Nashville-based entertainment firm The Lowry Agency has officially announced the addition of Nashville’s historic venue, The Nashville Dinner Theatre to their rapidly expanding client roster.
http://www.prlog.org/11522900-historic-venue-the-nashville-dinner-theatre-joins-forces-with-the-lowry-agency.html
#Acting
Keeping The Pace: Surviving VO Technology
KEEPING THE PACE: Surviving VO Technology
by Dave Courvoisier, The Lowry Agency Voice Over Talent
Ever since the worm turned and the “old way” of doing voiceovers became the “new” way of doing VO business, it’s been tough to keep up with the march of technology.
For decades, talent living in major metro areas reported to various professional studios, auditioning in person, and surviving on an agent/union paradigm. This still happens to some extent today, mostly in NYC and LA.
ISDN survives too, although people have long been predicting its demise. Such will be the case for many years, while the business of voice overs moves through its fits and starts, ever-changing with the times and the technologies.
In the meantime, an emerging wave that comprises the lion’s share of voice over work in the 21st century occurs in private studios all over America. These are studios typically built by the talent themselves, and populated by equipment cobbled together using whatever knowledge and resources they have.
In addition to the process of recording and sending sound files, much of the rest of the business of voice overs is also conducted online, or at least on a computer, often by one person – the voice over talent.
That means the process of marketing, promoting, advertising, accounting, bookkeeping, mailing, invoicing, editing, and follow-up all occurs in a digital world. That’s not necessarily a problem, but that world keeps changing and developing at a break-neck pace.
So, the question: how to keep abreast of the changes that will make up the new paradigm of VO, and what changes are those?
Clearly, Social media is not only one of those new technologies, but also the one that helps you understand the OTHER changes taking place in the industry. Why? Because Social Media sites that cater to voice-over business people personify the stream-of-consciousness that keeps you in-the-know.
FaceBook, Twitter, online forums, LinkedIn, YouTube, and ning sites like VoiceOverUniverse now make up the new (and continuous) Town Hall Meeting where people share, engage in Q&A, comment off-the-cuff, and create conversations and relationships.
Those online sites are typically where you will first see notice of new equipment, where to buy, how much it costs, and how to use it. Consider, for instance, the weekly EWABS online video webinar conducted by George Whittam and Dan Lenard. EWABS stands for East-West Audio Body Shop, and the hour-long Sunday evening event is free, and can be viewed on UStream effortlessly.
Newsletters, blogs, and teleseminars on equipment and services abound in the VO world these days (see http://courvo.biz, for instance). LinkedIn VO Groups have thousands of subscribers (see: Working Voice Actor Group administered by Ed Victor), and FaceBook has a number of extremely active VO Groups (see: Voice-over Friends, administered by Dave Courvoisier, Voice-Over Pros, administered by Terry Daniel, and Voice Artists United , administered by Chris Kendall – among others).
While many of these sites could be termed “niche”, they are also welcoming and inclusive. ‘No such thing as a “dumb question”, and newbie concerns are encouraged. J
Even more so, a Yahoo Group that caters to VO professionals has been going strong for years, and has an active, and highly-regarded membership that knocks around issues that range from equipment to software, marketing, demos, and freelance rates.
So how do you keep up? Join. Belong. Engage in the conversation. Pay-it-forward, and you will receive in return. Ask questions. Provide answers. Be a part of the community, and enjoy the benefits of association with like-minded souls. Everybody has something to give in the milieu of online discourse.
Success….At What Cost?
Success…. At What Cost?
by David Lowry
“And the work I put between us, doesn’t keep me warm” – “The Heart of the Matter” – Don Henley
One of my goals with my blog is to not only touch on the business end of things, but also the emotional side of things. This dream you are following has a strong emotional tie to it and usually the people around you, especially your significant other or those closest to you. Something that we managers sometimes have to deal with and that no one really thinks about is the price one pays for being in the entertainment industry. All of us who chase a dream often have to sacrifice so much to achieve it, just make sure it is worth the price.
This blog is going to be a one sided look at this topic as there are so many variables to consider her such as a jealous significant other whether it be of other people or of the career itself. We aren’t going to cover that here, what we will cover is assuming that you have a good stable relationship with the love of your life, what can happen to that when you are willing to sacrifice that for a dream, especially a dream that is nowhere near coming true.
