Welcome

 

When I made a single Instagram Story post expressing frustration with the social "platforms" I did not expect to migrate a solid 5% of my following to this somewhat less "clearnet" (funded by addicting you to advertisements) space. Those of you who subscribed are a part of the solution to the exact problem my friend and collaborator Dominick described here, better than I could. But then I had to do some explaining to my email list that after December 31st of this year, I won’t have a way to engage with them without paying $500 a year to Intuit (owners of Mailchimp and TurboTax).

In one month, Mailchimp, the service I used to avoid ad-funded platforms, is closing its free tiers. This comes, painfully, as no surprise: it's been getting harder to support distributing information and connecting people if the distribution method isn't not designed to profit. The alternative is to pay with our invaluable time consuming short-form vertical videos, and I don’t want to be a content creator anymore. So I'll probably be mainly doing real-life music and a little bit of posting songs on the internet. But, of all the stupid places to share stuff online I will keep this blog up, never fear.

Everyone like knows the broad acceptance of this is a problem, but are we actually going to do something about it? I'm finally getting the sense people might stop releasing primarily on Spotify and promoting primarily on Instagram. But it will take a lot of us who care about each other more than we desire to be spoon-fed. But if you're here, you've proven you care.

I've been playing like some classical music and a lot of jazz. As I've soliloquized to anyone who knows me irl, the focus this fall has been on supporting other music groups. In addition to a combo and a symphony I have been blessed with the role of guitarist in a post-hardcore band called Radio Caroline (check our website for upcoming dates; we'll be playing around a lot and we're mixing recordings right now). Of course, I still play keys as a member of the formidable Lyle's Tree. There's some very good stuff going on in that realm too.

I'll cut to the chase and admit the "call to action" of this post is that I'm playing at least 90 minutes of acoustic guitar songs (many of which haven't been performed) for free at a lovely little spot called Urban Forage in Minneapolis on December 13th. There will be an Irish jam in the afternoon so if you come you should like bring your guitars and fiddles and whatever else and then I'll play in the evening.

As long-term Eli Orion recording projects continue to percolate or brew or idk I can't think of any more novel alchemical analogy than that, I've been focusing on some more circumstantial collaborating stuff—I'm visiting Elijah and Quintin right now and we're making some good stuff. I want to have news about releasing a ton of songs and stuff but that news is a while coming and will only mean anything if I've actually spent said while working on whatever projects I plan to share with people in my online networks. For now, I'll leave you with these no-hesitation, one-nighter recording projects Q and I did (once in May and once in November) and this proof of antiplatform dissent...

I hope the video loads. Idk if it is working.

Take that, vertical vidoes!