Gary Powell, Composer/Producer

by Gary Powell

Austin psychotherapist, Amy Person, gave me the perfect metaphor for explaining how we might maintain a professional presence within our social networks, whether it is Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter, or some other social site. She contends that your social networks are an ongoing 24-hour a day convention for your business. To make the point, I’ll write only about Facebook. Please apply this idea to all your social networks which you intend to use professionally.

Yes, your Facebook Wall is an ongoing 24-hour a day convention for your business. In that, the content you post on Facebook, or any other social networking site, should be tightly controlled and consistent with your goals and then purposefully managed for the benefit of your convention-goers. We all want to attract people who will derive some benefit from our services and therefore visit often, and possibly even hire us or buy our products. We want them to see us as a valuable resource, right? Think of your future business leads and then consider how you would like them to see you. Are they interested in ground-breaking facts about your new hair color? How about that fascinating esophageal laparoscopic surgery I had this year? Wait, surely your future client, and the one client you have always waited for, will want to be notified when you walk your dog, are warming a can of Campbell’s soup or when you are waiting for your hair to dry.

Worse than just not caring, if they are indeed looking to you as a serious business partner, they will be judging you through what they experience on your site. Therefore, I suggest keeping your Wall as clean as possible and sweep the convention floor as many times a day as needed to control the endless drivel and to keep your content relevant to your goals.

Some personal content at your convention can give visitors insight into who you are and even humanize you, but Facebook is notoriously permissive and indulgent of a ridiculous level of triviality. Maybe you don’t have a problem with that, but you probably don’t want it on your convention floor either. Scrub the floors with great purpose. Deliver positive, helpful information through all the media you have at hand. Post it on your Wall, Tweet it, Blog it, Flickr it, but don’t trivialize your life, dump your garbage, or air your laundry there. Once you run a well-organized convention, your Facebook audience will grow in a healthy way and keep coming back. And maybe, most importantly, Google will love you for your efforts.

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How Social Media is Your Convention Floor. http://tinyurl.com/6re9g5

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Filed by Gary Powell at 10:40 pm under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

At full sail, we can realize and create our purest artistic vision at our highest performance level and understanding. We can then come to enjoy the benefits from the realization of working at that highest and best use. I’m suggesting that in between fate, hard work, discipline, luck, favoritism, and talent, we can occasionally find our wind and be at full sail. In these snippets of time when chance collaborates with our fullest and best expressions – we forget time, place and even the context of our artistic origins. Life floats on the gentle and effortless waves of creativity and success, and we have indeed found our wind.

This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune.

Conversely, we more frequently find ourselves in a dead calm. While we own the best vessel with all our gear at the ready, we simply have no wind. These are the periods of Big Sails – No Wind, which can be most disheartening, or something worse altogether. Within this metaphor, rations become scarce, resources diminish, and emotions turn to despair. The solution is to absolutely know that this will happen and to provision for it. Before World War II, the precept of economic prudence was a core value of most Americans. Few of our grandparents ever bought anything on credit. Having a good credit rating is not a bad thing, but it is not provisioning for the dead calm.

The dead calm may also require the use of a paddle. This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune. Regardless of whether the dead calm seems engineered through circumstance, is self-inflicted, or is being masterminded by people who would shield the wind from your sails, the antidote is to provision, provision, provision, and don’t forget to buy a paddle.

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Big Sails, No Wind-How to Survive the Arts in a Dead Calm. http://tinyurl.com/45mr4j

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Filed by Gary Powell at 3:30 pm under Music Business Insight
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I photographed this little shop window in September, 2007, while visiting Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. I’m not sure if this statement on their storefront window is true, but I found it appealing nonetheless. I walked in with cheery confidence and bought a groovin’ t-shirt which has indeed made me like myself more. Fortunately, there were no guitar stores on this street or I might have fallen into a narcissistic coma.