When you are an entertainer of any kind, so many issues can pop up such as jealousy, never being home and not being able to spend enough time with the one you love. In a relationship, both people sacrifice so much for one person’s dream to come true and the person who is pursuing the dream needs to keep this in mind at all times. A very serious effort needs to made to spend time together and not get lost or wrapped up in the dream so much that you emotionally abandon the one you love or that you are willing to sacrifice this person who you say you love more than anything for a dream. It is very hard to be successful at anything without the support of the one you love. It can make or break you sometimes. You know the old saying “Behind every great man, is a great woman.” or vice versa. This holds true especially in an industry that is mostly negative and involves a lot of rejection. It is also my personal opinion that success on any level really means nothing without that special someone to share it with. I have been there and for me at least it falls utterly flat in feeling compared with my being able to share it with the love of my life. Remember that your dream won’t keep you warm at night, it won’t hold you and tell you everything is alright when things are at their worst and it won’t take care of you when you are sick.
Hopefully you have a relationship where you are both on the same page and you both want the other to succeed and are completely supportive. If this is true, then with good communication then you can make it through anything. Keep your eyes on the prize, but as a team. You as the entertainer need to decide what is more important, your dream or the one you love. If it’s the dream then tell the other person now. The three most important and destructive words in the english language are “I Love You.” Don’t say this if you don’t mean or can’t act on it EVER, it doesn’t matter who you are talking too. You are just going to hurt them more when the truth comes out. Don’t let it be a shock down the road to this special person if you decide to leave them for an entertainment career as this person has most likely sunk everything they have emotionally and probably financially into you. If the dream is more important than this person, than this probably isn’t the love of your life. You may care about them, but the love of your life is one person you would sacrifice anything for including your dream. Take it from me, nothing is worse than losing the love of your life. It’s not worth it.
What is the Product?
What is the Product?
Meeting after meeting, artists tell me they need to record a new CD, or are just about to record, or are in the process of recording one. The first question I ask is “Great! What are you going to do with it?”
They look at me dumbfounded as if I am stupid. “Well we are gonna try and sell it of course” they say.
“To who?” I ask. “Well, our fans” is the usual response.
“What fans?” I ask probing further. “You mean the 176 fans on your twitter account?” “The same 30 fans that keep coming to your shows in the same city that you never get out of?”
“What are you going to do with the rest of the CD’s that are sitting in your garage after you sell 50 of them and have run out of fans?”
“What is your marketing plan?” “Who are you going to distribute it through?” “Better yet, why are you recording a CD for a fan base that doesn’t exist yet?”
“Do you have a provable demand for new music that will at least allow you to recover the investment cost of making the new CD?” 99% of the time the is of course “No.”
Needless to say from a business standpoint this is bad business. You don’t invest money into something that you have no idea or plan to make money/a profit on.
My point is: If you haven’t developed a sizeable fan base from shows and social media, you have no need for a CD until there is an actual demand for it or at least a big enough fan base to market it to. Let’s say you have a CD but you have only managed to sell 100 copies of it and you still have plenty left over. Don’t you think you should sell those first before making a new CD?
Obviously at this point you still don’t have a demand for your music, so why do you need a new CD? Your current CD still hasn’t been heard by anyone yet, so it isn’t old music to anyone but you. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to focus on developing a demand for new music by selling your current CD and generating a fan base who actually want to purchase it?
You need to resist the “artist” urge or need to create before it is time. That doesn’t mean stop writing, it means don’t pay for something you can’t sell. Don’t be fooled by the numbers on your social media accounts. I am talking about actual true fans, not just people who follow you because you followed them or because you bought a program to add followers.
The first thing the artist needs to realize is the CD is NOT the product; it’s a piece of merchandise. TheARTIST is the product. The artist has to create the demand for themselves/live performance before sinking a ton of money into multiple CDs, let alone one CD.
You can have t-shirts and other things to sell as merchandise through a developing rabid fan base that actually wants to purchase your merchandise. This will help keep costs down. The priority is developing the artist not the CD. The artist should be working on his/her/their image, social media campaign, the best live show possible and booking only. Once this has achieved a certain level, the artist can then worry about a CD that their fan base will demand. Bottom line is that if no one wants to see you live, you have no need for anything. You have to make them want to see you live and want to make the purchase. That comes from a killer live show. Practice, practice, practice, write killer songs that have a hook and melody and blow them away onstage. Period.
