BZ Music

I've been asked a few times to explain why Colby's song "If I Were the Devil" is getting more than 6 times more listens than his second best song "Dying Breed". Likewise, I've wondered why Colby's second album is getting so much more traction than his third or fourth albums, even though the third and fourth cost much more to make and have had the benefit of so much more media funding. The second album cost only $2k to produce and has probably made more than $500,000 in streaming income.  The third cost $20k and only "Honky Tonk Kevin" is in his top ten list of songs currently being listened to.  The fourth album cost around $150k and none of the songs have entered the top 3 on Colby's listens list, even though they have received enormous advertising benefit.   I've contemplated this question for almost two years.  At first, my vanity lead me to believe that it was my input in post production on the second album that made the differe...

Similar to the double dirty dog dare that cause the first album, I quickly agreed to go six months in advance, as if that month could never actually arrive on the calendar. We chose June, and around May I said:  “Gulp, I guess it’s about time to nut up.”  

The first time I heard of Sonic Ranch was last June in the middle of our Texas tour. The first time Colby heard of it was from Sebastian, a friend of ours from the Moscow Beta house. Sebastian had been listening to a band named Midland and had watched the video of their recording session at Sonic Ranch.  He told Colby about it, so Colby made contact with the ranch and was surprised to receive a call from none other than the owner of Sonic Ranch, Tony (I should know his last name, but I’ve obviously been avoiding using last names in this blog). The story goes that Tony called Colby while he was attending a wedding and had had a few drinks. Nonetheless, Tony came away with a very good impression of Colby and really wanted him to make his next album at the ranch.  We had been operating this “business” on a shoestring budget for the last two years, having spent only around $2k on each of the last two albums. I have yet to write the blogs about the making of the previous two albums...

Ever wonder how an album is recorded?  Prepare for a long description.  First, you know, you gotta write the album. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe how that happens. Just the sheer number of decisions on chords, progressions, rhythms, words, layers upon layers of meaning. Well leave that discussion for another time.  The huge conundrum of recording a song is the one versus many problem. If you play a song as a group (as god intended), and record all the parts simultaneously on one room, you have no ability to change the relative volume or influence of any one part (called mixing). So you have to have a perfect mix at recording (quite impossible), Or you have to record all of the parts individually so that pro level mixing can be done. But it is so hard to play a single part by oneself. The whole point of playing a song with a group is the unspoken communication that goes on all the time. Playing a song as a group allows the individual to use the group memory f...

The band.  The songs.  Getting popular

Link to the album:  If I Were the Devil Oh. I forgot to talk about the biggest hit on the first album  Moscow Drinking Team : From a marketing standpoint, this was a brilliant strategy to grow our audience from essentially zero to roughly 30,000 monthly Spotify listeners (Not that we were thinking about that). It’s not a song with wide appeal to a national audience, but was guaranteed to capture the University of Idaho grad market in all of Idaho and just about anywhere else in the nation and world. It’s just a simple tune about out-drinking members of competing institutions, with specific reference to local landmarks. So if anyone from Idaho (the University) hears it, instant playlist addition. Hell, I was getting chain forwarded email from my classmates saying: “Have you heard this song!?” And I’m like: “Yeah, I play bass on it.” That first album got our numbers up enough that we could try to expand our audience with a second album (link above). I've