Todd Dow

HONEST MUSIC

Planning and First Steps

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It’s been a long time between posts. I’ve been busy with a lot of non-music life since then. I actually don’t even remember writing and posting the last entry. Of course, that was right at the beginning of the whole COVID thing. Since then, I moved off-grid, which has meant a lot of work that isn’t related to music, just to get enough infrastructure in place so that I can get on to making music.

It has taken a lot of time and effort to get to a place where I can come out and tell people, “I want to do music for a living so I can leave my current job.” It mostly takes the willingness to make that stark admission, despite the feeling of inadequacy to leave a set, secure, albeit boring and unfulfilling career (not boring in the absolute sense, but the burnt-out kind of boring), to transition to a whole world of uncertainty where everything seems to hinge on chance. But I don’t really think that it really does depend as much on luck as one might think.

There were a few things that have kept me back. I mentioned being off grid and having a lot of other work to do. Making roads, building, doing electrical, plowing our road, which is a half mile. Our desktop PC that I use to record has been in storage without a place to put it. Then I hooked it up and it died. I had to build a new computer for recording.

I have also been working on my singing. This is silly, but I have a job where I spend a lot of time driving alone, so I made a playlist of soul music that I like to sing along with. Then I was able to narrow down a shorter list of what is actually within my range and voice. So, I have spend a couple years singing in the car, aiming for at least an hour a day, on my work days, 4 per week.

In the last month I have started actually planning on what my next steps are. I have been working on getting my personal gear, guitar, amp, and effects that I need up to par. There are other things I will need as I begin gigging. I plan on starting with open mics, then some actual gigs once I have a sufficiently sizeable repertoire of original songs built up. At some point, depending if I think I can do solo gigs or not, I’ll have to get a band together. In the meantime, I’ll be recording my originals and performing at open mics.

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