It’s time for me to shut up.

For all the times I complain quietly to myself about feeling left out or slept on, this is definitely not one of those times. On Saturday, I’ll be one of the DJs as part of 9 Deep, this weekend’s Mashville event. Mashville is the monthly DJ event showcasing great DJs in the area. It’s always an honor to be a part of a such a fun event. Definitely come check it out. Also, check out the Mashville blog plus their bandcamp page.

247 is a good friend of mine here in town, but more importantly he’s the hidden force behind a lot of great things happening in Nashville! 247 has done a lot of production for other artists around town, including my friend Spoken Nerd. I’ve told you about him before because he’s one-third of The Billy Goats. Also, he appeared on the Machismo EP.

One of my favorite things he’s done was his project with BlackatSylvesta & Ugly Lovely called Out of Place. 247 is the main lyricist in the project. You can get their entire Genetic Defects album for free by going to the Out Of Place Bandcamp page. Or just play it here.

He’s been doing a lot of video production as well. Recently, he began an online interview series highlighting some of his favorite artists around Nashville. You can catch interviews he’s done with James Fate, Bobby Exodus & Spoken Nerd on his youtube channel. Finally, I was able to “take my talents” to 247’s place and shoot an interview video plus a live performance featuring Jed Smith on drums. Take a look!

I have a lot of shows coming up in the Middle TN area. I love to play live. It’s one of the more cathartic things I do in life as an artist. I recently found out that I will be a part of Mashville in August. Mashville is the monthly DJ party here in Nashville where the best DJs play hip-hop, electronic, dubstep, and whatever other music they want. It’s always an honor to play. Here are some pictures from the last time I played Mashville.

Something odd happened at the last Mashville show. I had some fans come out to see me. After my set, they were all disappointed. One of them had brought her friends. She said, “Well I told them how awesome you were and that you had such a crazy energetic live show. But when we saw you, you were just playing records.” I was kind of taken aback. Did she not know that I was killing it? But then, I realized the problem. Normally, I don’t just DJ with records. My live show has developed into a unique blend of music, crowd engagement and performance art.

I recently learned of a term and genre for this called Live PA. The PA part stands for “Performing Artist.” This Live PA term is used to describe producers who recreate their studio environment while performing their tracks live. Usually, this is different from a typical DJ set where a DJ will play mix tracks that he might not have created himself. I do think that you can be both. Perhaps, the best DJs and Live PA artists are both. The Live PA forum states, “The “real” Live P.A.s take it further by recreating their studio sound live and have the expressive capability to improvise and change the music on the fly, because all of their instruments are right there with them on-stage.” Later, they go on to say, “…many of us grew up going to and playing in rock, jazz, and classical bands and concerts, where musicians play instruments live and put on a show for the audience. Some Live P.A.s also DJ, and some DJs also do a Live P.A., so the two performance methods go hand-in-hand for some musicians, while other more traditional musicians wouldn’t want to be caught dead behind turntables – it all depends on the person. ”
Check out Divinci of Solillaquists Of Sound

My goal as an artist and as a performer is to grow in the DJ world and the Live PA world. My favorite DJ, DJ Shadow, seems to move effortlessly between these two distinctions. For instance if you have his In Tune and On Time DVD/CD, you can see that he has lots of turntables, samplers, midi controllers; plus, he’s remixing it all live to create something completely different from the studio creation. Somehow I think this is what DJs can and should do anyway. However if you then listen to a Shadow mix such as this next one, you’ll note that he performs tracks of his own plus some other ones.
DJ Shadow In Los Angeles 10.31.09- Snippet by djshadow

Anyway! To avoid future disappointments, I will try and communicate what kind of set I will be doing. Either a Live set or a DJ set. If you see my name on a flyer with no distinction, it’s probably a live set. For instance here:

But if you see it and it says DJ set, well then obviously:

Eventually, I hope to grow to the point where this type of distinction isn’t necessary. At the same time, it’s kind of a fun problem to have. Would you rather watch a DJ set? or a Live PA set? You have any stories or comparisons? Let me know in the comments.

We are in the 6th month of a 12 month year and I wonder what I have to show for it. My dreams of doing music full time have been hanging on for dear life. Why? I could blame poor time management, insufficient hustle, cluttered workspace, etc. But I’m going to blame all of the above. Yet, these are silent killers. I wouldn’t have noticed it until the finale of LOST a couple of weekends ago. In fact, a bunch of my favorite shows ended for good this year: LOST, 24, Heroes, & FlashForward. I’ve been obsessed with watching these shows instead of getting Quiet Entertainer off the ground.

