WHAT'S THIS BLOG ABOUT ANYWAY?

Well, for most of my childhood and adult life, I've always been involved in music in some form or another. Whether it was school choir, family night at home using a comb to sing Michael Jackson's song "Ben" for my parents and siblings, performing on stage in musicals as an adult, earning an invite to the school of music at IU, or simply crooning at karaoke, I've just been a music junky. Mom used to play albums on the console stereo as she cleaned house and introduced us to some oldies like Andy Williams, Perry Como or the amazing Lou Rawls. With older siblings, I had my indoctrination of top 40 hits from Casey Casum every week and learned the edgy and scary sounding hard rock from my older brother when he blared it loud in his hidden cave of a bedroom in the basement.

But when I was introduced to Jesus in my early teens during a rough period of family matters, music took on a different role at an inner heart level. I understood the amazing emotion that connects me to God through music and to other people. Most people call it "soul", but whatever it is labeled, there is an aspect of music that transcends daily life and reality. Some artists and melodies just hit us the right way and connect us to times, events, people, or emotions that we may bury or tuck away because they are hard to handle. That first kiss, the song from our wedding, that hard break up, that experience in church where we sensed God's presence like never before, that song played at a funeral of a loved one, the TV theme song we rattle in our head from time to time, or even the period music from centuries ago that still grips on to our imagination and carries us to another time and place. All music has some intellectual and emotional connection for us that somehow causes us all to find a common ground.

For the past 10 decades in America, it has become a commercial industry that many of us have tried to navigate personally or through someone we know. In my case, it has been both personal and through my own son that I've become part of an industry that is ever evolving and, because of technology, rapidly changing the way consumers obtain the creative products of artists all around the world.

There. I've laid a pretty basic foundation of where I've been in this universe of sound and hopefully given you a basis for why this blog is important for me to write. So, let me set some objectives of what I hope this blog accomplishes for me and anyone who reads it.

FOR ME

• I get overwhelmed daily with the amount of information I come upon in managing my son's career and just feel it is a great way for me to journal my discoveries along the way and hopefully keep record of what to do and not to do going forward.
• I find writing to be cathartic and hope to be published one day.
• I know so many people trying to make a career of music for themselves or their kids that I find it important to share the realities we have faced and see others facing along the way.
• Hopefully continue to build a good network of friends doing the same as me with their child.

FOR YOU

• Provide some truth to the muddy waters of this industry and all the things you can be sucked into believing about the journey.
• Provide some resources you can go to for helping along the way.
• Provide some insight into the cold reality of the "machine" we call the music industry.
• Give some advice from a marketing perspective, since that's what I have done professionally for 25 years.
• Make you smile at least once while reading a blog.
• Be a personal resource to answer questions you may have that I haven't covered yet in blogs.

If these goals can be achieved, I'll feel like this effort is worthwhile and keep posting.

Please feel free to give me feedback if you want. My email is phox6801@gmail.com. So send me a message if you want :)