The proof is in the pudding with the live show. You have to win over the audience and develop them into fans. If you do this, they will stay fans and will buy your CD when you finally do release it. Not only that, you will have a nice building up to — and can actually pull off — a great “launch” and have impressive stats from the fan base that is actually demanding and waiting for this merchandise.
“Jesse James Dupree” of “Jackyl” was on my radio show “Live From Music City” and flat out said (which I wholeheartedly agree with) that they didn’t approach anybody in the business or do anything until the were constantly selling out shows at the bars they played all up and down the east coast. That was when they had a need for a team and were ready to shop for a record deal. Then they could take their pick of labels because all the labels wanted them. It was the single best piece of advice on my show ever. Here is the interview for you to listen to: http://ht.ly/4EErD. There is simply no need for much of what most artists THINK they need until there is a demand for the artist themselves.
Simply put, if the artist would focus on the essentials; booking, image, developing a fan base and PR the rest would take care of itself. Everyone wants to do it backwards; they want everything now and have no patience. Business doesn’t work that way and when you work harder and not smarter you tend to not succeed and also are in danger of completely burning yourself out.
A simple strategy you can adopt is to record two or three songs that you can offer on digital download to tide people over until there is a need for a CD and that you can use to help market yourself with.
You can make a couple of videos to put on YouTube that should be very high quality. Rehearse your band till they are perfect and then pay a professional company to video record your performance of these songs at a good venue with a sound man who knows your sound.
Put them up as single songs and market the heck out of it with social media. YouTube is the destination spot for new music discoveries now. This is a much smarter use of your money. This not only allows for people to discover you, but share your music. Most importantly, assuming you play very well live, you can use this to show venues that you are worth booking based on the crowd in front of you and your actual performance and stage presence.
Develop the artist first then once you have a fan base you can create a CD to sell. No point paying for something you can’t sell to anyone. Be strategic in your plans and definitely plan! Don’t just do something without thought of the benefit of it and how you will get it out there.
Good Luck!
More Social Media Etiquette When Approaching Entertainment Industry Contacts
More Social Media Etiquette When Approaching Entertainment Industry Contacts
A while back, I wrote a blog on “Social Media Etiquette When Approaching Entertainment Business Contacts” http://wp.me/pu8Se-4 and I can see I need to expand upon that topic. For those of you in the entertainment industry looking for the person to help you get your big break, you need to understand what you should and should not do when approaching them. It will only help your chances in getting the help you need and increase the odds of success in an industry where “making it” is very slim.
First off, don’t spam people with your links of any kind. That is the fastest way to getting no one to pay attention to you. If you use twitter, do not have an auto DM set up with your links for people to check you out. Develop relationships first; if you are interesting to them they will check you out. Otherwise, you are just another spammer.
Secondly, don’t send the same message to a hundred different industry people on your open time line for us all to see. That is another sure way to make sure no one pays attention to you. Don’t be so lazy and don’t be so insulting to our intelligence.
Thirdly, if we do check you out, we will check your account first before watching your video or visiting your web page. If you act unprofessional, use horrible language, do nothing but hit on other people then we know how professional you really are by that alone. Do not engage in any type of unprofessionalism, slander, libel, or any other thing that detracts from your true goal. Nothing says unprofessional faster than your behavior online. Stay clean, focused and use appropriate language and marketing. This goes for industry professionals as well.
Fourthly, don’t ask them to RT your music for you when they have a list of their own clients they are trying to promote. That isn’t fair to their clients, and usually they won’t anyway unless it’s a personal friend. Please remember, our DM boxes are filled with requests all day long from people asking us to “check them out” or “do you have any advice,” all this on top of our already overfilled days of work. Our jobs as managers, agents, PR — or whatever role we fill — is to get OUR clients form of entertainment out there, not anybody elses.
Lastly, make sure you know what they do before you contact them asking for representation. Look at their list of services. If they don’t say they are a talent agent, then don’t ask them to be yours. You can’t get everything from the title of a company. Do your research and make sure you don’t waste anyone’s time.
Good luck!
Picking The Right Professional or Team for your Career
Picking The Right Professional or Team for your Career
The power of social media has its pros and cons. The pros obviously are the ability to network and get your message out there. The cons are you don’t know whom you can trust. With so many people out there saying how great they are and making huge promises you have to be very careful about whom you choose to share your info with and put your hopes and dreams in the hands of. In the entertainment world it’s a crap shoot to begin with, so make sure you spend the time necessary researching the people who are offering their services to you or making huge claims about what they are going to do for you in the “industry”. Also make sure you research exactly what they do or the services they offer so you can decide if it’s really what you need as an artist.
