Stormcellar Band Home Page

We're saddened by the passing of John McConnell, friend of the band.

Even the casual observer would note that there's been a big dose of passing over the last year or so. This one's a little closer to home.

John was a talented, passionate guy. We made a particular point of working with him, on his grand old 2 inch tape machine.

John was a gent of the old school and did not suffer fools lightly. I can quite clearly recall at least one 'frank and honest' conversation with him :-) Knowing that it was Ok to stand my ground with him was a personal milestone. Thanks John.

We were fortunate to have recorded with him. Vale John.

A big weekend for us - Friday night will be our 20th show at the Town Hall Hotel, with special guest Dan Crestani.

I did a compilation of all our Show posters :-)

and sunday we're doing an afternoon session with our mate Shawn and Miss Jo is joining us!

2017 is all about celebrating through creating.

Mr Wizard suggested one of the ideas I'm pursuing is a 'bucket list' concept, but I plan on sticking around a while, so I'm calling an EPIC list :-)

It's time for KUNG FU LOGIC!!

Continue!

We've been apprentices and journeymen, if we wish to emulate the ways of the Master, we must start with Understanding.

We must first understand that we are not the Master. Only then do we take the first step towards mastery. 

Ponder that one a minute.

We must Make Stuff.

Do Stuff.

It must be.

EPIC.

Also, affordable.

So less Kung Fu Master and maybe more KUNGFU MASTER!

We have a number of things on the hop, some of which are going at full speed, some of which have already FAILED. 

Experiment, fail, learn, repeat :-)

So for my own purposes, I'm just going to note down some of the projects we're still working on now - but, because D. tells me that talking about it gives the same dopamines as doing it, I'm going to go half way here, to avoid internal rewards for work we are yet to complete, so no details. 

2017 Band Epic List

1. Defiance - 80% complete

2. Project  Jo - 10% Complete

3. Project Lightwell - 25% complete

4. Project MJSPS - 25% complete

5. T-Shirt For Every Gig Project - 30% (yeah 2017's moving aint it?)

6. Heavy Weather Videoclip - partial fail. I worked it up and didn't like it. back to drawing board.

7. Project GOB - fail 1, 2nd now at 10%.

8. Project SL - FAIL. Might try again.

9. Sailing suite - 50%

10. SC 10 - 5% (Yeah if you know our album numbering you know what what means)

11. Project Jerry - 25% complete.

12. Project Revival - 60% complete

13. Project TLGIS 2 - 25% complete

14. Project PopU - 15%

15. Project ReM 1 - 5%

16 Project 5 - 50%

Would you believe that's not all we're up to. But as you have no idea what most of what I've written means, I guess the answer is 'WTF are you talking about?'.

Fair call. 

For every video or thing you see up here, there's plenty of ideas and attempts that don't work or don't get off the ground.

It's OK to try something and have it go haywire. Some of the best fun we've had has been when things went a little sideways.

I expect a few of these things to come together over the next three months so it will make more sense as we go. But if it goes south, I'll note that too.

Meanwhile, I got work to do! Can't hang around here blogging!

As the Stormcellar Marketing Department, I've been following various web-based things, reading and thinking for a decade.

I generally keep that stuff to myself because I believe I should be 'doing' not 'telling'. So we do. But we follow the best of our own internal analysis and common sense.

But the time has come for me to say it loud for my fellow muso's.

ATTENTION MUSO'S USING SOCIAL MEDIA: DO NOT INVEST YOUR TIME IN BUILDING SOMEONE ELSE'S BUSINESS FOR FREE.

Commence Rant!

Facebook have dropped off the number of 'friends' who get our media posts by 50%.

They call this a 'reduction in "organic" traffic'. ROFL. 'Organic' meaning 'not paying facebook'.

Facebook want us to spend $ to reach the same people who actively sought to know what we're up to by 'following' our page.

Like some kind of street dealer, they started free, encouraged you to 'establish a social media presence' and now if you don't pay, well, all that time and effort....

Imagine having to pay for 50% of your emails to get through?

Humans have been using control of resources for power since before the time of the Pharaohs.

When we started out, the dominant player was Myspace. How'd that work out Justin?

We started this site before we joined FB cos that's how we roll and despite many Marketing Pros and other Music Service Providers seeking to help us by relieving us of our cash in return for electronic status enhancement, our use of FB has been dropping and dropping.

