Welp, I thought I added this post, but I guess not! The following is an excerpt from my substack on the last year.
Clownish is out anywhere you get or don’t get music.
I should mention as I don’t as much as I should, that for 2024 I’ve arbitrarily decided last December I would try my hand at putting out music once a month. More specifically a completed album every month for the entire year. I was feeling cocky, (and perhaps filled with a bit of liquid courage) and when I woke the next morning, I still felt I could do it; false confidence I suppose.
In June on 2023, I released “Well, Hell.” I hadn’t put out a proper record like that in five years at that point. I’d been writing and putting demos out on SoundCloud as one does, which is really just another form of self preservation at the least. At the most it’s like tossing a penny out into a dark and dirty lake, sinking right to the bottom where no one can discover it. The discoverability on these sharing platforms is nonexistent to say the least, which stinks, but I digress.
Between 2018 and 2023, I’d been working haphazardly on these songs. Once they were out, I was in a writing frenzy. I was listening to artists and bands that I revered, and wanted to write like, and who put out music often at a furious pace. My ethos became, “Once it's written, put it out.” Why not? Not to be too self-deprecating, but not many are listening. I always thought it silly when a brand new artist without a tour, a record deal, and doing it DIY always adhered to arbitrary limitations on releases and schedules. They release an EP first of five songs, then play some shows, put out singles, do some gigging, then put out a “proper” album of 10 songs or so after a festering and irrational amount of waiting. Bands feel like they need to follow this nonexistent schedule of releases and shows and all the other things.
Sure, if you’re beholden to a large following or distributor. You don’t want to saturate a market, playing three shows in an area before playing a release show, or put out two records back to back before your audience can ingest what they’ve just received. But most artists don’t have any of that. They just think it’s what is required in ORDER to make it. Which is total bullshit. We live in the streaming age, where the world is full of shit and the bar to entry is nonexistent. Put it out, no one cares. Plus, they underestimate today’s listeners. They can listen to several albums a day or more and still want for more. Point being, after shedding myself from this group of songs that had been festering for the better part of five years, my outlook was far different.
by the time the end of 2023 rolled around, I had an entirely new record ready and recorded, with a hefty surplus. I was cocky to say the least. I decided to go gently. I’m horrible with holding myself to self-imposed commitments. So I released what would be called, “Hot Dog Water Music” in January, not announcing my plans, in case I fell on my face or procrastinated myself into failing.
Well, February came almost as easy with “Just Average” and once March’s “Underachiever” came out, I knew I was committed. It’s gotten tougher each month. My creative faculties have been drained to say the least, but I’m getting it done. Besides September’s “Ideas and Nothing More,” everything is wherever you can stream. That record is still up on Bandcamp, along with my first few records, but it’s simply demos and half-baked songs in order to fulfil this monthly promise.
Perhaps I’m just doing exactly what I rail against in a way; making arbitrary deadlines and schedules for myself, but the difference is why wait when it can be now?
This is already far too long for anyone to bother reading, but if you are, I appreciate that you’re here. It’s scratching an itch I forgot about all these years. I think this place will be a great centralized outlet for longer form ramblings I don’t get to share anymore. With the advent of social media, oddly, perspectives and outlets are more scattered than ever. Not unlike you perhaps, I’ve got folks on Instagram who don’t follow me on TikTok or Facebook, and vice versa. Unfortunately, all these different sites call for different types of communication, almost none of them discoverable by even people who follow me. I’m not bitching just to bitch, it’s just the way she goes.
Here’s hoping Substack is the new wave of blogging everyone’s been missing since those mid 00’s days.
Upward and onward as they say. More later.
Yours in Hot Dog Water Music,
-Pat
