As I’m continuing to get set up and settled into the remote groove, I’d love to hear from you: what sort of things are you looking for in a session player? What would you look for in a remote collaboration situation to make the experience as valuable as possible? Do you have any sort of preferences around equipment or technology? etc., etc. Comment or email back — I’d love to talk.

More info on remote sessions can be found here.

Please pass this on! Being in the biz, we all know the importance of personal connections. Any referrals are hugely appreciated.

Rock on!

My understanding is that she is quite the songwriter and solo performer. I look forward to exploring more of Trixie’s work.

So from Black Dub, I followed the dots to Trixie Whitley. And from Trixie, I have started to connect the dots to her late father, Chris Whitley. It’s still early days in my exploration of Chris’ work, but I was immediately struck upon hearing his collaboration with DJ Logic on the album Rocket House. To hear the alt.blues stylings of Whitley on his National Reso-Phonic, combined with Logic’s beats is truly inspiring. Whitley’s work is equally gritty, sexy, spiritual, pleading and surreal. His songs are challenging and unconventional. I’ve had time to preview and handful of Whitley tunes, and look forward to digging in much deeper.

See/hear for yourself here: (sorry for the goofy VJ at the beginning)

So, thank you Daniel Lanois, for helping me connect some big musical dots.

I’m amazed by the timing of Simon Sinek’s blog post and corresponding Tweet, which I picked up and read. I’ve been in need of new inspiration lately, and his blog and attached video really helped.

Maybe it’s time to finally tackle that urge to sample the sound/rhythm of my windshield wipers and write something to it.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Another illustration on why it’s so important for us to treat our musical endeavors as a small business. And like “normal” business people, why it’s so important to be able to articulate your goals and vision.

“The fact that people don’t care about you as much as you care about you doesn’t mean that you have to do everything.  But it does mean having your own clear vision and communicating it.  It also means knowing what success looks like and enough about what has to be done to get there so that you can tell if your team is on the right path.”

Communicating your vision can sometimes be a very hard thing. After all, we’re artists and we communicate with our work, right? I know I have a hard time with it. At a music conference I recently attended, I jotted some basic talking points written on a note card that I kept in my pocket, and I would read it form time to time just to keep it top-of-mind. Not a “sales pitch” mind you, but more along the lines of what sort of things I’d like to accomplish in the short term with my career, and what I’m hoping to gain relative to those goals by attending the conference.

Would love to hear your thoughts on art-as-small-business and team building.

I agree with Bragg. It’s destructive to try to shut down people who are trading music amongst themselves. Trading is how people get turned on to new music, and has helped spawn lucrative careers for many artists. The “enemy”, or the “competition” if you will, are the file sharing sites. It’s just good business to offer a better experience than the competition. That goes for any industry out there. And now especially the music industry.

His last paragraph sums things up beautifully:

However, we will not be able to marginalise the pirates until we can offer accessible, easy to use, fairly priced alternative business models that people will actually want to buy their music from. While we may never be able to sink The Pirate Bay, the challenge we face is to make it look boring, shoddy and unreliable.

A good article for anyone in the biz, especially those who are in a self-management role–managing your band or your own career. It’s way too easy to loose track of the big picture. There’s some good advice in here to keep you focussed on the big picture.

What are some of the challenges you face in keeping your plan on-track? What sorts of things do you find helpful?

I really think Adams Clayton is one of rock’s finest bass players, and I have tried hard to learn from him. Adam is proof that there is power in restraint, and that less really is more.

Adam Schlesinger rockin' the Thunderbird

I was just flipping through a recent issue of Playback (ASCAP’s member magazine), and I was taken by the answer given by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, Tinted Windows) to the question “is there a formula for writing a great hook?”

I don’t really know how to define a great hook, but you know it when you hear it. I do think that repetition is the key to hookiness and almost anything can become a hook if you repeat it enough times. When I’m working on a song, sometimes I think, “What part of this song would someone sing to someone else if they were asking them if they knew it?” That part is the hook.

I really like the last part of that quote. “The part that someone would sing to someone else…”. That’s a nice way of thinking about it, and gives the songwriter something slightly more tangible on the journey to “hookiness”. I’m going to remember that one.

How would you describe what makes a great hook?

For more post-Nickel Creek goodness, check out Sean’s sister Sarah Watkins.