Woe is me, fallout. I ain’t talking the supreme post apocalyptic role playing game / 1st person shooter hybrid, nosiree! I’m talking about posting anything positive on the internet!
It’s not that bad, and frankly it was expected. I WROTE yesterday’s entry about Sofar precisely because I hate seeing that pile-on of hatred when everyone’s reading a headline and wants to throw in like “oh, he was quiet and such a nice boy BUT I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH HIM!!!!” I haven’t really gotten that much PERSONAL blowback but it’s been interesting to see the breakdown: over 40 and / or part of the folk scene? “yeah, rob said something nice about it but I’m going to post this article again because I’ve heard he’s wrong but no I’ve never been to one and now I never will!” Under 40 and more of an indie artist? “Yeah, those things are great / I’ve heard some bad things but I should give’m a try!”
I was up really late last night just trying to think through better ways of saying what I’d said – but Heather wrote to me and said I’d laid it out perfect, so I guess that’s as good as it can get.
I’ve spent most of today fielding comments from yesterday’s post in-between setting up promotion for next month (promotion I wouldn’t have to be doing if they were Sofar shows! Ahem…), putting together a Spotify playlist (here’s my “ilyAIMY is Baltimore’s Acoustic Grunge” playlist because it’s fucking ROCKIN’ – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1XqIzzE3ixWFrJ3aBNKMtT) and writing press releases and Facebook ads and… well, all the unglamourous work that goes on behind the scenes here in the rob Lair / ilyAIMY HQ. With Heather out on her honeymoon I’m trying to be extra careful that nothing falls through the cracks – betwixt that and the wedding and everything I’VE been the “organized one” which never REALLY bodes well. Watch the calendar three months from now and you’ll be able to judge just how on my game I was!
On top of all of the above (I’m amused by that sentence) I had multiple board meetings and social outings like a grown-up god damned folk czar.
Monday was Teavolve’s open mic of course and I met with a couple of people about small-time professional development like self-serve web solutions and contract gotchas… Tuesday night it was time for a Focus Music meeting down in Silver Spring. There were a couple of surprise announcements that I’m a little bit stressed about. It may mean a weird potential for personal advancement and it may mean a real volunteer drive, we have yet to see, but we voted to start a couple of great web initiatives that should make everyones’ jobs better… assuming we can keep moving the spinning plates from the human fingers to the digital fingers without dropping anything – and we also voted to put some money into the Washington Folk Festival this year (proud sponsor of the Yurt Stage, booyah!) and… and that’s a good thing.
The music organizations that I’m a part of – I don’t really talk about them much because it’s like that stuff in the first couple of paragraphs. It’s the boring stuff. I imagine the audience in my head when I’ve bombed my banter yelling “PLAY THE SONG!!!” and man, I wish it was that simple. After Focus Tuesday I had a Takoma Park Folk Festival Wednesday (meeting in Takoma Park) and it continues to be frustrating that we’re having to do a lot of local-based asks (for zip code based online pages like Nextdoor and Patch) because all the leadership roles are people from outside of Takoma Park. Man… find me a local who wants this job!
Sigh – we discussed construction at the school and how that’s effecting the stages (we’re having to do a lot of rejiggering – and everything we do THIS year looks like it’ll have to be REdone NEXT year!) and the Fourth of July (the volunteers who will make the TPFF’s 4th of July float will be coming from Gaithersburg so… where can they build the float? NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY…) and we ate too many cookies and I lamented that I was just LATE with things this year… facetiously I offered to let them fire me but there was a resounding “NO” on that front.
I’m actually a lot more positive about these things than I sound, I think they both do good deeds. It’s just… volunteering for stuff is kind of a real mark of privilege and I spend a lot of time rubbing pennies together and scraping for scraps and don’t REALLY have the money to be driving down to DC every night for freebies… but I do because the world kinda needs better music and better community. I probably tarnish my soul with all the bitching just as much as I polish it with the deeds though.
Thursday we had some spare time to go visit friends who are visiting the area – Jason and Alyssa are in town from Ohio showing off their new spawn Kaylee and I was just so glad the timing lined up. I’d call it a “quiet” visit but there’s no such thing with a 5 month old!
And Friday was that wonderful Sofar gig! Saturday was WRITING about the Sofar gig and Sunday has been as above and reading responses from Saturday (like, I Love the woman chiming in about how “THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT HOUSE CONCERTS!” and I want to reply “ACTUALLY, ISN’T THIS KIND OF WHY YOU STOPPED DOING HOUSE CONCERTS cause it violated your HOA?!?” etc etc… Sunday’s today – HOLY FUCK LIGHTNING!!!!
Terrified cat, surprised wife, and literally the air smells of ozone it was THAT close!
Iiiiii should probably turn off my computer!
