.

It could be any or all of the above, or something I haven’t even listed. Regardless, the culture is not what it used to be. I know too many musicians who have seen their incomes drop 50-70%, and too many who have just dropped out entirely, to think otherwise.

So what to do now? Where do you get started?

The first thing to talk about the house concert. These aren’t new; folk musicians have done these for a long time. But in other genres, these used to be mostly college neighbourhood excuses for drinking and party riots – if you haven’t seen the Runaways biopic, you might, there’s a good example of what they used to be in that film. Spoiler: they sucked.

Not just Kentucky

Over time, however, they’ve become civilised. There are house concert circuits, there are house concert providers who host and take care of you, and do this on a regular basis. Terms are all over the place, of course. Most don’t charge, some want a percentage of the suggested donation, but even that’s generally just to cover expenses.

So what do the hosts get out of it? They get an event, and social credit – a key currency in any post-scarcity environment. They get to be part of it; people who do this like music and care about it, and want to be a part. This is one way.

Meanwhile, you’re offering an experience they aren’t going to get in any other venue. You’re offering something that’s close and personal and right there. And at the same time, you are getting a venue and a chance to make fans.

Seriously, a crowd of 6-12 people in a living room gives you your best shot of doing the most important thing you can do starting your career: making that personal connection, becoming meaningful to somebody, and through that, re-establishing the value of purchase that we talked about way back in Part Two of this series.

I mentioned these aren’t new, right?

Start by getting people who’ve heard you on the internet to host. If you’re lucky you can get fans to do it (hi guys! ^_^ ). Even if the turnouts are tiny, you’ll need the experience and the references. Once you’ve done some of those, you might be able to get the attention of people who throw these regularly. And from there, maybe you can get onto the circuits, if that’s where you want to go.

But don’t do them if you hate them. Don’t force yourself. People will know.

Event shows are another break-in point. Anything where there’s already an event that you can join is an opportunity. You gain cred by showing that other people are interested in your art. You get a crowd already there for something; you don’t have to overcome the stay-at-home inertia.

For example, I’m a musician, but I’m also a venue – I run nwcMUSIC, a mini-music-festival under the auspices of the Norwescon science fiction convention. I don’t have a budget; I don’t pay; but like a good house concert venue, we take good care of you. You get to play in a good environment to a lot of people who are already out at an event and therefore a lot more likely to check you out, stay and talk with you later. You end up with four days of meet-and-greet. You get to do panels; hopefully, you impress people.

The Doubleclicks at nwcMUSIC 2012/Norwescon 35

See also: Sakuracon, PAX, any kind of multi-modal event that’ll draw people in on several fronts and also let you get personal with potential fans. Hell, Clallam Bay Comicon, where I was last weekend? Exactly the same thing.

Because that’s what you have to do: build that connection, and through that, re-establish the idea of value in purchase. Maybe it’ll be merch. Maybe it’ll be CDs. No matter how you count it, it’s about getting people invested in you, and therefore caring about what you do.

To do this, you have to be there, not just show up and take off. You have to be on the whole time, not just on stage. You have to be part of the event, because you’re selling not just your music, but an experience, and a bit of glamour.

If you’re doing a convention or a show and only doing the concert? You’re missing opportunities. Get onto some panels. Be lively and entertaining and prepared. No panels you care about? Propose some. Make a god damned impression.

People also like event souvenirs. CDs can be souvenirs. Even download codes can be merch can be souvenirs – this is why my download code slips are shiny gold tickets, and not just pieces of printer paper. People react to that. Yes, I know, you first and foremost want people to care about your music! I’m in this because I want people to hear my stuff, not because I thought, “I know! I’ll GET RICH by MAKING MUSIC!”

Because that trick always works.

But if they don’t get your CD, or your download code, they can’t listen to your downloads or CD. So stop worrying about why they bought it and just hope they do. If they like you, if they liked the experience, they’ll want the token of being there, and once they have the CD or the download code, you’ve improved your odds.

Similarly, doing a house party on a house party, or house concert tour? Don’t just play and leave; go to the party. Then build in some time between house shows where you can hang out after the party with your hosts in a relaxed and fun manner.

preferably sedated

It’s work, being “on” for hours at a time like that. It’s new and unfamiliar to many, including me. But people are doing music this way, and some are building careers, in this post-scarcity environment. It requires a gregariousness that you or someone in your band have to have, or be able to cultivate.

