To be successful in being a DIY musician you must be succesful at “DIY” and at “musicianship”  these two concepts are at constant odds with each other. Constantly fighting for your time and attention.

First let me define what I mean by being a DIY Musician. The goal for me is multi faceted.

• Create quality music
• Build a following 
• Make music make money
• Enjoy myself

Problem is with all the time spent DIY there is little time left to create.

I guess the fun is in the journey

Started posting on Craigslist looking for venues for planning stages of Spring 2011 Tour.

We hope to take a week in June 2011 and hit the road.

Here is a MAP of potential cities and schedule.

Version 2 has a better connector design, The electronics are better tuned for modern preamps. and it sounds great, I still need to take some time and do some recording so that I can upload some clips.

SO tell me, what do you like better. “Copper-Phone” or “The Pipe Bomb” ?

Find it on craigslist HERE

Looking through my site access logs I found some interesting Bandwidth leaks. (other sites publishing images from my site by linking to my server directly) Big Mistake.

There are a few ways to handle this.

• Contact the webmaster and ask them to host their own image
• Delete the image from my server
• Change site settins to disallow external linking
• Replace the image on my server with something else

I chose the latter. I have replaced my 401K  and my Gin_Tonic images with the one on the right. effectivly infiltrating a number of blogs and financial sites.

Update!

Cd has been released and is availible at the Record exchange and at CD Baby. Find more details on the link below http://www.ronnierecords.com/IdahoMatters/Idaho.html

Update. Here is the telephone mic. I had to replace the transformer and I mounted everything on a pc board all internal to the head. Sounds better than before and it’s more solid construction. It has a high gain and looks all Steam punk. Runs on phantom power .

Perfect for thet “Telephone” Sound or for that bluzy grunge harmonica sound.

I have a bunch more of these Carbon Elements and a few more transformers. I think I’ll build them up and sell them on Craigslist.

I put this image in a post on my Acousticats blog to give a visual for a gig we played last summer where there were a lot of flies.  This image alone brings 150 hits a month that blog.  So here it is on this blog . (Can you say link bait?)

I found this schematic on the Internets

Of course after visiting my neighborhood Radio shack They had none of the parts so I bought stuff that was close. I ended up with 3 resistors adding up to 21.6K a 1uf cap and the transformer is a audio output transformer (obviously the wrong one). I am still going to create another with the proper components when I get them but for now check out the link below for a sample of what this one sounds like.

telephone

Saw THIS article in google news.

Been thinking about what to do this summer that would be interesting and fun. and stumbled across the idea of guerrilla concerts.

Basically you go somewhere were you know there will be a crowd, Ticket line at a popular venue just before a major show. Parking lot where a fun run is being staged.. A political rally…you get the idea… Just show up and play.

Could get a fine could go viral…