I recently did some research on a person who claims to be in the music industry. For the past year, this person has been making huge claims about how they are going to “change” the industry with a new platform. First of all, from what I understand, a platform like the one they hope to “change the industry” with already exists. I believe in practicing what I preach, and began to research this person. I contacted a well-known, reputable friend who has been doing business on Music Row here in Nashville for more than 20 years, asking if they have ever heard of this person, their company or their work. My friend is in the same area of the business as the person who is making the claims, and my friend sent an email out to all contacts. The result is that no one had ever heard of this person who claims to be “revolutionizing the industry”. There is no bio on them, no track record, no website, no clients, no proof of anything showing that they can do what they say they can do. Even worse, they are not listed on ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Harry Fox or Music Row as what they say they are. Now you have to be listed with at least one of the following ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or Harry Fox to be what they say they are, so this leaves you with either (a) they are a fraud, (b) they don’t know what they are doing, or (c) they are possibly operating under a different name, which also means their online presence is a lie. They have been putting together a team of people who, like them, seem to have no real track record. You can see that in how they promote themselves on the web. Don’t work for a person, or hire a person who doesn’t have their own business together with proper imaging, websites, photos, content and most important – actual proof of their work. This is the entertainment industry. Image and proof of solid work is everything for everyone, not just the artists.
When picking out people you want to work with, please review and research them in detail. Never trust an online profile that doesn’t list any information about themselves, their company or who they work for. Ask their clients if they are happy with their service and make sure they have legitimate things happening for their clients. Make sure there is a proven track record for the service they claim to provide. If they don’t have anything to show for their success then it’s a big risk. Especially pay attention to how they behave online with their twitter and other social media accounts. If they behave unprofessionally – flirt, make huge promises, offer a special free of charge opportunity to a hundred different people for months on end, make false claims against another with no proof or get involved in mud slinging then run and run fast. That is not professional behavior and they will treat anyone like that, including you. It will hurt the chances for your career to be involved with someone who behaves improperly, especially in the music industry, where the reality is that the odds are already stacked against you. If their followers or fans grow at a very slow rate, that is also a sign. It means they have nothing to offer content wise. They aren’t adding value to the industry, so know one is paying attention. It takes more than listing followers and saying nice things.
Not everyone is a huge success or a huge business, that’s not the most important issue; making things happen is what’s important, proof of work. Finding a professional or a team that is hungry and works very hard is what matters the most. Never fall for promises that are huge; this business is too hard to make any kind of claims and promises – that is the reality. When evaluating a person or company, let their work speak for them instead.
Please read our blog “It’s All About The Team Baby” by Sass Jordan, a Juno and Billboard award winning artist and former host of Canadian Idol for more on picking the right team! http://lowryagency.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/183/
Good Luck!
Filling the VO Void – 5 Tips for Taking Advantage of Downtime
Filling the VO Void
5 Tips for Taking Advantage of Downtime
By Dave Courvoisier, The Lowry Agency Voice Over Talent
What happened?
Every freelancer hits that wall. The work…just…stops. Nothing’s coming in. Leads are long gone, and clients are clamming up. Hopefully it’s just a day or two…a week or two at the most.
You’d go crazy trying to figure out why. Sure, there may be some legitimate reasons: you’ve been slacking in your marketing, lead-generation, or referral “asks”…but sometimes you’re doing all that stuff – diligently – and still the work stops.
These moments are actually opportunities. Remember all the things you put on the back burner when you were crazy-busy with that big narration project and six auditions/day? Well, now’s the time to drag it out…now you have the time.
Since 80% of your VO business is marketing, and 20% is voicing anyway, this should not be a big surprise. In fact this may be one of the reasons the work stopped coming in – while you were busy voicing projects, the lead-generating activity stopped. It’s a nice predicament to be in, but the key is to be able to find the time to do both.
Take Advantage of the “Free” Time
Here’s a quick list of suggestions that will keep you “working” while you prepare for the next wave of paid gigs:
1) Practice. In VO terms: audition. Pick up what leads you can from pay-to-play sites, your agents, and web-searches. That’s right, do a Google search for “VO jobs” or “voiceover needed”. You’ll be surprised what comes up. When those sources dry up, just read. Practice on copy from Voices.com or Edge Studio. They have reams of legitimate copy for practicing. Record it. Edit it. Listen to it. Send it to someone for a critique. Play like it’s real, ‘cause it is.