We did some ads, played the game and then decided 'nope'.

Even so, our 'Follow' base has been rising - even despite refusing to spend anything on FB.

Recently, I've been getting complaints from Cellar Dwellers who actively want to know what we're up to and aren't getting the feed.

Yes I know there are 15 simple steps FB say will fix that but I call BS.

They know people are not going to fiddle with their settings too often.

It's much easier for us to just pay FB to make sure they see our post/gig/video/comment/pic.

Nope.

We don't don't truck with SUBSCRIBE!!! SUBSCRIBE!! or LIKE!!! LIKE!!!

Rosie hates spam so much we barely even send out a newsletter.

But we know that you come here and read this and that when you want to know what we're doing and intersect with us, you check the gig guide.

But are we here to spend our time making ourselves the Masters Of The Invisible Palace? 

Social media is an echo of what you do, not what you do.

Social Media are not producers of content. You are.

You populate their world with your life and they then turn around and sell your information or seek to Pavlov you with 'OH GET A RED STICKER!! GET LIKES!!'.

On the occasional rant I've had on this subject, I've quoted concepts such as 'the map is not the territory' and argued that  the perception of the world through the prism of Old Media and Clickbait Media is not truly representative of reality.

We were in Middle America before the 2017 Election and what we saw/heard varied tremendously between what the folks in the US thought and what the media was telling me they thought.

I add another argument:

Would it make sense for everyone on planet earth to be obliged to use One Single Email Services Provider? So why would we all use one Social media provider? 

No. But we're led to believe that 'social media' is made up of the dominant player and 20-30 smaller satellite companies.

Bah humbug say I. Here's what's become of  Messaging on the web - from XKCD

Social media is doing the same thing.

How many websites, accounts, cost per month, subscriptions and adverts should we participate in?

We like making stuff and doing stuff. We're tech so we do Social Media, streaming, youtube, twitter etc.

We're so Original Geekster we have integrated messaging across platforms. It's all highly nerdy. 

But we are not up for supporting large corporations with free content and then having them charge us for the privilege.

We will still use Social Media, but we're spending less and less time trying to build their imaginary world.

We have our own imaginary world thank you very much! Right here, no ads, no clickbait.

I'm not sure quite what the right approach is, but I am increasingly leery of the main Social Media platforms and I think I'm going to change how we interact with them.

Rant over.

A much needed roadtrip...ahh..except for traffic when we got back :-)

Sydney came out on the roads this weekend after what seemed like a month of rain.

Trafficking musicians across town on the return meant dealing with all of Sydney. Everyone was out. Going to the Adele concert. Doing things. Sunshine.

After another peaceful country run, coming back into the full fury of the common road user reminded me why we are the country that spawned mad max.

Up until we hit that Emerald City traffic, we'd enjoyed some fine fine driving weather.

so peaceful

After a rough few weeks, a road trip was just the ticket, 

My aunt tells me 2017 energy didn't start until the end of February. It's all about the eclipse. 

by that measure, gig 457 was our first for 2017.

It was good. We did the thing. The thing was good. 

Cheers to Bucky & Jethro and to the Williams clan for coming out. They've got an amazing array of international and local acts coming through there. I'm pretty sure it's just because it's a great place to play.

Also the schnitzel.

Cheers to Sean, Irisa, David and all the folks who spent the evening with us.

Rosie and I stayed overnight and hit the swanky downtown Canberra breakfast scene and a bit of op shop shopping. Rosie got a beatles record.

I spotted a bit of Australiana and made an unexpectedly artistic purchase :-)

I felt like to we took full advantage of a road trip.

Musical Tourism :-)

All the way down and back I was listening to a new song from Bill. Adding new songs to the set is another of the great joys of doing this. 

I'm continually fascinated by the stuff that comes out of the guys. They're like Tuning Forks, stuck in the ground, vibrating to the feel of what's around them.

Rosie, Mr Wizard and Bill have all brought in some chill stuff. 

I think that's a reaction to the anxiety hype that's in the air. Certainly suits me right now.

You know we're making a conscious effort in what we do, here on the blog, and everywhere else, to try and chill out a little.

The world has continued to turn, the sun rise and set, rain comes in and passes. We're all still here.

And occasionally when the weather clears, we emerge from the safety of the stormcellar and go about our day to day things.

That's ok by me also :-)

As always, drop by when you need a break. We'll be here, doing what we do.