So what exactly do you do again?

It has been impressed upon me that I've got to market myself, promote the brand, etc. It makes sense and it's the world we live in. The question then becomes how? Generally, you're young when you start down this path and your audience is young too, but the idea that I can still market myself to the young is both counter-productive and to be honest, a little creepy.

The other route is based on the idea that you should market to those who share a love of the music of known artists that you sound like or emulate. That seems reasonable except that the groups and artists I like or whose music I've drawn inspiration from, their fans are probably not that into artists they've never heard of and aren't interested in hearing something that sounds like their favorite music when they can just go back and listen to the tracks from their favorite bands catalog. Why should I listen to someone who sounds like the Beatles when I can just listen to the Beatles?

The third option is the genre route; meaning which genre do I fit into. The problem there is the music I make is basically pop-rock stuff with some country and americana thrown in when I go acoustic. And pop-rock has fractured into literally a minefield of sub-genres from the genera of pop and rock, not to mention country, folk, americana, jazz, ECM, hip-hop, rap, and bluegrass. Somehow I have to decide where I fit in in this miasma of choices.

It makes my head hurt.

But that's the nature of music today. Mostly it's just music played on guitars, keyboards, and drums. I like to throw in dream-pop, electric folk, indie rock; I play a lot of different stuff, but I do have my own sound, which is important; sometimes more important than a particular description.

Still, we march on; we figure it out; we have day jobs.

Maybe I should focus on tee shirts?

Year Two of Mr Primitive's Revival

I survived my first year back in the world of music. I suppose if the first period of my work had been more widely experienced things might be different, but in truth I had no interest in that at that time. My only interest was in creating the music. My fascination was in seeing what I could come up with and once I was satisfied with it; it was done and it was time to move on to the next song. I disappointed Brian in not including him more and I was stubborn in wanting the songs to be a certain way. And once I began feeling like I had nothing new to say; that I was repeating myself, going over the same ground, I stopped.

The question of why bring it back, of why begin again, is in the idea of the worth of the material; are the songs any good? It took me a long time to believe that they are; that there is merit in the work. It's odd to come to terms with something like that. You would think that once something is done, that once it is finished-and you did this-it's good. I don't have any unfinished music from that period. If I liked something, I finished it. If I didn't, I erased it; this was all back in the pre-digital age for me.

I haven't the slightest idea what 2017 will bring or how much more money I'll need to spend to become the legend I was meant to be. I do know that more of the Seattle period will be released, as well as the Denver period, the early stuff from 1980 to 1984. There will be new stuff, for me, for everyone else it's all new. Maybe I should have been more proactive in the 80's, but what I did in the 80's wasn't quite 80's pop or rock, oddly more in line with later pop and rock idioms, and therefore problematic when it comes to marketing etc.

It may still be problematic today in that there is much to swim through, but I'm there on Spotify and Pandora and the other streaming services and maybe some will take a chance and listen. I plan on continuing to perform and put out music and I'll do what I can to get the word out, but I'm still some sorta old dude now and that matters. But you never know. You write, you record, you preform; it works out. Someday I leave my family my catalog and they look at it and wonder:

What do we do with this?