2) Listen to ads. I’m serious. You’re already watching TV or driving your car with the radio on. Don’t skip past the commercial spots! Somebody voiced that spot. Why wasn’t’ it you? Listen to the nuances of the spot. The writing. The author’s intent. How the talent handled the juxtaposition of the video and the copy. Sometimes it even helps to transcribe the copy, and voice it yourself in your studio. Can you approximate the read that got someone the job? So you don’t have HIS/HER pipes…fine, play to your strengths. How would you read it? Record it. Send it to a friend for an honest opinion.
3) Visit VoiceBank.net and listen to all the demos you can stand. These are people represented by agents. They got on VoiceBank by no mistake. The demos you hear there are representative of the talent who are getting work today. How long is the demo? What was the first thing you heard? How many elements did the demo have? How many different reads did you hear in the demo? Does your current demo stack up? If not, (3) could just as well be Redo your demo (the subject of a whole ‘nother blog!)
4) Spruce up your marketing activity. Maybe you like to send postcards to prospects or regular clients to let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you’re an email maven. Maybe your approach is to camp out on the social networks. How’s your FaceBook profile looking? Does it have lots of trigger words that the bots will find? When’s the last time you tweeted ANYTHING, or contributed to a discussion on LinkedIn? All those seemingly mundane actions spread your name out on the internet. Maybe you’ve forgotten your promise to make at least 10 calls/week to prospects. WHATEVER your marketing duties are – get going! The stuff you do today will bring work tomorrow or next week.
5) Re-examine your audio chain and your studio. This could be the time to make that re-arrangement in your physical space that will absolutely remove a mental roadblock to recording. That strange crackling that pops up in your recordings? Track it down. When’s the last time you checked for an update on your software…or for that matter, this may be an opportunity to finally dig into the manual and find out what is the software keyboard shortcut you need for long-format narrations that will save you hours in the booth.
Get the drift?
There’s actually more…much more. Like prospecting for a good agent…asking your steady clients for a referral to another possible client… doing good research on the internet to find your next “warm”-call target.
See? These are things that get lost in the shuffle when you’ve got your head in a big voice project. ‘LOVE to have work. But that job was not a “gimme”. You did something right somewhere sometime to earn that job. Now’s the time – when you have the time – to get back to the basics and make it happen again.
Do Yourself and Us a Favor
Do Yourself and Us a Favor
As many of my blogs, I am writing this in response to an interesting email I got a few days ago from someone shopping me as a booking agent. Now anybody who does their research and reads my website about our services (this email was submitted through my website) will notice a distinct lack of any reference of booking as a service. That would be because we are not a booking agency. We are a management firm, which is plainly spelled out in the “about us” section of the site. If you follow us on twitter you will see a few booking tweets as we do try and help our clients book shows, but like all true management firms, we try and find real booking agencies for our clients.
Anyway, the people who were emailing me sent no information about themselves for review. No press kit, no websites, not a thing. Now anybody in any form of the entertainment business knows that you always have to SUBMIT something to be considered for ANYTHING. A generic email is the worst thing you can possibly do to try and get professional help. I was nice and replied back, saying thank you for the inquiry but please submit the appropriate information as listed on our website and explained that we are a management firm and not a booking agency. The person emailed back saying “I am one of the most well-known (popular – whatever you wish to call it) independent authors on the market today and one of the most powerful female Horror authors in history.” So obviously they were this big deal and didn’t need help with their business. They only needed help booking because they were so busy with engagements they couldn’t handle the booking aspect anymore and needed help keeping it up. Now mind you, I was perplexed at the thought that someone didn’t actually need help with their business (because we all do). I looked at the one link they sent back — now I was really confused. This was a MySpace page, and a very poorly done one at that, with no scheduled bookings on it at all.
So to reiterate, no press kit, no websites, no proper submissions, no visible bookings, no way to corroborate the “awards” and “incredible popularity” this person was purporting, I was shocked at the arrogance portrayed in their email that they didn’t need help and were too big for that and obviously knew better than my agency did. Evidently the importance of branding, image, professionalism, marketing, social networking, how to approach industry professionals wasn’t important to them and they didn’t realize the power of being the best your business can be in all areas to increase whatever current success your are presently enjoying.
