Last Tuesday I had planned to go to Smashed Plastic to listen to the test pressing of my Reality Jockey record, but earlier in the day there was a fire at the coffee roaster in the neighboring space. SP told me to come around 4pm instead. Shortly before I was getting ready to head over there, they called to let me know they pressed a copy and checked it out. Side A sounded great! Side B, however, was from a different artist’s project altogether! There was a mixup at the plating factory in New Jersey and they had sent over the wrong plate. Topsy turvy world of rock and roll, I say.

After some FedEx’ing, the correct plate was sent, and I’m scheduled to go in tomorrow morning at 9am to sit down and take a listen myself. If it sounds good (and I have no reason to expect otherwise), Smashed Plastic will fire up the presses and finish the run. I was told the records need to cool off for a few days before they can go into the record sleeves / jackets. I’m planning on picking up the shrink-wrapped finished products early next week. I will make an update to this post tomorrow after I visit the pressing plant. Stay tuned, friends!

Over the past few months, I’ve added an enormous amount of routine to my schedule. In addition to a sizable uptick in my freelance work, I’ve been hitting the gym three times a week, brushing up on my Spanish almost every day with the DuoLingo app, meditating for 10-15 minutes a night, and, last but not least, have begun to floss regularly (thanks, Pavel!)

Between the flurry of new activity, and tending to the production of Reality Jockey (and preparation for the launch party!), I’ve dropped the ball on my weekly newsletter, and for this, dear readers, I profusely apologize.

I feel as if I may have let a few of you down, as the metrics suggest the lot of you have been opening the email pretty regularly since I began sending them in February of 2017. I’ve been making a lot of personal progress as a result of these new activities listed above, and am obviously trying to find a balance between everything. Thanks for opening this, and thanks for sticking around!

I am committed to returning to the regular schedule with new, action-packed emails every Tuesday at 9am CST. In line with any decent mea culpa, I’ll add some extra-specials for subscribers only.

*** if you’re reading this on my blog and are not signed up for my email blast, you’re clearly missing out! Enter your email address below and climb onboard already!

In 2001, I sent my Roadstar album to 900 college radio stations, and 300 of them ended up adding the album to their rotation. Many of the stations were playing the album in high rotation, but while this did increase press coverage, it ultimately did not translate into sales. And that was in 2001 when people were still buying cds, compared to now, where sales of music are down and streaming services (which don’t pay artists well) have increased dramatically.

Originally, I had planned to send Reality Jockey to 300 non-commercial stations (mostly colleges). College radio is still very much a ‘thing’, and usually is ahead of the curve when it comes to breaking new artists. When I executed my other big album campaigns- Roadstar, Kyrie Snow, Romance of the Spaceways- I was more interested in exposure than making my money back. With Reality Jockey, I am very concerned about the return on my investment. I decided to nix the 300 station push, which saved me about $4000. The project as is is still costing me about $8k. I am manufacturing 500 records and 100 cds, which would bring in maybe $6k if I sell everything. I will be offering digital downloads of Reality Jockey with a ‘Pay What You Want’ model, because I want everybody to have it. I imagine that some people will pay for the download, but pending some magical force in the universe, it’s unlikely I’ll bring in two or three thousand dollars that way.

The point I’m getting at here is that it’s unlikely I will recoup 100% of my investment. And that’s totally okay. My reasons for creating music have never been to make money. I love the process, love listening to what I create, and love having the finished, shrink-wrapped end product in my hands.

Having said that, why don’t you go and preorder Reality Jockey today!

I’ve been working hard on artwork for the 12″ LP. I had already begun using art templates sent to me by my original vinyl manufacturer in Ohio, but since Smashed Plastic has opened right here in Chicago (well, not technically until next month, but they’re running my project early), I’ve been working off their slightly different templates. Maureen and I took the Illustrator file I had for the inner sleeve of the record- with the lyrics and liner notes- and imported it into InDesign then moved things around a bit to conform to the template.

(the front is on the right side, the back is on the left)

There were more creative decisions to be made here than I had anticipated. There were quite a few instances where I had a whole lyric on one line, but it had to be split into two because the columns needed to be smaller than I had planned. Since I like my lyrics to also stand on their own without music, the formatting was not to be done haphazardly.

We fit in a Recaman Sequence graphic underneath the lyrics at about 25% opacity. We started at 30 but I felt the image was competing with the fonts, so we backed off a little.

I don’t remember where I found the main font, called “Red Rose”, but I love how it feels a little techy but still retains a good amount of class.

I chose the typography to better organize the information visually.  There is a ton of text on the sleeve, and it’s important that the eye can keep it all straight. The guest musician credit at the bottom of the songs’ lyrics is a tiny 6pt but boldface. The song titles are 8.5pt bold, the writer credit is 7pt regular, and the lyrics are back to 8.5pt like the title, but regular (not bold).

For the album jacket, I chose a font called “Krona One” for my name and the album title, eye-dropping the blues and browns from the butterflies’ wings. When you buy a copy of Reality Jockey on vinyl (and why wouldn’t you?) You’ll see that the record label on Side A is that same blue, and the label on Side B is that same brown.

It’s a ton of fun putting all this together, but I have to admit it’s a bit stressful. After moving around text you need to make sure you didn’t lose a line or a character somewhere, so I played the album in headphones a few times and went through everything line by line to make sure nothing got jacked up in the process. Once these files go out to the printer, there’s obviously no turning back!

On Friday, March 15th, we’ll be celebrating the release of Reality Jockey, my 12th solo album. It’s all going down at Esquina Chicago at 4602 N. Western Ave. The event begins at 8pm and we’ll be spinning the vinyl at 9pm. We’ll be serving beer / wine, and there will be snacks on hand as well. RSVP on Facebook.

I’ve decided to raffle off copies of the album and donate all proceeds to Thresholds Chicago, a non-profit providing mental health services to the underprivileged in our community. Raffle tickets are $10, and I’m reaching out to local businesses to donate goods / services to add to the raffle prizes.

This is where you come in! If you own or work at a business and are able to donate goods or services to the raffle (and ultimately Thresholds), please email me directly so we can coordinate. Thanks very much for your participation! Let’s see how much money we can raise for solid social services for the community.