Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Binge Blogging

While I'm keeping this blog and growing as an artist, I'm also keeping and growing a family and keeping and growing a business. Sometimes the balance of all this gets thrown off by one or more of these three things. This year, the latter two have kept me on my toes. Having an ambitious senior (college stuff already, too!) to support is an amazing, demanding thing, something which I know will not last long. Transitioning my sweet boy to high school is scary and exciting on so many levels. Both kids do their own homework and provide their own motivation to succeed. Apparently I have easy, enjoyable teenagers...

...and it's a good thing, too, because keeping and growing a private practice is a lot of hard work. There have been many times when I have sacrificed money or time or resources to get to the good place I am today. I have set and adjusted and met my business goals, always with the balance of family and studio days in mind. There have been so many firsts in these three years. My three most recent firsts have been the hardest yet, and they are tied together in such a way that if one of them slips, the others slip, too. It has been hard to not let the stress of these issues wreck my joy and steal my peace. I have really had to practice what I preach. At times I sailed, other times I failed.

That's him in the middle. One his phone.

Through all of this great juggling, my best friend and partner has not only been an amazing support, he has also been doing his own juggling. At work, after five years with one particular machine, he has been transitioning to the use of this new machine. In between cases, he works hard to keep a band going, score great gigs, write music, and book tours. This year has been really exciting for the band---and I have neglected to blog about these things because of the aforementioned. (And did I mentioned my computer's internet tanked? I finally had time to figure that one out and fix it last week.)

At the end of last year, Vehicles were awarded Best Local/Regional Album of 2014 by KMUW's Jedd Beaudoin, someone who has reviewed/interviewed Cody a couple of times now and faithfully plays Vehicles on the radio. In March Vehicles opened for Gin Blossoms at the packed-out Orpheum for a really cool charity event for Dragon Master. It was quite a thing to witness Cody playing his songs to that many people. In March the band toured down to SXSW and played a couple of great gigs for cram-packed Austin, Texas. I keep hoping they will post the footage from Tony's GoPro recording of the gigs.

In May there are two more important milestones coming up: First, Vehicles will sit for an acoustic session and interview with Torrin for Creative Rush's Songwriter Studio. I was lucky enough to attend the session for April and it was pretty awesome. I am excited to hear Vehicles acoustic. The very next night Vehicles will play The Crown Uptown theater with Gooding!!! I LOVE Gooding's music and have only seen him/them play twice, so I'm really, really, really excited for this gig.

Good for music lovers. Good for Vehicles. Good for Cody Cloud.
 








1 comment:

the Whitelaws said...

So awesome, Mel! Wish I lived closer so I could go to one of the Vehicles' gigs!