John Clinebell’s Blog

Hey, so the gig has been set! It’s Friday, April 11, and here’s the all but finalized bill:

Friday, April 11, 2008
The Second Monthly…
SoCal Songwriter Showcase
The Talking Stick
1630 Ocean Park Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90405
310.450.6052
http://thetalkingstick.net
6:30PM-10:00PM
FREE ADMISSION
ALL AGES
EASY PARKING
FREE DRINK WITH PURCHASE OF JOHN CLINEBELL’S CD STOMPING GROUNDS

Featuring the talented:
7:00PM-7:30PM - Martin Schlomer - http://www.myspace.com/westrd
7:35PM-8:05PM - Michelle Vreeland - http://www.myspace.com/michelevreeland
8:10PM-8:40PM - John Clinebell - http://www.myspace.com/johnclinebell
8:45PM-9:15PM - Super Karma - http://www.myspace.com/superkarmalove
9:20PM-9:50PM - Melinda Miller - http://www.myspace.com/melindamiller

This thing is gonna be a lot of fun!

That’s right, remember:

• FREE show to kickstart the weekend
• PLENTY of time to hit the bars afterwards
• ALL AGES venue!

In addition, anyone who buys my CD will get a free drink ON ME! That’s right, a free coffee, tea, latte, mocha, bottled water, whatever!

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am writing to let you know that I have a few great pieces of news to share with you this week!

1. SHOW IN SAN DIEGO ON FRIDAY NIGHT
2. SHOW IN LOS ANGELES ON SATURDAY NIGHT
3. PRE-RELEASE OF STOMPING GROUNDS
4. FIRST SINGLE: A NEW VERSION OF “NUMBER”
5. I WON THE CHEVY SONGWRITING COMPETITION!*

SHOW IN SAN DIEGO ON FRIDAY NIGHT
I’m taking a trip down to SD this Friday to play a gig with a new friend of mine, fellow songwriter Dave Boodakian! Come join us for crazy original sets from madly skilled SoCal performers. Here’s the details, straight from Dave’s MySpace page:
March 14 2008 at Mueller College
Across the Street
4601 Park Blvd, San Diego, California 92109
Cost : $8

Quoting Dave: “This show will feature three other artists who I personally picked out to play with me! John Clinebell, Martin Storrow and a mystery set from a special San Diego Music Award winner and local legend… check their profiles out on my top friends!”

Dave’s Myspace page can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/davebooda
Hope you can make it!

SHOW IN LOS ANGELES ON SATURDAY NIGHT
Oh yeah, and after you have a blast down in San Diego with us definitely head over to the west side for acoustic sets from Dave, Phillip Boone and myself from 7-10PM at The Talking Stick the next evening. We’ll be rotating half hour sets, so there’ll be plenty of variety, and trust me both of these guys are stellar; I wouldn’t have planned a whole evening of music with them if they weren’t! And the only thing better than the music will be the venue; The Talking Stick is the perfect chill little singer/songwriter venue on the west side. You’ll be able to purchase great drinks and watch an intimate performance in a comfy atmosphere you’ll be going back to whenever you’re in the neighborhood and need to relax with your laptop or book. Plus they’re awesome that they support local talent as they are with this evening!!

March 15 2008 at The Talking Stick
1630 Ocean Park Boulevard
Santa Monica, California 90405
Cost: FREE

I’ll be handing out free stickers and other goods at both gigs, and performing BRAND NEW SONGS; THAT’S RIGHT THEY’RE SO GOOD THEY DESERVE (AND JUSTIFY THE USE OF) ALL CAPS.

Phillip Boone (WHO ALSO DESERVES ALL CAPS) can be found at http://www.myspace.com/philipboone

3. PRE-RELEASE OF STOMPING GROUNDS
More information for you on the new and MUCH improved Stomping Grounds… There are gonna be eleven tracks, that includes a new bonus track, and a remixed “Number.” Haha, get it? Number. LIke it’s a musical number and the song is also called “Number.” I bet you’re thinking “Gee, John, I didn’t think I was getting a top-notch comedy show in this music update, but I am sure better off for it!” ***

***Rest assured that one thing you will not be getting in the re-release is more “comedy.”

In case you’d like to pre-order the CD (which is launching very soon) or pick up a sweet tee shirt right now with the album cover on it for a modest price: http://store.spgentertainment.com/store.html

4. FIRST SINGLE: A NEW VERSION OF “NUMBER”
I could tell you a long hilarious (truly!) story of how this happened, but suffice it to say that “Number” is the first true single on the re-release of Stomping Grounds. The guys over at Uncle Plum took what John Wolf and I created and gave it a really sick treatment. If you go to http://myspace.com/spgentertainment and listen to it on their page, you’ll see what I mean! That version is gonna be included on the re-release, so you’re actually able to pre-order it now.

