“Ain’t Nobody” for sale!

I’ve put together a sales site for “Ain’t Nobody” in case anyone feels they’d like to buy a copy. It’s in this widget below –

which is a store called Nimbit that seems to do it right. I can’t set it any lower than .49 cents, so I set it at .50 so I wouldn’t have to deal with 80% of a penny….I hate pennies…..

Anyway, this copy is as final as I think it’s gonna get, it’s been rounded out with small bit of mastering type compression and it sounds really good, I’m very pleased with the results, plus it’ll play in a car a little better than the last one.

If you’re of a mind, you can also add the widget to any page you’d like, just click the double-arrow symbol in the upper left and it will tell you how to do it on a regular page and on a MySpace page.

I gotta say, I LOVE this democratization of the whole “business” part of the biz, these things are great for those of us outside the major label system (almost everyone these days), but without huge sums of money to put our stuff out there……and yeh, it would be nice to recoup a bit of the expenses now and then….I’m not expecting to pay my mortgage, but every little bit helps.

It probably seems like a lot of effort for 1 song, but I’m learning about all these newer tools and although it takes some time to go around and figure out what’s best for me (and you) and then how to implement it (you would not believe all the little details you have to know and get in order, it’s NUTZ) but once you get it together it functions quite well and gets a lot easier.

I’m doing all this because I have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline and I need to have this all in place for all that….I’m gonna put this other thing up in a bit that is so NOT me you won’t believe it, kinda like the Alabama 3 theme song for the “Sopranos” actually, or a cross of that and Blondie’s “Rapture” and some Prince thrown in…..bet you didn’t know that as a bass player, next to things like Doobie Brothers and Led Zeppelin the strongest influence I felt was funk type stuff like George Duke and Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke etc etc….I was a serious jazz fusion guy for several years…I was even the token white guy in a band in Alaska that played ONLY stuff like Marvin Gaye and Dazz band and so on, I had a BLAST in that band, groove for days….

So there you go, gimme a shout and lemme know what you think….now…

WB

“Ain’t Nobody” final…?

It’s funny how you can go round and round about the simplest things, and at the end of it all realize that you didn’t really need to make it all THAT much “better”….

I’ve been trying for the perfect combination of things on my song “Ain’t Nobody”, having great players play on it, trying to replace parts etc etc….and I found that what I was looking for was not perfect, not awesome, but just lonely. That and just letting it be what it was when I wrote it – simple, clean, uncluttered, warts and all. There’s some things that aren’t perfect, but when I went back and made them perfect, they weren’t anymore. Being that I’m a great believer in “musical” as opposed to “right”, I put them back the way they were and found I was much happier.

In the end I played a little slide guitar, and edited down some friend’s parts to get to something that I really feel does it right…..keeping Stuart Mathis’ big open baritone guitar chords on the verses (you can check out Stuart’s new CD that I played a bunch of bass on), and Cary Park‘s mandolin parts that sorta noodle in and out (Cary is doing his new CD as well, and was in Boy Howdy).

I’m pretty pleased with it, and although it could probably use a really great mix engineer to come in and really put the “magic dust” on it, it’s very satisfying to me now….

So what do you think? I hope you’ll take a listen and then read further down the page for some help you could give me. Here’s the original –

And here’s the final version –

I’d love to hear your thoughts….

So here’s how you can help me….I have a page at ReverbNation, a site that is REALLY well set up for musicians (BTW – if YOU are a musician and decide to use them, I think it’s good for me if you say I referred you, another way to help!), and they have a number of things you could do like join as a fan of mine, but the coolest thing would be to go about halfway down the page to a bunch of tabs, one of which is “Widgets”. Hit that and it will take you to a whole bunch of widgets that you can put on almost any webpage, and it will generate the code for you, so all you do is cut and paste it into your site/blog/MySpacePage/Facebook/emails….wherever you like. That would be a big help….

Feature me on your MySpace page…..if you have one, you could go to my page there at http://www.myspace.com/therealstill and grab one of my songs to add to your profile….you just click add on the music player and it will do it for you..pretty slick. That way people will hear it when they go to your page….so that’s helpful too!

Shortly I’m gonna have a link here to BUY the song if you like, which isn’t much different than the next idea, but I’m setting up my own store so that I can refer people to that instead of just iTunes etc, all of which take a big bite outta the money, and as I said, I can use every bit of that…..

Since you’re here, that means that farther down the page I’m gonna give you a direct link to a high resolution version of this song FREE! But if…..you’re of a mind to send some money my way, here’s a way to donate whatever you like to the cause….I don’t require your money, but it’s always welcome to feed my music habit….

So here’s the link to the file, feel free to spread it around, I hope it brings good moments to you when you hear it, it was a joy to put together!

Right-Click or control-click to save “Ain’t Nobody” 224k to your computer.

Happy Listening! – WB

Christian Music?!?!?! What?!?!?

Ok, this bugs me…..here and there on the World Wide Internet, I get slagged because people are thinking that what I do is Christian Music. Now I have nothing against Christian Music per se (except that many of the “artists” doing it aren’t real Christians, just greedy and desperate), but I couldn’t be further from it.

First of all, I’m not a Christian…there I said it.

In fact I’m kinda REALLY far from it….believing as I do that most organized religion is pretty bad for people in general, and also believing that most religions are based in the very human conceit that we matter much in the context of the cosmos, which the science shows pretty clearly we DON’T. Which I don’t find bothersome at all, in fact it’s not only ok, it’s liberating and refreshing to know that what I do actually CAN’T make the sky fall….so really let’s just be happy etc etc etc…

Anyways…..IT’S NOT CHRISTIAN MUSIC…..to ME anyways….

I DO believe that music should be whatever the listener wants it to be, so if some of my stuff has that kind of meaning to you, then run with that….music isn’t about me telling YOU what it is, it’s about some nebulous place in between us that is it’s own thing that the two of us create when I provide some music for you to use as the soundtrack of your life for those minutes that you’re listening to it.

I will admit to being spiritual, but not in any organized sense…it’s more like just really being amazed by the complexity and beauty inherent in the simplest things in life that are happening all around all the time….. and some of my stuff certainly reflects that I’m sure….awe and wonder is appropriate in the context of the human experience.

Anyways, it’s NOT Christian music to me….

New How To Video on YouTube

If you like “The Lady’s Song”, then you might like this video –

Lemme know if you have any questions, I’m here to help!

WB