34/52: Should You Take The Gig?

Blair Pope October 6, 2017

Recently we had a reader request a topic that is relevant to every up and coming artist/band. So genius we were surprised we hadn’t thought of it ourselves! (kidding) (mostly). His question stemmed from how to phase his artist out of playing bar gigs. So this brought up a few more questions -- How do you say no to easy money? How do you turn casual, lean back listeners into actual fans? How do you even brand the bar gig? Should you take a gig with bands that don’t line up sonically? So let’s dive into it!

32/52: Adding team members: Think before you do it!

Blair Pope August 30, 2017

Growing your team is an important and necessary part of your career as a new artist. However, when and how you do that is the tricky part. We’ve already talked about being strategic with your partnerships, so today we’re going to dig deeper into when you should think about adding team members and who they should be. I’ve come across too many artists with too many people working with them but not enough happening to justify them all. On the flip side, I’ve seen artists drowning in day to day work, struggling to keep everything on track when their careers are starting to really take off. Here are a few steps and questions to help guide you!

2017 Ron Pope - Main Photo.jpeg — No Excuses, Just Do It.

31/52

31/52: No excuses, just do it! How we got to "Work"

Blair Pope August 18, 2017

Today is a special day for the ABTS crew! Today is release day for Ron, so we've been crazy this week getting ready for the big launch. Since we started this album about 18 months ago and have been planning out our marketing and promo timeline for about a year, this is a very welcome day!

When Ron first mentioned that he was already in writing mode for a new record approximately ONE month after we had released "Ron Pope & The Nighthawks" I was pretty reluctant to move forward. I thought maybe we should pump the brakes and ride out the new record for a while. Collect our thoughts. Then he played me the first song he wrote and it was perfect. It was better than anything he had ever written to date. It hit me: no excuses, let's f*cking do this. There might not be a perfect time for creativity to strike. Maybe it's not ideal timing to be promoting an album AND constructing a new album's timeline, but who cares. If it feels right and isn't forced, then DO IT. We have one shot and one career, so we put the wheels in motion. The resulting record is "Work" and I could not be more proud of it.

This isn't a place where we'll be doing much music promotion, but considering Ron writes the blog with me, I thought it might make sense to let you guys listen to what we've been working on on the music side of things: http://smarturl.it/workronpope

Thanks for sticking with us!

- Blair & Ron

30/52: NO FAKE FANS

Blair Pope August 10, 2017

Recently, you may have read about Spotify creating “fake” artists. The follow up to that was the discovery of fake Spotify streams - you can read a whole, long, anger-inducing article here. While paying for plays or likes is nothing new - Soundcloud never could seem to rein in the rampant bot plays and people have been paying for social media followers for years - it doesn’t make it a practice we should all be involved in. I know it’s tempting, but I’m here to scream DON’T DO IT! YOU ARE WASTING YOUR MONEY AND POTENTIALLY SABOTAGING YOUR NEW CAREER.

29/52: Collaborate!

Blair Pope July 31, 2017

We’ve touched a little on collaborating in the past, mentioning the importance of having a friend group in the industry, and a group of peers that can review and critique your work. Today, we want to dive into the collaboration topic a little deeper and talk about other ways you can do it outside of songwriting, critiquing, and touring. No matter what stage of your career that you’re in, you can come up with some pretty innovative ways to work with others in a mutually beneficial way.

28/52: Learn How To Sleep

Blair Pope July 24, 2017

This week, we're on a little family vacation, so we thought we'd focus on a topic that is near and dear to our hearts: SLEEEEEEEEEP. Yes, glorious sleep. Oddly, this was a huge point of contention between us when we started working together. Blair needed to get stuff done during the day (and needed me to be involved)... and let's just say, I wasn't into that idea.

26/52: Nine Ways To Stay Healthy On Tour

Blair Pope July 10, 2017

Going on tour is a blast. You travel to crazy places, you find yourself in all sorts of funny situations, you figure out exactly how long you can go without washing your hair, etc, etc, etc. Oh and you play music almost every night and they give you money for doing it! BONUS! Seriously, touring is an amazing adventure. Now for the whomp whomp whomp part… (did that sound effect come across??). If you don’t keep yourself healthy out there on the road it can turn into a death spiral.

02/52: Make It Your Job

Blair Pope January 9, 2017

Ahh, a day in the life of a musician. Sleep until noon, drink 10 cups of coffee. Switch to whiskey around 4pm. Shower infrequently. Forget email exists. Rely on someone else to make shit happen for you. Isn’t it nice?

Unfortunately, unless your name is KEITH F-CKING RICHARDS, that sort of day isn’t happening

01/52: Create Something Good

Blair Pope January 2, 2017

Hello and welcome to the inaugural post of ADVICE BY THE SLICE! Why did we just caps locks the shit out of that? Because this is exciting! We are pretty amped up by the response we’ve already had to this (thanks for stroking our ego a bit) and we’re ready to get started.

So first things first.

#1 - CREATE SOMETHING GOOD