*5. I WON THE CHEVY SONGWRITING COMPETITION!
In a maddening series of plot twists and turns, the race to the winner of the 2008 Chevrolet Songwriter Search came down to……………. A 50-WAY TIE FOR FIRST PLACE!!! Haha, that’s right, in the end 50 songs ended up with a 52% record in the head-to-head player. So I haven’t heard from Chevy yet, but I eagerly await my $500 prize, and hopefully a place on their sweet industry promotional CD. In case you didn’t hear the tune during the contest, you can find it here: http://singersongwriter.musicnation.com/ The song is called “Go For Broke”

That’s all, I’m gonna go get Lost in the webisode I missed from last week. Let me know how you’re all doing; hopefully great

Cheers,
-John

–
http://clinebellmusic.com
http://myspace.com/johnclinebell
http://lasongwriter.org
http://youtube.com/johnclinebell
http://sonicbids.com/LosAngelesSingerSongwriter
http://bigserp.com
http://realestatemarketingblog.org
http://thedailyinjustice.blogspot.com

1. keep playin. you’ll lose your crowd if you talk a lot or take long breaks between songs.
2. engage people while you perform. eye contact helps. at first it will seem forced, but after awhile you’ll get comfortable with it and people won’t think you’re begging for tips with your eyes.
3. don’t plug your cd every couple of songs, but don’t be ashamed of promoting yourself. remember, you’re the shit for going out there to begin with.
4. don’t mind the vendors. sometimes they can be a pain in the ass, and might bug you about playing close to their carts. too bad.
5. same goes for other performers. especially if you start playing on what they consider ‘their turf’.
6. become friends with the cops. don’t give them any ‘tude when they ask you to turn it down. it’d be a good idea to have stephen (the manager of the promenade) check your levels once so you don’t have to worry. also remember that you can usually turn it up a little bit and no one with mind. i think the bottom line is you can get away with playing a little louder if you’re good. no one wants to hear someone who sucks cranked up. but just be mindful cause it’s a $300 ticket!
7. put a lot of money in your case before you start playing. singles, change to weigh it down. if your case is full, people will think you must be good. it really helps get the tips going.
8. don’t put out more than 5 cds at a time if you’re selling them. this is another rule the cops will bust you for (or at least warn you about).
9. the 2 hour time includes all setup and break down. if someone starts setting up before the 2 hour period, then technically that’s your spot if you want it. i’ve had a girl squat at her spot for like an hour before her set started, and I could have booted her out if i wanted to. i’ll do it next time.
10. have fun with it. that’s the only way you’re gonna street perform for the long haul. some days you’ll do well, other days you’ll get like eight bucks and some free gum that they’re passing out which teens drop in your case.

hope that helps

Hey, I played at The Stone Bar last Thursday night (10/25). Just a word to anyone thinking about booking with T-Roy at The Stone Bar in Thai Town; I would not recommend it. Let me list out the reasons:

1. The venue is in a shady part of town.
2. There’s no parking anywhere near the joint.
3. They pushed back my set an entire hour without prior warning or even talking to me about it when I got there.
4. The place generates almost no crowd on its own on a Thursday night. And everyone scatters after the act they came to see is done playing.
5. No vocal monitor. Makes it very difficult to know what you sound like out there..
6. Generally poor level of talent on the bill. And no, it wasn’t me saying this.
7. Does not pay at all if you don’t bring 10 people out. Considering factors 1 & 2, I was lucky to get even five of my west side fans out that night.

So unless you just need a place in Thai town to assemble all your friends for some drinking and great Thai food afterwords, I’d recommend skipping booking with T-Roy and The Stone Bar. On the other hand, it seems like they will book almost anyone, so if you’ve just arrived in town and need somewhere to just shake off the rust, this isn’t a bad option… Here’s the sites for both the bar and the company that books Thursday nights. Just remember, you were forewarned

The Stone Bar in Los Angeles (Thai Town)

Surge Events (booking The Stone Bar by T-Roy)

In case you’re wondering what board games this Los Angeles singer songwriter has sitting on his shelf, you’re gonna get the 411 on what they are and why they’re there. But first, let’s examine the history of the American board game. It’s something that was invented in the early 1980’s as something to do before my family could afford an Atari 2600. We used primitive plastic shapes, often resembling popular cartoon characters, to “move” around boxes drawn on a piece of really thick paper. Most of the games had a lot of rules. Some of the games never had all the pieces. Other games were so obsolete that you could only play them if you had two or more players. Whenever I won, it was really cool. Whenever I lost, it sucked, big time. So there you have it, the U.S.A. bored game.