So the moral to the story is . . . please don’t waste any professional’s time if you aren’t going to do the research about their firm first before approaching them. If you think you know more than the people you are approaching, don’t approach. Don’t ever send a generic email. If you don’t see submission policies, ask for them politely. Then when you do submit your information, describe what kind of services you are looking for. The agencies don’t take the time to answer people who aren’t respectful and submit properly. Those who don’t submit properly are showing that they aren’t ready for the professional service anyway because they haven’t taken the time to be professional themselves.
Good Luck and do your homework!
The Comfort Zone
The Comfort Zone
Often times when trying to make a career happen or anything else for that matter, we tend to stay in a safe place. We do only what we are strong in and never work on our weaknesses. You see this a lot with musicians practice routines where they only practice what they know and avoid what they don’t. We are scared to reach out and try something new. It might be technology, social media, new venues, new band members or numerous other things that make us nervous. We are scared of change in general, as is human nature. We shy away from what we don’t understand or from the unknown.
Unfortunately, we never know what is coming tomorrow and security is usually just an illusion. How many times have you experienced or watch someone loose a secure job, or a relationship that seemed secure and perfect only to find out it was far from the truth. It catches us by surprise and it’s a major shock to the system. It makes us nervous and scared to try new things, but in order to move forward, we need to step out of the comfort zone in order to grow.
A very popular quote from Albert Einstein is “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results”. In your artistic career, if you aren’t getting the results you need or desire, then you need to try something new. You need to do things that you don’t like or may not be comfortable with. You are responsible for making it happen especially since you are most likely doing this all on your own with out a team of people to help you. Another popular quote is “Successful people do what unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do”.
As an example everyone knows that social media is the future and most are already late getting to it. I have heard countless times from artists/entertainers that they don’t like doing social media. They don’t like twitter because it’s seems so trivial. “What do I say?”, What can you put in 140 characters?” or “I just don’t get it, it isn’t my thing.” These are the reasons or excuses that I hear for people not doing what is necessary for their careers. Let me tell you as an artist and business owner, there are a lot of things that aren’t “my” thing. I still have to do them to be visible and stay competitive.
In a world where the same big paying opportunities to be signed by a major label aren’t there, the artist has to find ways to get their product out there. There is none cheaper than social media and since most artists are always saying they aren’t making any money gigging, they have no reason to not use social media.
I am encouraging you to step out of your “comfort zone” and put together a plan that will help you get to your goals. Do the things you don’t like to do and you will be way ahead of those who aren’t and are at the same time setting yourself apart from the pack of mediocrity that is out there.
Good Luck!
Records and Interviews
Records and Interviews
by Sass Jordan – The Lowry Agency Artist
Pretty much the first thing you get asked in an interview when you are promoting your latest record is ‘what is it like?’. Not an easy question to answer, as an artist, because usually it’s about so many things. I like to have an answer already prepared so that I don’t have to think about it on the spot, and confuse myself and the interviewer as I jump around all the inspirations and moments that made up the songs. Generally, when I am thinking about making a record I will have a theme that I can work off of. For example, my most recent record, From Dusk Til Dawn, was thematically exploring the darkest hours before the dawn, the time when we feel the most vulnerable in every sense, and all the growth and expansion that comes from that. There was also a flavor of Southern California in the seventies, and a touch of Memphis vibe … just slight dabbling, not out and out excavation.
It’s best to remember a couple of entertaining stories from the recording, and to perhaps discuss a song or two. I find that most interviewers are quite willing to be led where you want to take them – there are very few who are really prepared and come to the session with a real set agenda. Either way, it can be a lot of fun, especially if you have a sense of humor about it. The thing you can never forget is that you are promoting something, be it yourself, or your latest release or up-coming shows – these are the things that public wants to hear about, but tucked into something they can relate to as people.
Once in a while you will come across someone who is a total goof and really has no idea what they are doing, but in those instances you still have a choice. You can take them by the hand, so to speak, and lead them down the path they were supposed to take you down – OR – you can just dismiss the whole thing, which is probably not a good idea. Just have a sense of humor about it and realize that not everybody is up to speed!
Interviews are the place where you can deliver more of a direct message about what you do and what you are interested in and the ideas, people, places, and things that you want to support. If you have a particular charity, or piece of information you would like to share – an interview is the place to do it! Even if it’s just an energy or state of being – it’s another opportunity to reach out and affect or help other people, uplift them, get them thinking, make them happy (or angry!). I used to loathe doing them until I figured out that it was up to me how I felt – and not up to anyone else. Once you figure that out, that you’re in charge of how you feel – everything else changes for the better!