Fair's fair - since Mark went to the effort of making a quiz about me, I've compiled for your quiz-taking pleasure the Mark DeVries challenge. Check the scoreboard to see how your Markish knowledge compares with the masses at large.

And on with the musing...

A week and a half ago (sorry for the anachronistic post) was originally supposed to be a CST concert night, but the show was cancelled when the Uptown Bill's scheduler guy (who, for the record, is both an extremely friendly guy and a tireless champion of live music in Iowa City - I don't mean to say that what happened was anything other than a mistake) realized that he'd booked two acts for the same night. The other act had gotten their contract in before we got ours in, so we were bumped. Not a big deal, I guess - the Uptown Bill's shows are always fun but rarely very well-attended - but it's frustrating. We have enough trouble trying to find places to play without having shows disappear. We'll get rescheduled, I'm sure, and I understand that mistakes happen, but it still sort of eats.

On the upside, though, it left me with a free Saturday night for the first time in quite a while. I got to watch the Cubs get whipped by the Yankees, play through my Storyhill songbook (Mary on the Mountain, after umpteen playings, is starting to fall under the fingers), catch up on some reading, and spend a little time ruminating about CST-ish-ly things.

Matt had some interesting thoughts on his blog about the cancellation. I'll quote the pertinent bits here:

On a completely unrelated note, I was disappointed today to find out that Charlie's and my upcoming show this Saturday night had to be cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. It seems the venue was double-booked, so we were left out in the cold. Ah, well. That sort of thing has happened to us a few times now. It's not the best feeling when we're told, "Yeah, you were on the schedule, but someone else wanted to play that day, so what could we do?" Granted, one of the other times it happened we were bumped for a pretty big name act, so I really couldn't blame the venue. This time, though, not so much. Some band I've never heard of. To be fair, they've likely never heard of Central Standard Time (our band, I mean, not the time zone).

And so it goes with CST. One day we might feel poised to take the music world (or at least the local market) by storm, the next we might feel ready to put away the guitars and sound equipment and call it quits for CST. I don't think we'll do that anytime soon. We do so enjoy performing and playing together, and it's really a pretty easy hobby to keep up, so I guess there's no real reason for us to quit. I certainly don't want to quit. I hope Charlie doesn't want to quit. I hope there are a least a few people out there who would be disappointed if we ever quit.

Matt and I rarely discuss CST in any sort of where-are-we-going-with-this sense. We've exchanged hundreds of e-mails about how to get more shows and about how frustrated we often are with ourselves for not playing more but we very rarely have Where Are We Going With This Band Thing, Anyway? conversations. We both shy away from the tremendous amount of work that would be involved in moving up to the next level - which would be a locally-touring, concert-every-other-week-or-so band. And the level beyond that - a full-time-job, nationally touring band (which is still several steps down from a nationally-known, played-on-the-radio, making-the-band-members-fistfuls-of-cash level) - is basically unworkable. Neither of us can afford to quit our jobs and hope the band starts paying for itself and Matt has quite a bit tying him to the Iowa City area.

So where do we want CST to go? The model, of course, has always been Storyhill (which makes them laugh - "You want to do this?" John said to me when I expressed our dream of being Storyhill II to him. "Man, you seem brighter than that."). I can't speak for Matt - since, as noted above, we haven't really talked about this much - but I would be deliriously happy to be playing Storyhill-type concerts, even if they were only once a month and didn't take us to exotic locales. If people were as interested to hear what we have to say with our music as I am to hear them that would be so incredibly neat that I can't even find words for it. That seems like a lofty goal, though, since Storyhill (who are immensely more talented than we are to start off with) built their fan base with several years of full-time touring, with all the musical solidification and copious new material that comes along with it. CST being almost certain to never be a full-time touring act it's probably best to put thoughts of Storyhill-ic success out of mind.

So where does that leave us? I honestly don't know - like Matt said, sometimes it seems like we're on the verge of taking the local market by storm, sometimes it seems like we might as well stop pretending we deserve to be paid for performing. We've averaged a show a month for the last year and a half, and there's no reason we can't maintain that average pretty much indefinitely. I'd like to (and I'm pretty sure Matt would like to) push beyond that a little and set ourselves up in the local college act circuit and maybe travel out West at least a couple of times, but I've no idea how to take that next step. We experimented with having a friend be a booking agent for a while, and that was going very well until he got tired of it and moved on to things that interested him more (we'd be interested in trying again, if anyone would be interested). We went to NACA and so far haven't had any return on that investment. Once upon a time, we were sure that success was just a matter of waiting for people to start coming to find us. We're past that, but still not sure how to get to a point where venues will start calling or booking right away because they know people will come out to hear us.

You need to approach the task of self-promotion as a musician with a fair amount of hubris, and that's hard for Matt and me both. While still disciplining yourself to refine your product and continue producing new songs, you need to approach concerts and booking contacts projecting a "wait'll you hear this!" vibe. Not arrogant, necessarily (at least not in the folk music genre), but confident. As I once described the Storyhill experience, throw the music out at the audience and dare them not to like it. We're getting better at that (we don't apologize to audiences before songs anymore, generally) but it's sort of a Catch-22: confidence both comes from and leads to success.

So where will CST be in five more years? I'd guess probably where we are right now; playing a show a month or so and wishing we were playing more. Maybe (hopefully) that's pessimistic - certainly 'twould be divine to have the band be a significant source of income - but barring significant lifestyle and/or personality changes on Matt's and my part I think CST will probably stay more or less on the plan it's established. On the other hand, to answer your question, Hibsy-Wibsy, I've no plans to quit.

Not so much of a coherent or get-to-a-point-ish blog entry; that's largely because I don't have many clearly organized thoughts on this topic. Anyone with any thoughts and/or expertise on the subject please weigh in - I'd very much like to hear from you. And, again, if the idea of being a booking agent has always appealed, let us know.