Here are my favorites:

Scrabble. This game stretches my strategic and poetic minds out at the same time. Usually I grade a decent game as one where the combined scores are well over 500. I make a seven letter word every other game or so; it’s always awesome to clear your tiles. In case you ever play me, I have a tendency to gridlock the board up by playing a style that often closes off access to entire sides of the board. I’m mindful of keeping your opportunities for double and triple word scores at a minimum. Formidable? Yeah, I’m not bad. But know that I’ve been outright embarrassed before (on multiple occasions), so I’m hardly unbeatable. And yeah, we use a dictionary when we play.

Chess. What’s not to like about a game that has been around longer than most family lines and has cool names like “rook” and “pawn” for the pieces? I remember loving a computer version of chess that I had for the Commodore 64 back in the day that had a battle component to it. If your lowly pawn ended up taking a high-ranking piece like the queen, the battle you’d have to fight to actually take the queen would not be pretty. And you wouldn’t take the queen. That component to the game made it much harder. And the computer would be very bold with its moves, knowing it could whoop ass on a lot of my pieces even if I ended up taking them. At any rate, Chess is great. I wish I could be that guy in the park playing chess for a day.. If you’re up to the challenge, be wary of my castle move, aggressive approach, and the slightly unconventional values I assign to the pieces. And don’t ask me who’s turn is, because I don’t know.

Jenga. I believe one of the things I was meant to do in life was take cut pieces of wood out from the bottom of a stack of them and put them on top without disrupting the balance of the stack. My favorite part of playing Jenga is where you test out all the different pieces to see if you can get one to move easy. That’s where you get to play the “see how much you can wobble the stack without knocking it over” game. It’s also a lot of fun to mess with your opponent by dramatically breathing in when they’re trying to be graceful with their move. Just don’t try that on me; there’s ice water running through these veins.

Stats for 7/14/2007:

# of sets: 2
# of hours out there: 4
# of cds sold: 10
# of semi-homeless guys clapping along to my music: 1
# of families that were awesome and danced to a few songs: 1
# of people wondering if I had an acoustic CD: 3 (guess that means I gotta go back to the studio, haha!)

I found the best place to play on the entire Santa Monica Third Street Promenade tonight. Considering I’ve played everywhere else before finding it made it all so sweet. To protect my space, I won’t exactly divulge the location I was at, but it definitely helped me draw a better crowd than anywhere else I’ve been.

Have an awesome Saturday night,

-j

Here’s some interesting factoids about my performance last night:

Location of gig: Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade
Weather was: Fairly warm, a little windy.
Set up shop: In the middle of the block between Wilshire and Arizona on 3rd Street
Set started: 8P.M.
Length of set: About 1 1/2 hours
CDs sold: 3
CDs signed: 1
Little kids dancing: at least 2
Homeless people dancing: 1
Un-homeless adults dancing: 1
Industry contacts: 1
Number of little kids trying to take money out of my guitar case: 0
Number of cards handed out: probably a dozen
Largest number of people watching me play at once: probably a dozen
Number of people asking if I played private parties: 1
Number of people requesting I play a Johnny Cash song: 1
Number of songs I played that I hadn’t played in a month: Half the damned set. I actually was planning on stopping after playing ten songs, but people started buying CDs and hanging around so I felt an obligation to continue the gig.

I’ll be out there again tonight… so come see me. More stats to come soon.

It’s at this late hour that I come to realize how much strain my day job (as a website marketing guru) puts on my type-burdened hands over the course of an eight hour shift. Sometimes when I come home to the west side of Los Angeles, the carpal tunnel I have hurts so bad that I don’t even want to get up out of bed, let alone pick up a guitar and play. But then I realize that there are good reasons for taking a steady gig, especially when you’re not established as an artist; the ability to clothe and feed yourself without reliance upon your parents, it takes the pressure away from feeling the need to ‘make it,’ and most importantly, frees up income to fund music projects you otherwise would not be able to afford without the backing of a record label.

Still, when I consider how much time I’m losing on a daily basis, it frustrates me. That’s time I could be spending practicing, auditioning, mailing out press kits, street performing on the Santa Monica promenade, schmoozing, working out, or just hanging out in the scene. I don’t know if anyone out there has a universal answer for singer-songwriters out there facing the same dilemma I am. At what point do you have no choice but to take a leap of faith that you can make a living writing, recording, and performing? Or can you take incremental steps like ditching your full-time gig for a part-time job? Or anyone wanna just take all the mystery away and sign me now?