Here’s how it happens. I don’t watch TV on actual TV. I use Hulu and Yidio to watch pretty much everything I’m going to watch. I think if I watched on the regular timetable, I’d at least be able to say “oh I’ll work on music until 24 comes on.” But as it is; I can watch at anytime; and I’ve been lazy and finding an urgency to get things done. I love Hulu and Yidio, but in this case it’s been sucking all my time! I blame myself. But who could resist watching every clip and web exclusive of LOST leading up to the finale? And Jack Bauer’s finale season: How far will he go?? And a Hulu bonus! the entire series of the A-Team is on Hulu right now! Should I watch the entire series before I go see the movie in theaters?

I wouldn’t have noticed the slow death of my music career if not for a few artists. Let’s look at The Hood Internet. They recently came through Nashville on their tour. I had never heard of them before but they were booked to play Mashville, Nashville’s monthly DJ party. So, I went online to check them out and they had released 9 free mixtapes over the past 3 years! How did I miss this? So I downloaded just 4 mixtapes (for free) and I instantly had 4 hours of music to listen to. Well these guys aren’t lazy. This exact thing happened when Pretty Lights came through half a year ago. I had never heard of him, but he was coming to Nashville so I looked him up. He had four free records on his site too! I don’t know when he started but I think it’s also been 3 or 4 years his current setup. I downloaded it all and had about 4 or 5 hours of music with which to get acquainted. I’m a big fan of both now.

This discussion made me remember a blog post I read a while back from Justin over at AudibleHype.com asking Is Touring Really Necessary? I encourage artists of any genre looking to do this for a living to go read that. Long story short though, He says the five core ingredients to success without touring are:
1. Great Music
2. Easily Accessible
3. Prolific Output
4. Evangelist Fans
5. Low Overhead

I had to look around; is anyone doing this in my town? DJ Wick-It is pretty close. I think he’s got at least 4 of those 5 goin for him if not all 5. He’s got all of his (very dope hip-hop & dubstep) music available on his soundcloud page. Also, Spoken Nerd is super prolific. Since I’ve known him, he’s always put out a lot of music and is always thinking two records ahead. Check his latest from his bandcamp.

So, I am looking to these artists for inspiration. With some of my favorite shows out of the way, I have no excuse. I have to get to work and make actual music. I know my e-mail list will keep me accountable. Maybe you will too. So thankfully, I don’t have to worry about Jack Shepard OR Jack Bauer. At least not until the 24 movie comes out.

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That’s a video taken about 2 miles up the road from where I live. The large store there is Kroger where I actually used to work. The flood seemingly hit our area of Nashville (Belle Meade / Bellevue) the hardest before taking over the rest of Nashville including downtown, Opry Mills area, & Antioch along with neighboring Franklin. A lot of the water in my immediate neighborhood has gone down finally, but there is still a lot of damage and devastation. Needless to say, my thoughts have been kind of scatterbrained as I try to make sense of all of this. The updates I was going to give you throughout the week and weekend has been neglected. I’ll try and give you a quick run-through of some things I’ve been doing lately and also how this flood affects all things QE.

not a Nashville pic but you get the idea

On the night of the first rainfall, I actually got a chance to see Pretty Lights along with Gift of Gab as they both came to Nashville. Despite the flood, this show was packed. It worked out well because had I been home that night, I would have been trapped by the flood-waters. Instead, I just couldn’t go home. Pretty Lights’ show isn’t groundbreaking DJ-ing or turntablism or anything. However, you can’t argue with 2,000 screaming people. Gift of Gab was awesome. Daedulus (who I didn’t know would be there) was really great and gave me a lot of ideas. However, a true highlight for me was seeing This Is Art (Check them out on bandcamp!) perform. I just opened a show with them a couple of weeks ago. They did great in front of a large crowd and their continued success inspires me to connect with even more people.

Anyway, so the next day I foolishly tried to get a bunch of my gear and stuff to safety after the flood. As it turns out, the safest place for the gear was in the home and not in my truck. So although everything is mostly dry, I do think some moisture got inside the mixer. I will be letting it dry out. It should be good before the house show I’m playing with Details Details this Saturday. This Nashville stuff is crazy. Check out this video that a friend made. I leave you with that for now.

P.S. – Kudos for using The Album Leaf!