Beware the ides

This blog entry may contain “forward-looking statements”. Readers are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual developments or results may vary materially from those in these “forward-looking statements.”

A little while back I thought I needed a little bit of a road map to help me figure out the arc that will take me from being mild-mannered stay-at-home dad with a modest web-based consultancy to becoming a self-sufficient fully-independent singer-songwriter so I can concentrate all my efforts on writing music (and run-on sentences) full-time.

I’m taking the foolish step of putting the whole damn thing online now in an attempt to force myself into action. If I layout a plan of attack and don’t follow through it’s all right there for my smattering of readers to see.

This plan officially kicks off at the end of summer when my youngest starts going to school, thereby giving me 2.5 days a week to myself for the first 2 years and 5 days a week after that.

Year 1: Sept. ’09-Aug ’10

Year 1’s main goal will be to record and release an album’s worth of material. I’m figuring on at least 12 songs, which averages out to, let’s see here … carry the 1 … about a tune per month. If I can keep that pace up I’ll be very happy.

These tunes will not be Song Fu tunes or anything else I get involved with along the way. Rather, they will be songs that are entirely written by me with no specific input from anyone else. As of this writing, I’ve got almost three dozen of these puppies already written & just waiting patiently to be recorded (another 100 or so have been banished to eternal obscurity), so it’s time to concentrate on clearing the proverbial logjam.

Not to say that I’m done with Song Fu. If they keep holding it, I’ll keep seeing if I have time for it (hopefully I will – it’s gotten me mammothly inspired in the past).

Year 2: Sept. ’10-Aug ’11

As the little dude goes from Junior Kindergarten to Senior Kindergarten I’ll see if I can pick my production schedule up a notch in order to produce at least two of my songs per month. If all goes well, I should have three albums worth of material by the end of this year.

Year 3: Sept. ’11-Aug ’12

With the little guy moving onto Grade 1 and a full-time school schedule I’ll see if I can do even more in the studio. That’s right; three songs a month.

I’m figuring if I was able to get out three albums in two years of part-time school I should be able to get three albums out in one year with both kids in school full-time.

Year 4: Sept. ’13-Aug ’14

I’m hoping by this time my music has started to catch on a little bit and I’m able to start accepting less & less of the freelance work to concentrate more & more on writing, recording & releasing quality material.

I’m also hoping that by this stage, with six full-length albums under my belt, I will have successfully cleared the logjam of older material so I have an absolutely blank slate ahead of me. Then it’ll be time to pull a Coulton.

Eight years after Jonathan Coulton’s legendary “Thing a Week” series I’m going to push myself to achieve the same damn thing. Not an original idea, but neither is running a marathon, and plenty of folks are still doing that.

If I can keep it up, I’ll have another four 13-song albums in the catalogue. That’s a grand total of ten for anyone who’s lost count so far.

Year 1: Sept. ’14-Aug ’15

If by this point I haven’t gone thoroughly mad I think it’ll be time to kick up the heels and re-examine life a little. I’ll have just released an average of 2.5 albums per year for four years running. Time to slow down a bit. Maybe get a celebratory tattoo.

I’ll spend some time re-evaluating my priorities & maybe start working on some admittedly odd side-projects. I’ve always wanted to do a kid’s album & maybe even a holiday album.

Maybe I’ll finally put a band together & start playing some gigs.

Maybe I’ll do a February special, where I participate in both February Album Writing Month and the Record Production Month (RPM) Challenge. That’s right, 14 tracks written, recorded, mastered and mailed off by the 1st of March.

I think by that point I’ll a) have the challenge bug pretty much out of my system, and b) I’ll have a pretty good idea whether this experiment in alternative economics is even remotely sustainable.

So there you have it. I’ll try to revisit & update this entry at the end of every summer until 2015 where I hope to declare myself a success. Please bear with me & hopefully we’ll have some fun together along the way.