But it can be done. It’s one way forward from where we are now. Not the only way; but one way.

This time next week I’ll be in Toronto! I’ll be practicing some of what I’m preaching here. There will also be a Part Six of this supposedly-two-part series, which I’ll do my best to post from the road. I do want feedback and suggestions; we’re all making this up as we go along, and there is no well-trod path here. If you spot a landmark, give us a yell! Otherwise, I’ll see you on the road.

1: Which is to say, the kind of youtube video you see from phones at shows now? They used to clamp down on that so hard. Even still photos were often prohibited, and gods help you if you had a cassette recorder or microphone. People used to make special concert-taping equipment, like glasses with hidden microphones and wires that ran down your back. So crazy.
 

This is Part Five of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of articles about, well, what it says on the tin. There are no barriers to availability now, and copying is free. What’s a musician to do now?

Back from Clallam Bay Comicon late last night – I have to say, Donna throws one heck of a house party! It was tiny, as expected, but not as tiny as I’d feared and I had a small but solid and appreciative audience on Saturday. Having it during Fun Days no doubt didn’t hurt. It was also fun to meet Mark Monlux and Kevin Boze, who were in the closest two tables next to me. ^_^

It was a bit of a weekend vacation, really. The beach is lots of fun to hike around on – it’s pebbly in some places, sandy in a few, and has terrific rockeries in other spots, particularly out where the lighthouse was. And Saturday night was beach party and fireworks night.

500 million illegal fireworks launched from this point

And everybody sold stuff! Seriously, everybody had sales, including Anna, who wasn’t even there, courtesy me taking along a few copies of Faerie Blood.

We stayed at the Bay Motel, which I was calling:

The Bay TV Phones Motel

The WiFi is a lie, by the way. Or maybe it was just us being out on the far end of the hotel. Hard to say. On the other hand, it was clean, the room slept four across three beds and a partition wall, it had a kitchentte, and I slept great for a $30 room share. I mean damn.

It’s mostly for sports fishers…

no, really?

…and the guys two doors down for us were smoking salmon they’d caught earlier in the day. There is now, for the record, a place in North America were I will intentionally eat cooked fish. This is unheard of outside Japan, but now? Japan, and Clallam Bay, at the Clallam Bay Inn. Made by Kayla. Fantastically good.

Sekiu, on the far end of the bay, is actually quite pretty too. But watch out for the statuary:

H.P. Lovecraft Memorial Signpost

Anyway, Donna’s already winding up for a second one next year. She has plans, potential hotels and indoor function space, and people are arguing about dates. So if you have opinions on that, jump in over here! And thanks again to everybody, particularly Donna for inviting and taking good care of me. ^_^

Next up: Toronto! That’ll be some amusing culture shock. The only real commonality will be the CBC. See you by Greenwood Park!

I’ve been underestimating Clallam Bay Comiket. There: I admit it. I have. There’re press releases and such now and it’s turning into a real thing even this year zero, and if it flies this year at all, it’ll be bigger next year. I’ll be there Saturday and maybe also Sunday at this point. It’ll be great. ^_^

And it’s also much further away than I thought! So I’m overnighting. I hope not in my car. ADVENTURE!

not that far away

PEOPLE LINKED TO THEIR ART! Here are the links promoted up, as promised!

Fishy has a very few hours left on his fire sculpture Kickstarter, but he’s made goal! AND – barely, as of now – the stretch goal. So this is LAST CALL FOR THE HARMONIC FIRE PENDULA! It’s cool.

Geri called for support for this effort to raise CAN$2,000 for a special-needs child’s bicycle. It sounds like a lot for a bike, but, well, special needs are what they are.

Irfon-Kim Ahmad is a Toronto musician! He records under the band name “Ramp,” and his stuff is all free-download. He’s hoping for comments and opinions! Check out the Ramp website here, or hop directly to the music page here.

Sarah Palmero has an Etsy store! It’s called Creature Comfort Craftworks and she hand-dyes yarn, spins fibre, takes requests, and occasionally makes things herself. Fabric artists, check it out.

And that’s all! Hopefully I’ll see one of you at Clallam Bay!

PS: This week’s instalment of my post-scarcity/post-RIAA music industry series – Part Four: Touring (Part 1 of 2) – went up late on Tuesday. So if you missed it, here it is.