Keep it short.

No one has time anymore.

So keep it short.

Not sure I can…

Just not my style.

Never took to writing music for commercials.

60 seconds?

30 seconds??

No time to stretch my wings.

Yeah, I’m probably a bit long winded.

But I love to tell a good story.

Weave a good yarn.

I tend to put the problem on the other guy’s shoulders – the reader, the listener – the world.  Not my fault if they can’t hang in there.  Can’t slow down enough to consider something a little deeper.  Things are just going faster.  It’s a throw-away society.  No time to stop and think, to pause and pray, to sit back and dream, to lie down and do nothing.  We’re all trying to get somewhere when really we’re already there – only we just don’t know it.  Baba Ram Dass said, “Be here now.”  Eckart Tolle wrote The Power Of Now.  A best-seller.  Who had time to read it?  It appears that many did, so where are they and what are they doing about it?  Can’t we slow down enough to just sit and read?  Just sit and listen?  Does music have to get relegated to the background?  Someone said to me the other day, “I listened to your album while making dinner the other evening…”  I was crushed.  I hoped they liked the tunes…  Now I’m supposed to break this paragraph up into several for my blog post so that people will be more inclined to read it.  Long paragraphs will scare you away.  Did you know that?  Are you afraid?

There.

Fear gone?

Feeling better.

Want to read on?

OK, perhaps tomorrow…

Even More Inspiration

• Tempo
• The Organized Artist
• The Atheist
• Send A Signal
• Chanting/Enchanting
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn

There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences.  The only thing that comes close to it is greed.  I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable.  We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative.  They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth.  Truth is truth.  Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me.  The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about.  Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person.  I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge.  In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method.  The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science…  Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms…  This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both.  I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”.  I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality.  So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist.  For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level.  I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion.  In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions.  This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs.  It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth.  Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC.  I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity.  There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word.  Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language.  Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality.  It simply was not invented for that world.  And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life.  As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help.  We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking.  One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on.  Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong.  He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him.  During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically.  We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions.  I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away.  I was healed.  There was never any difficulty moving through this experience.  It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again.  However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking.  Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times.  Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth.  My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality.  The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration.  As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at.  I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance.  Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language.  It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science.  Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn.  The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me.  One complements the other.  I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc.  There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful.  Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically.  On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle.  On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician.  Being a human being is far too often a struggle.  Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life.  Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound.  Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively.  Here is where the problems lay.  Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore.  My gratitude abounds for this space in thought.  I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced.  The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine.  We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• When Things Go Wrong
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• Phoenix Rising

And it’s a good song.  I know it is, because it’s been running around in my mind for several weeks now.  I wake up singing it and wonder for a moment where it came from and then realize, “Oh yeah, that’s that song!”

The client keeps coming in when I’m finished with my latest iteration and she sits and listens and nods her head as I play it for her and then when it’s through we nod and agree that we’re not there yet.

In the original session, her pianist and writing partner came in and recorded the piano and she the scratch vocal.  They were kind of ornery with each other when usually they’re a happy team.  I stayed pretty quiet as he kind of ran roughshod over her as they worked and he laid down the piano part and she sang the scratch vocal.  It was not an inspired session.  At one point I remember exclaiming kind of in fun, “Boy, you two are like an old married couple.”  The session was more about their momentary troubles than the song itself and the song was basically a love song!

As he got more and more depressed and actually meaner to her, she became nervous and hurt, embarrassed and withdrew into an uncustomary quiet.  But we were getting the work done.  He’s a fine pianist and though he was not particularly inspired that day, his playing was solid and mistake free.

When the session was over I was relieved to move on in life.  I began, several days later to orchestrate the song using his piano track and her scratch vocal as a base and it all seemed to go downhill from there.

It has seemed that no matter what I tried with this good solid song, I could not seem to capture the spirit of the love relationship in the song.  I’m sure, by now, you’re all thinking, “Well, no wonder, Pete.  There was no love in the song’s performance.”  True, but there is a lot of love in the song’s writing.  The song comes with huge armloads of love generated by the lyric, melody and harmonies contained therein.