Seriously, what I think each one of us has to do is figure out what’s most important in life. For me, having a decent standard of living is great, and I don’t need to become the next American Idol to feel I’ve accomplished something in life, but I’ve been thinking of how free I could feel to go after making ends meet while pursuing my foremost passion… and that’s a tough one. However you go about it, just be honest with yourself. I’m trying my hardest to do the same, and probably why I’m starting to climb the fence.

When you’re a singer/songwriter playing music on the street in Los Angeles (where everyone and their mother is a singer/songwriter), and it’s a slow day, sometimes you’ll take whatever form of appreciation you can get. One time I was out there, sweating my rear off, giving it all I had to passers by. I got a good number of people to check me out, but for some reason the tips weren’t coming. Maybe someone threw the thirteen cents they got back from McDonald’s in my bucket, but that was it. Three-quarters of the way through my set, in blistering heat, I was thinking of pulling the plug on my whole operation that afternoon. But then there was a group of high schoolers who walked by, and one of them waved. Sometimes that’s all you need, just a little inspiration to keep at it. At that point I said “fuck it” and tried to do my best the entire rest of the set.

When I first got out there to set up, I noticed that they were running some kind of soda promotion. They were handing out bottles of Sprite to anyone who wanted them. I’m not a big Sprite guy, so I passed on the freebie. Well those high schoolers walked up and down the Promenade, and the second time they passed me, they all smiled. Like I said earlier, sometimes that’s all you need. Even though I wasn’t making jack out there, finding a connection with people is really what it’s all about. And they did eventually show me some love. About five minutes later, they all came by holding 3 or 4 Sprites and put them all around my tip bucket. I must have had at least a case worth of them!

If by any chance one of you stumbles upon this blog, I hope you know that surrounding my meager tips for the day with those promo pops really made my day. And even though I don’t dig lemon-lime drinks, I gotta say they tasted pretty good after sticking them in the fridge for a few hours on a hot summer night.

However many it takes to find one that isn’t totally self-devoted.

Maybe it’s just a by-product of the ever-increasingly corporate music industry, or the generally self-centered nature of people who consider themselves solo acts, or perhaps there’s just far too many of us to peacefully co-exist. Whatever the case, singer-songwriters are territorial, ultra-competitive, and all think they are treading new ground. At least that’s what it seems.

I remember the first day I set up to play on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. It was like a Saturday morning, pretty dead. Only one other guy I could see performing on the entire block I was on. I got my gear plugged in, got the tip jar out, and started my set. Not ten minutes went by before the guy on the opposite side of the block mozied on over, barefoot, to introduce himself. After talking to him for about thirty seconds, I guess the pleasantries were over because he asked me to turn down my amp. Now I’m not gonna pretend like I didn’t want people hearing me, but by no means was my volume out of control. The fact that I could still hear him all the way on the other side told me that I couldn’t have been that loud. I could have made a stink that the dude who plays James Taylor and Lyle Lovett covers while complaining about not getting any tips in between his songs was telling me to tone it down, but I’m a lover, not a fighter. I turned it down a little bit. So anyways, that was my introduction to the lack of comeraderie in the L.A. music scene.

I know there are a lot of egos in this town, but I still don’t understand why people think they need to box other people out to get a leg up. I could go into countless other things I’ve noticed on 3rd Street; from acts who set up really close to me and try to drown me out to performers who conspire to control the best spots to play on by planting pieces of gear four hours in advance for their friends to watch while they are nowhere nearby. If I dig an act, even if I’m super busy, I’ll bob my head along, and smile as I’m walking. Is that too midwest of me?

I’ve even had difficulty with friends of mine I’ve shared shows with. Jealousy over the small crowd I manage to pull, or CD sales I make. “Grow up already” is what I want to say to the entire industry, but considering I’m just putting my first foot in the water as far as the marketing aspect goes, I guess it doesn’t help to have a bad attitude about it. So I guess the whole point of this is that I’m a singer/songwriter in spite of what most of my colleagues represent. Not to mention the cliches. Those will be fun to go into in another post.

If you’re looking for something to do on a weeknight, definitely visit my website (Los Angeles Singer Songwriter John Clinebell) and see if I’m playing on the Promenade or somewhere else. I’d love to entertain you for a bit while you’re having a good time outdoors.