Support - Part 2 of 2

In my last post, I talked about the support a band needs from friends and family. This post will be about the other kind of support - what I call “organic” or  “earned” support.

Let me start by saying organic support has nothing to do with granola. 

Granola is delicious, though.

Organic support comes from the actual, real fans that you earn with your music and from sponsors. Friends and family can become real fans, but they usually don’t since, as I mentioned in my last post, they tend to have a certain vision of you off stage that trumps whatever kind of amazing rock star you are on stage. They’re invested in you remaining their little brother/college roommate/co-worker instead of a rock star.

So real fans usually don’t know you outside of your band. The thing that makes real fans so awesome is you know their fandom is real. If they tell you you’re awesome, that’s how they really feel, since unlike friends and family, they don’t have to be nice to you. Strangers who don’t like you either walk out or drunkenly scream at you just how bad they think you are.

Support - Part 1 of 2

One of the things that a band deals with (and by "deals with" I mean "struggles with") is support.

It's a big enough issue that I'm going to break out the topic into two posts. Yes, I'm saying that blog readers have short attention spans and don't want to read posts that are too long. With that acknowledged, this first post will be about support from friends and family.

When you're first getting started, you're mainly focused on building the band - lining up your musicians and learning songs. At this point, "support" means someone giving you a place to rehearse or neighbors not calling the cops on you when you do.

Art guitars

Our gig last night at the Pleasure Pier in Galveston was cancelled due to weather, but that freed up me and Johnny to attend a very cool event instead - the "HandPlayed: Austin Paints Guitars" exhibit and silent auction. 

HandPlayed is a project between Moniker Guitars, a custom guitar shop here in Austin, and 12 local artists. Moniker provided each of the artists with a guitar and asked them to paint, engrave, etc. the guitars to create fully playable works of art. They then put the art guitars on display at Up Collective, the show we attended last night, and they're auctioning the guitars at 32auctions.com/monikerguitars until December 15 to benefit the Austin Music Foundation.  

What makes this event especially cool for us is that Moniker is currently building a custom guitar for Johnny, so by the end of January, Johnny will have his very own guitar work of art, though admittedly, the guitars we saw last night were slightly more artistic than the one Johnny will be playing. 

Upon seeing the awesome pieces last night, I decided I needed to share the art with you guys, so here are some images from last night's exhibit. (If you'd like to buy me and Johnny a gift, we would like either the one by Graham Franciose or the one by Kong Screenprinting. We like to give people options. Thank you in advance for your generous gift - you are the bomb diggity.)