i'm moving my blog

if you know me at all, you know i love changing things around. so i'm moving my blog as of right now:

http://kiesshauer.tumblr.com

i won't update on this site anymore, but the archive will still exist here for now. hopefully i can move it all over to the new one at some point, but that isn't a feature they have at the moment.

see you in the new space!

the haps

well, the contest was a no-go. i ended up being a little surprised by some of their finalist choices -- there were a few guys i thought for sure were shoo-ins that didn't show up in the top 5 at all. it would be interesting to see the overall scores for everyone that entered -- i wonder how far down the list i ended up? i suppose we'll never know. :) in any case, congrats to mr. jeremy poland, who ended up being the winner - you can check out his original entry here. you done good, sir.

i had the interesting experience of playing 'you are never really gone' at the funeral for my wife's grandfather a couple weeks ago. most of you know the song was written when rick's (a friend of mine) father died. it was written with him and his family in mind, but also drew on the experience of having two other friends of mine pass on in college, andrew clayton and justin fisher. but even though the song was written for a funeral i had certainly never played it at one. it was quite an honor. the experience of having something you write mean something to people reminds me why i wanted to write in the first place. to know your words have brought even the slightest measure of comfort to someone in pain, or the slightest amount of honor to a life well-lived is a humbling and fulfilling thing. i feel a sense of purpose, and it makes me grateful for whatever gifts i've been given to that end. i'm no good tunesmith on my own - God's in there, nudging, prompting, whispering....enabling whatever good comes out. i love it.

with that said, the nudgings to want to start writing again have been popping up more frequently recently. i tried to figure out why i hadn't started yet, and part of it was feeling disorganized. so last night i got all my previous bits together and sorted them out -- set aside stuff i'd already used and stuff that was....well, crap.....and kept the bits that might still be useful. now i'm organized, and the obstacles to start writing again have been cleared. so all that's left is inspiration, and then we'll see what comes out. if you read this, you'll know when (and if) anything noteworthy does. :)

other than that i'm just getting ready for the concert later on this month with warren barfield, which should be cool. it's in carrollton, which i know is far for a lot of you, but if you're around there or bored, come on out. it's for a good cause, as well. for more info on the event, click here. if you want to go ahead and get tickets, you can click here.

anyway, more to come. :)

the last week of the contest

so there's one week left in the Fish contest - get your views in now, if you can! it's crunch time, people. http://tinyurl.com/2el9vch

i seem to be hovering around 15th place or so in terms of view count, if you're interested in such things. i'd love to breach the top 10, but that's more in the hands of my friends and cohorts than it is in mine. :)

throughout the contest there have been a lot of whispers and rumors and grumbles about possible cheating - i myself have witnessed some people's view counts shoot up by crazy amounts - on the order of 20k or so in a single day, haha - and figured they figured a way to game the system. apparently, however, the fish is aware of such things and sent the following email to all contestants, which you might be interested in:

--

You are receiving this message because you entered a video performance into our Opening Act competition.

There have been a lot of phone calls and e-mails from many of you asking about views counts and how we are tracking valid view counts for this contest. Per our official rules to the contest, we are using YouTube's official policy for counting views to determine which video has the most views. We have no control over these counts, and we cannot change the counts as the view counts are completely in the hands of YouTube. With YouTube being the standard for personal videos on the internet, we are confident that this is the most accurate and fairest way to determine which videos get the most views.

However, we do realize there are ways to cheat this system using software and websites that will help you increase your views by paying them a fee. We are looking closely at every video and tracking the view count trends on a daily basis. Should we feel that there is an abnormal increase in the video view counts for any contestant, we will take the necessary steps to determine if any of the video views were gained artificially through any of these means. If we determine that this method was used, then we will discount those views gained through this manner as we determine the finalists for this competition.

We want this contest to be as fair as possible, and your cooperation in this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for taking part in Opening Act. We wish you all the best of luck, and feel free to contact me with any questions.

--

so there is that -- good to know they're more or less on top of the situation. seems like a big task to track daily trends on each video, that's for sure.

apparently they are also going to watch every video that's submitted, not just the top X or whatever, so that's always good. i suppose they'll probably have some kind of forumla that awards points based on the views and talent combination, but who knows?

either way it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out!

other than that, i've got a few events coming up, which is cool. i've actually got two spots opening for other bands, (thanks to the waltons) which seems like a pretty great thing. one is for a couple of bands at an event at West GA - the bands are True Story, which i've heard of, and another one called A Ransom Plea that i'm not familiar with. the other event is a fundraiser concert with a guy named Warren Barfield. i hadn't heard of him prior, but have looked up his stuff and he's quite good. so who knows if i'll even get to talk with him or anything -- not sure how the interaction goes between opening and main acts -- but it should be fun in any case. i'll be reporting on everything here for sure to let you know how it all goes!

that's about it for now - just playing where i can, riding the wave and seeing where it goes. :)

A Contest - I need your help!