DISCLAIMER

In creating your lesson plan for life, remember that Retail Therapy is not for everyone. It should only be administered when in the company of someone who knows your credit limit and is bigger than you are. Under certain circumstances, Retail Therapy might actually be more detrimental to your self-worth than supportive of it. Use great discretion when undergoing Retail Therapy and remember to never shop alone especially when audio gear or musical instruments are involved.

Photograph by Gary Powell

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Filed by Gary Powell at 4:40 pm under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

This site is a very personal self-help manual for me. When beginning my career in music, the kind of mentoring insights, like the ones found here, were either absent, misleading, or simply wrong. Within this site we have visited Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Aristotle, Rosa Parks and even Joseph Stalin. All of these people have a connection to the American holiday of July 4th; all positive ones, excepting the latter. Joseph Stalin represents the worst of what human beings are capable of when our institutions, governments and lizard-brain fears become enmeshed.

Parallel to our American heritage, my experience with institutions is that they simply have no idea what to do when a person who colors outside of the lines shows up. Missing the contribution of individuals, or not identifying talent which does not fit nicely into an existing 18th century societal curriculum, is still common to this day. Within this blind spot is where the institutions must adopt and change or risk becoming irrelevant. England rejected the idea of their own irrelevance and neither prepared for it or won the war. Fast-forward 232 years and we can project that the shear muscle of tradition, branding-power and sweat-shops won’t be enough to sustain similar institutions after The New 1776 goes world-wide. What’s this got to do with music or a successful career in the arts?

With some 45 million of my productions having been sold in 47 countries it’s hard to argue that I have not been successful. This, however, is not a simple success story. It is one that is best understood within the context of how and what I have contributed to and negotiated with – both small and large organizations and even individuals. There are not just insignificant nuances to understand about a career in music of this length. There are also accidents of fate, manipulations, weather, betrayals, luck, and bold personal moves. The New 1776 is about understanding everything in our careers until that time when old strategies transform into bold moves. The Declaration of Independence was THE bold move of our country. This came after decades of negotiations and measured strategies which did not work. We each have to know when OUR time for a bold move has come.

Most of my words here are written as fuel for personally stretching to reach my own goals. My goal is to achieve a greater integration of my talent, education, skills, self, and experience within a musical expression. Here, within this music-business blog, I have slowly been granting myself authorization to move forward in bold new ways.

In this regard, this blog is a very personal self-help manual.

It’s 1776 all over again for people like me, maybe you are another, who with conscious intention to serve the whole of the good, can now directly contribute and profit from your own individual authority. This is how we can best design and realize our well-earned and prosperous future. I’m ready for the right people to win. The world is ready for the right people to win. How do we do it?

I’ve been supporting my artist friends since entering music school in 1970. However, I have ignored my own artistic vision to a fault. Now I find my vision pregnant with rich content – born from my own bitter wars of disappointment and the abject folly of success. Within this context, which only experience brings, I have lost all fear.

Here are some guidelines I’ve set for myself.

Do not follow or artistically try to find my audience. That’s what record companies are good at, not artists.

Invite my audience into my own musical experience, even if I know it expects more from them. I have found most individual adults hungry for music which reflects the complexity and beauty of their own lives.

Through continued study and experimentation, both musically and otherwise, let my music show a personal reflection from these quests for understanding.

Boldly put this music out there. It was healing to write it, so now share it with great pride and expectations.

Ask my friends and colleagues for help and support in any way with which they feel comfortable in participating.

From this 2008 Independence Day forward, on my site you will begin to find more links to iTunes and other download sites as well. I am now asking in a direct way for your help by forwarding my announcements to your friends and networks. You can also connect with me on Plaxo where I will be keeping my “Pulse” in regard to future releases. I will look forward to creating these new works and sharing them with all of you. We have so many ways to help each other now – through our social networks, writing and subscribing to blogs, and simple email, we can refer our support for each others’ efforts therefore inspiring more people to reach higher for others and deeper within themselves. This is how we build a world that we wish we were living in just as Thomas Jefferson did for us in 1776!