I woke up yet again this morning.  The song was on my mind.  I lay there in my half sleep as it drifted through my mind, free from its troubled past, centered in its character and intent and simply expressing its original concept of one loving another.  Then I got it!

The recording I was working with was too fast!  The tempo was simply going faster than it really wanted to go.   I knew this because the tempo in my head this morning was about 10 BPM (beats per minute) slower than the track I’ve been working with.

The intent was rushed on the recording because the performers were not centered, the pianist really wanted to finish and go home and the singer’s mind simply wasn’t focused on the love of the song, but rather the awkwardness of their present relationship.  At the time the song was new to me, so I was more focused on the technical – watching the meters, getting the piano recorded correctly and laying down the vocal with no distortion.  The rest of my mind was struggling with their troubles and my concentration was divided.  Besides, they wrote the song!  They ought to have a good feel for the right tempo.

But they didn’t.  That morning in the studio, they weren’t centered in love, they were both in a hurry to get through and out of each other’s presence and so the real “doing” of the moment produced a rushed, unfeeling track and confused vocal performance.

Art reflected life.

Going too fast.

How many times do we say that to ourselves?  “Slow down, Pete, you’re going too fast.”

It all got me to thinking…

I’ve been working on a life.  It hasn’t been working.  I’ve tried several different approaches – and nothing I’ve done has seemed to bring this life to its realization supporting the meaning, content and intent of the life.

And it’s a good life.  I know it is, because it’s been running around in my mind for many years now.  I wake up singing it every morning and wonder for a moment where it came from and then realize, “Oh yeah, that’s my life!” 

In the original concept, the life was laid out ahead of me in a pretty clear plan and the basic construct of this plan worked well, but as I’ve gotten more and more into it, it’s taken on a much bigger picture – probably bigger than I could handle.  And things have started to go south for me. 

So many projects, so much to do, so split in my daily activities and so often behind the ol’ eight ball.  It (the life) was exciting and the accomplishment was demonstrable, but the happiness was only found in the song writing, the music making.  The rest was far too pushed, far too rushed trying to get a massive list of things finished so I could keep up with the massive list accumulating every day, every hour, every minute.

I woke up yet again this morning.  The life was on my mind.  I lay there in my half sleep as it drifted through my mind, free from its troubled past, centered in its character and intent and simply expressing its original concept of one loving another.  Then I got it!

The life I was leading was too fast!  The tempo was simply going faster than I really wanted to go.

The intent was rushed in this life because the performer was not centered, the doer really wanted to just finish and go home and simply wasn’t focused on the love of the life, but rather the awkwardness of the rushing from one moment to the next.

I’m going to slow it down now and get back in the groove.  This life is a love song and that love has to be reflected and can only be reflected if first I am centered and in the moment, not in a hurry, not caught up in the madness of the scramble, but rather in the true rhythm of the moment. 

I’m going to find a new tempo.

Life reflecting art.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Chanting/Enchanting
• Valentine Thoughts
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• Attention Span
• Spiritual Scientist

Back then, LPs were large enough – approximately 12”x12” – so that the cardboard cover they came in could have all kinds of information about the music and the artist.  I remember to this day literally paragraphs of my Ellington At Newport (Jazz Festival) that I played and read until the grooves wore out.

Back then they even gave a Grammy for “Best Liner Notes” each year.

Then the medium began to shrink – first to the size of a CD and now to nothing more than a digital download of the cover and the names of the songs if you’re lucky.  Lost along the way were other pictures besides the cover, lyrics and especially my beloved liner notes.

Several years back when I started producing CDs regularly I tried to keep the time-honored traditions by releasing CDs with 8 to 24 page booklet inserts.  Inspirational music depends a lot on its lyrical content and I always felt it necessary to include those lyrics and especially give credit to all the musicians, singers, designers, etc. who worked to complete the project.  But the cost of the booklet became prohibitive.

Today a 4 panel booklet CD will cost $1.14 per unit from the manufacturer if I buy at least 1000.  Take that booklet to 18-24 pages and the cost soars to over $3.00 per unit.  There go the profits.

