About As Indie As It Gets
While I was away I got to meet Trish and Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan. I heard them play and enjoyed it very much. I bought a CD of theirs, all covers, including new folky stuff as well as Beatles and Sesame Street. They’re an unbelievably nice couple and they have a little boy named Sammy, too (but, alas, I did not get to meet him). I’m gonna try and get them to play where I work in the Fall. They played a song based on Norman MacLean’s Young Men and Fire that gave me goosebumps. It was probably the depth of Trish’s voice or the strength of Richard’s playing or maybe their harmonizing or all of the above. They reminded me that there is more talent out there than there are record deals. But in this day and age who needs a label? As the Xerox commercial says, on-demand publishing means anyone can get their stuff out. I think that if the RIAA is worried about record sales they should invest in companies that provide on-demand services. That way the labels can get a cut, the public can get more music and books by their favorite artists, and the artists themselves can release things that are artistically great, but not necessarily sell-able (at least in the eyes of the corporate bean-counters).
But what do I know? I’m an artistic idealist who wasn’t willing to stick his neck out and scrape together a living from art (though I probably am not doing any better than I would have!).