This is The New 1776 for the entire globe. It’s time to go inward and come out with a healing hand which only inspiration and aspiration can lend, remembering that within this freedom, we all contribute and support each other by our own choice. Happy 4th of July to the whole world. I’m choosing to win.

Helpful? Then Copy, Paste and Tweet It:
The New 1776 and How We Claim Our Own Authority. http://tinyurl.com/5tscyv

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Filed by Gary Powell at 12:00 pm under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

If you were born into the world, as I was, with Walt Disney Records as the dominant deliverer of family entertainment, then you will cerainly enjoy reading Mouse Tracks written by Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar.

Joining the enormous legacy of Walt Disney Records in 1989, I thought I had a solid knowledge of the record company. I did read stories, recognized names and saw faces in Mouse Tracks that were familiar, like Annette Funicello. However, there were also surprises to me, like, reading about the record mogul Mike Curb’s varied career. The book also recounted stories of old recordings, still fresh in my musical memory from childhood, like, “Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier.” Obviously, the researchers and authors, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, spent many hours in the archives and on the phone with the principle contibutors to the record company since its inception in 1955.

I am not an employee of Walt Disney Records, but as a prolific contract producer for the company since 1989, the authors contacted me and asked for a memorable story from my studio, Powell Studio Productions here in Austin, Texas. I won’t give it away, but you can read about the unusually simple technique used to create the singing aliens for “Toy Story Sing Along Songs” on page 185.

Thank you, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, for including my work and studio in your wonderful book.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

“Tim Hollis is the author of three books – histories of tourism and children’s television – all published by University Press of Mississippi.”

Greg Ehrbar, a twenty-year Disney company veteran and a two-time Grammy Award nominee, is a writer of advertising, books, television specials, radio shows, compact discs, and Walt Disney Records Read-Alongs.”

Filed by Gary Powell at 7:08 am under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

Memorial Day is the day to reclaim one of our greatest American values,

“perception becomes reality.”

No, that’s not it! Professional communicators across all cultures and generations have known and utilized this manipulation – every politician, every manager, every promoter. Decades ago, I had several people in the field of public relations suggest that it was time for me to “build my myth.” I could never understand how they could miss the fact that my musical skills and professional life didn’t need a myth. I did, however, have the need to create my own authority. Although this is the truest of American values, no one suggested it to me. The lesson of claiming my own personal authority was finally taught to me at age forty-two! Although there were immediate benefits, it took another decade before it sank in and became integrated into my being. Utilizing our self-determined authority, if we have earned it, is how we; the talented, the educated, the bold and the caring, win.

I did have the need to create my own authority. This is the truest of American values.

Only a few will understand that we, ourselves, are responsible for creating and maintaining our own authority. If learned and applied, each of us can now create a professional life which is less encumbered by the weight of the institutional gatekeepers, and there are plenty of gatekeepers who are usurping, borrowing or hijacking our earned authority. You, the individual, with the freedom to hang out your own shingle, creating your own opportunities while prospering through the relationships of your choice, is the kind of pursuit to happiness which can be traced back to the “Magna Carta” in year 1215, to Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence” in 1776, to the “United States Constitution” in 1787, and to James Madison’s “Bill of Rights” in 1791.

Through this eight-hundred-year-old paper trail, self-reliance and self-determination has become embedded into the American consciousness. By awakening this reasoned argument, which we have inherited through the words of these authors, these liberators, we can define the direction of our own destinies even in failure. I have struggled with and yet still continue the great challenge of creating my own life and identity. Nobody owes this to me. The responsibility rests solely on me. If I fail, let it be a grand and picturesque failure for others to either follow or avoid. Today, I will do it yet again before the sun sets on this Memorial Day, in honor of those who have, for centuries before, fought the good fight. Either way it goes, at my final sunset, whatever I have built or have failed in, will be gloriously mine.

I wish you all a peaceful and healing Memorial Day!

(I took the sunset photo above in Alaska on a September afternoon in 2007.)

Filed by Gary Powell at 2:51 pm under Music Business Insight
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