It's terrible when my boring day job work life ever spills into my fun personal free time life, but in the IT consulting world, there is this concept of a "retrospective" at the end of a sprint to reflect on your recent work. It's an agile methodology thing in software development.
I just thought of some of that being comparable to the phase after announcing your new record is out. "Hues of Blue" has been out for two weeks now. For artists like me, it's not unusual to think back on it, get past it, let it do what it's gonna do, and shift your thoughts to other things.
You're supposed to think back on what worked well, what didn't, and identify what you could possibly do differently next time to improve. Capture the lessons learned, and all that. Never a bad idea.
It's like a lot of things, releasing an album. There's an arc to how you feel along the way.
You give a speech, a performance, take an exam, meet a work deadline, etc. There's the preparation, the work, a little nervousness beforehand, then you deliver on the big day.
After the initial positive feedback dies down, there's a feeling of emptiness somehow, a hangover of sorts. It leaves you thinking to yourself, "well, that's over, now what?"
The obvious cure is to move on to the next project of course, but sometimes you have to let yourself live with this inevitable blues for a while first.
Some of it is blues because your blues album didn't immediately achieve more initial "success" than it did. You never expected virality, but the excitement wears off.
Time to get real about it. You always think your music is great right when you finish it, and history proves there's a "creative myopia" aspect wherin later on, you realize it wasn't as great as you thought. It's a real thing that happens to everyone.
History also proves that your taste changes, your tolerance changes, your favorites change over time. Other people's opinions have an influence. I've been continually surprised by which songs of mine people seem to like most. The opposite can happen too.
The scenario: I liked it enough to record/release, then quickly didn't think it was among my best, then time went by and compliments, stream counts, etc. show I might've been wrong. Revisiting with subsequent listens years later makes me change my mind and begin to think of it as being among my best after all.
Gotta give it time. Some faves stay on the mental list, some fall off and get replaced.
The inevitable letdown time is when "they" say you should keep hyping that new album, long after the release day. You had the slow build up of anticipation, and that's just the beginning. Hype, hype, hype. Never stop hyping.
Thinking of this, it makes me want to remind people that my album called "Sunrise" was among my best. That's what I think about it two years later. Never too late, right?
My quality has dipped since, I can and do admit it. But I think it's important to release your mediocre stuff, and not just wait around until you have nothing but absolute keepers. You'd go a lot longer between releases, for sure, if you took that approach. A real record label wouldn't agree, but here at Scott Cooley Records, I do what I want, dammit.
Ups and downs, peaks and valleys, strikes and gutters. Such is the catalog of most.
In retrospect, if I were reviewing this album, in the context of my catalog, I wouldn't say it's among my best. Honestly, I might rank it near the bottom of a list of my albums. I would say it has:
- More of a limited number of genres than usual (less variety)
- More of a consistent theme than usual (subject matter wise)
- Less commonly-used instrumentation (harmonica, horns, mandolin)
- Fewer songs than usual (11)
- A strange track order (with every other song being sort of "blue", with a couple of the best at the end)
- One non-original standard (Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out)
- Three arguably substandard songs on it (Because Of You, Fox Hunt, You Had To Let Me Go)
- One that could've been recorded better (Hot Plate Situation)
- One that could've been sung better (More Than Meets The Eye, arguably all the rest too)
- Three outstanding songs (Scoop, Treasure Trove, Rock Bottom Blues)
Overall, it's like a lot of albums by any artist: you have three songs you love, three that could've been left off, one interesting cover, a couple that could've been performed and/or recorded better, and the rest being fairly enjoyable.
These days, assuming you don't purchase streams, the play count stats are right there in most of the streaming platforms, so however you define success, you can't hide from the reality of how the new release is doing, it's there for all to see.
I could review the data with you herein, but I don't need to. It's public information. Popularity is what it is. I'm not chasing anything. I'm also not hyping anything. I'm done now.
My lesson learned is simply that I like writing & recording. The releasing part isn't too much trouble. I don't mind a couple blog posts and social media posts to build anticipation and make the world aware of it. Beyond that, I don't have it in me to seek publicity, or do anything else marketing-related at all. It's just the way I am. Can't help it.
When you do everything yourself, it can be a little exhausting. Time to take a long break now, then possibly repeat the same process again someday. I don't think I'll change much of anything.
If I win the lottery or something, I could enlist professionals to help me with a lot of it, which would be very appealing, but my current budget remains unchanged, and only allows for my own labor. I've proudly never spent any money on getting the assistance of others in making my music. I never thought I was good enough to get that serious and sink any money into it.
I like doing it all myself, but I've always been an individual sports type of guy. Take tennis for example. I love singles and despise doubles. I love the thrill of being the only one to take credit for my wins, and don't like relying on others. If I were on the ATP tour, I'd prefer to be one of the rare players without a coach even.
I have to be a team player in my day job, but in my free time, love to go it alone. Sure it would help if I wrote better songs, learned to sing better, took instrument lessons, practiced more, etc., but I'm not willing to do any of that.
You can't just set out to write better songs. They just happen. You have to write some, then take the bad with the good. This project feels like continued mediocrity, but I may change my mind about it someday.
I gravitate toward being a songwriter, first and foremost. If I was a young man, I'd go to Nashville and try to do that I guess for other artists. In this day and age of 20+ songwriters writing a single song, I suppose I'd have to be willing to change my DIY loner approach.
As you know, I also recently announced a fun cowriting experience that resulted in a great outcome. It helps I'm not opposed to collaboration or cowriting. Maybe that's something I'll open myself up to more. Stop being so selfish and be more willing to share, that kind of thing.
Maybe that's the takeaway from my retrospective: gotta start getting others involved more often in my future music endeavors. It may cost some money, but the older I get, the more it would be worth it.
On the other hand, since I already have a few unreleased songs in the vault earmarked for consideration of future release, I can't quite release another album where half the songs are my obviously home recorded quality, and the other half that enlisted pros, which would be odd. I'll think about it some more, see what happens. Starving artist stereotypes aside, I'm not completely poor.
Despite Hues of Blue not setting the world on fire, I feel like I've still got some music in me, so that's the good part. I won't say room for improvement, but I will say room for more. I probably do need to be a little more selective with my standards.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot - Happy Independence Day! Here's to the self-funded indie artists out there owning their creative freedom. I virtually toast you all and wish you the best!