so, long story short:

i've entered a contest that one of our radio stations (104.7 The Fish) is having. basically you have to upload a video of yourself singing either an original song or one of 4 songs they choose for you. then you get as many people to watch the video as possible, and they judge you based on a) how many views you got on youtube by august 20th and b) your talent. if you win, you get to be the opening act at a festival they're having on september 4th! plus you get a big chunk of cash and you get to have a bunch of money donated to a ministry of your choice from The Fish. (the ministry i'll pick if i win is Georgia Tech CCF, in case anyone wants to know. :)

you can view my entry here, fresh up on youtube this morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl0nvoRcujI

there's some stiff competition out there so i need all of you in a big way before august 20th! watch it as many times as humanly possible - then tell everyone you know to do the same! it counts views every time you watch any part of it, so you don't have to watch the whole thing every time or anything. :)

anyway, it's pretty exciting. there are a crapton of entries of course, but who knows what could happen? i debated pretty hard between doing 'king forever' and 'nothing else', but settled eventually on the former since it's kind of "happier" in general and seemed like a better candidate.

so....wish me luck! and watch the video a lot if you want to help :)

in a store!

so a friend of mine was in his hometown in north carolina the other week where there happens to be a small christian record and book store. since he knew the owner he mentioned my cd to him and the guy said he would give it a listen and if he liked it they might put some in the store.

well the guy listened to it and guess what - they're buying a few to see how they do! apparently they have some corner of the store where they highlight upcoming or local artists and have a listening area and everything. so we'll see how that goes. who knows, maybe they'll do well and they'll want more. :) either way if you're in the Franklin, NC area and you happen to know where Dalton's Christian Bookstore is maybe you can stop in in a couple weeks and check it out for yourself. :)

either way a big thanks to matt for taking the time to ask on my behalf - people like you are the best.

in other news - the Worship Leader thing might not be closed yet either. i emailed the guy back and he suggested i resubmit the record one other time. they also write reviews in their issues so i'm seeing if that's an option as well.

ahoy (or "altogether uninformative blog titles")

so - here we are, about 5 months in from release day. here's what's been happening.

i finally got my first report from Tunecore - a report from the first two weeks of march, the first two weeks of being on itunes. it's pretty confusing with the delay - it's weird feeling not knowing what is going on now, and only what's happened 2 months ago. but i talked with the guy at Tunecore and he said that kind of delay is pretty common for the music industry for several reasons, not the least of which are fraud issues and verifying sales. so it makes sense and i suppose it's just another thing to get used to. while i may not understand everything about why Tunecore works the way it does, i will say this - they've been stellar at answering my wide variety of questions.

the song discovery thing i mentioned might not pan out - the dude said i'd be considered for either may or june and i think i probably would have heard something by now. will probably email him back to see if there are any other options. other than that i'm still just trying to play at stuff to get some more exposure. we played at a wedding last weekend and i sold a couple cds there. we're playing at a few events over the summer which should be good too.

travis told me when this started that the best thing to do when trying to promote a record was just to think of every possible avenue and pursue it. to get as creative as possible with how you think of it and what to do to get the word out and just do it all - not pigeonhole it at all.

if there's one thing i've learned about myself over the years, it's that i'm really not an idea guy, generally speaking. i won't say i never have any unique ideas about anything but that's definitely not something i'm good at. so what do you do when you're faced with something you're not good at? you get help from people that are good at it. :)

so i'm asking you, blog readers, or whoever you are, for your help. i'm sure most of you don't spend your time sitting around thinking about how to promote a record, but if you've got any ideas i'd love to know. email me, leave them in the comments, send me a facebook message, give me a call -- whatever. if you've got an idea i want to hear it! one of you could be the creative genius that cracks this thing open. i've already gotten such good advice from unexpected places, so let's have it. no holds barred!

ASCAP update. and other things.

so yeah, my meeting was last week - just forgot to update until now. sorry about that. won't happen again. i mean it probably will. i'm forgetful, you know.

the meeting was pretty informative. i probably didn't need to drive down there to talk to them in person, but it was a bit nicer than talking on the phone would have been. the lady there was nice - she answered all my questions and gave me good advice about what to do.

ASCAP and organizations like it basically exist to pay artists royalties where they're due, mainly from radio play. so there's really no urgency for me to register with them, but she did say it takes 4-6 weeks to process applications, so you might as well do it sooner rather than later. there's two sides to registering - as a writer and a publisher. if you're an independent music type like myself, she actually recommended i register as both sides - basically there are twice as many royalties to be had that way if they ever exist. you pretty much publish yourself if you're not signed, and you can change it whenever. so i just have to come up with publishing names, which should be sort of challenging. i still need to ask if the publishing name has to be a registered organization or anything.

i also asked about internet radio - which is apparently covered by a separate organization or two, the main one seems to be one called Sound Exchange. registration with them is free, so i'll definitely do that. internet radio, mainly pandora, is something that seems very worth looking into. they have a lot of hoops you have to jump through just to be considered though - having physical cds for sale on Amazon (no idea why) and having a barcode. all of that costs money. it's pretty amazing how much money this stuff costs...it's like a never-ending flow of expenses the more exposure you want.

she also mentioned this other new website that is launching soon which i went to visit called musiconlinealive.com. it's supposed to launch in a week or so at some big ASCAP expo in L.A. the basic idea is that they're trying to do web-based versions of albums - virtual albums. you can edit them however you want, add images, and change them on the fly. will it be the next cool thing? i don't know. but registering is free so i'm probably going to try that out too.

anyway, still working at some other ideas and places to play. the red cross benefit thing got canceled for scheduling reasons - they might try to reschedule it later on, so we'll see. there's stuff coming up this summer that might bring some new playing possibilities.