Perseverance
So this is the week! My album releases this Saturday, April 25th on iTunes, Spotify, and here on my website. It’s the culmination of a lot of time, effort, and in some cases lost relationships (on a blind date a girl once asked me what I’d do if I had a show, but she wanted me to stay in. It didn’t work out). To celebrate the release, I’m partnering with The Drop Comedy Club to put together a virtual show via Facebook Live. We’ll be going on at 8pm Eastern Time (US) on The Drop’s page (http://www.facebook.com/thedropcomedyclub).
For this week’s blog I wanted to talk about not giving up. I’ve been trying to put this album together for significantly longer than I’ve actually been funny enough to have an album. The first time I ever tried to record an album was the weekend of May 3rd, 2013. It was two shows in two nights in a lecture hall at UC Berkeley, and it… it wasn’t great. There were about 30 people per show in a room designed to hold about 120 people, and it doesn’t matter how funny everyone is, a 75% empty room is a bad start for a show (much less a recording). I had a lot of very funny comics on the shows with me, and the crowd definitely had a good time. The man running sound (Will Scovill out of Oakland, CA) did a fantastic job. But when I reviewed the recording material, I just didn’t do a good enough job to want to release the album. In retrospect I’m very glad I didn’t try to release it, I just wasn’t a strong enough comic to do an hour, much less to try to sell that hour at weekend shows. Also, I wasn’t doing many weekend shows, so it really was just a complete rookie move. But in the moment, it’s very sobering to realize you aren’t as good as you thought you were.
The second time I tried to make an album was years later. A sold out room in Bloomington, IN and a wildly fun crowd. The problem we ran into here was twofold. First, the equipment at the venue was not well set up for an album recording with an audience. Second, I was low on resources and did not have the money to get better equipment. So we had a regular mic on the stage, and a second regular mic at the back of the room to try to collect crowd response. It did not work, and we lost the recording.
About a year later, I tried again in Fort Wayne. This time, nobody showed up. We had an audience of 10 people including the staff, and that’s no way to have a show. We still had the show, and it was actually pretty fun. But no matter how fun it was, it was never going to be a good recording.
But then we come to Veteran’s Day weekend, 2019. Working with Dave Osenbaugh of MixIt Recording was easy and streamlined, and Heather and Jim from The Drop in South Bend made the experience a delight. We did the recording as a one and done on the Friday show, and it was a sold out crowd that was there to have a great time. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. The openers knocked it out of the park and set me up for success beautifully, and it brings us to now.
If something is worth it, keep at it. If there are roadblocks, don’t let them stop you. If it’s important enough to you, it’s worth doing right and not giving up on. This positivity thing from me is really weird. I think next week I need to talk about something I hate.