So Watchfire Music and a few other artists turned to the Digi-Book.  What is a Digi-Book?  “A Digi-Book is an electronic version of an album’s liner notes and vital information.  This downloadable digital booklet contains photos, lyrics, and notes written by the artists and producers of the album as well as all sorts of information pertinent to the experience.”

Better yet, go look for yourself!  WFM’s latest is a gorgeous journey of nearly 40 full screen pages of pictures, lyrics, quotes, artist insights and credit material with bios that is visually stunning and completely informative regarding the experience of making the CD and other vital information.

Designed by WFM’s leading designer, Sara Gray, who also did Julia Wade’s Every Day gem of a booklet, this digital package looks fabulous on your computer screen and can actually be printed as well.  If you print, we suggest using Glossy Photo Paper for a beautiful treasured keepsake of the album experience.

But you don’t have to print it to enjoy it.  Backlit from your computer screen, it’s a colorful experience that is sure to delight anyone who is into the music on the album.

Best of all, it’s FREE!  You can download it and send it to a friend in just a click or two.

We even created a new section of the site just for Digi-Books!  Just go to the far right of the Nav Bar and click on Digi-Books.

I’m not going to write much more about it because that would be redundant to the experience, so take a moment or two right now to follow this link and experience it for yourself.

Oh yes, while you’re at it, Buy The Goin’ Home CD!  The whole package is worth far more than the price of admission.  That’s a promise.

We did a soft release last Thanksgiving Day and already, in one week, Goin’ Home is our best selling CD of the year.  I can’t tell you how excited we all are here at WFM at the promise that this CD and Digi-Book holds for the coming months.  We thank so many of you, literally hundreds of people who have already been so supportive of this project.

The package is finished. It’s available now.  We promised it for Christmas and delivered.  It’s a wondrous Christmas gift idea and with WFM’s Send To A Friend capability, it’s the easiest of shopping ventures – all from your easy chair in front of your computer.  Give the gift of music and a perspicacious look at the road to eternal life.

Don’t forget the Digi-Book!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• The Changing Scene
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• My Body

Over the last week it’s come to our attention that we’ve been hacked into and others have been sending out posts — both unsolicited and unauthorized — from this blog, Sparks From The Fire.

We’re working hard now to clean this up and clear it up with our blog administrator and hope to be back to normal in the next couple of days.

Bottom line is that you may have and may yet receive blog posts if you have our RSS feed or see a post on the site that we did not write and have not yet spotted and taken down.

We’re deeply sorry for this inconvenience and this sad attempt by others to communicate.

We shall overcome!

Peter Link

Even More Inspiration

• Attention Span
• Spiritual Scientist
• How To Handle A Liar
• The Atheist
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4
• Tempo

During this time we invented a company, Watchfire Music, to sell our product and to be the machinery behind all of our musical efforts.  It has been just that for us, and so we continue to try to make it all work during these historically toughest of times.

My approach has been to try new things to see if they would work, to stay creative and turn out good and great product and to sometimes pause and simply watch where the world, and especially our industry, is going next.

If we were a rich organization, if there were an endless financial stream of support, we could be leaders in the industry – we certainly know and understand the technology and keep up to date on the evolution of music and the Internet – but we don’t have that deep well of cash.

Many companies have tried to lead and gone down trying.  We have survived because we have stayed small and nimble, watching for the technology to evolve to a point where the industry would settle into a music delivery system that would make sense during this collapse and ever-changing time.

To a certain extent, it has worked.  We’ve not spent millions of investor money.  We have a powerful and well-developed ecommerce website that is pretty automated, easy to manage and graceful to change.  And we have gone from a start-up company to more than a breakeven company in these 5 years of both success and failure.

Have we failed?  You bet.  I could name 20 great ideas that have come and gone and now only exist in the depths of one of my hard drives.  Have we had our share of successes?  Another “You bet”.  After all, we’re still here.

Will we change things again?  A third YOU BET.

It seems now that with the success of Spotify and Pandora, music is now a streaming medium.  For the average Joe with their smart phones and iPods and iPads and whatever new fandangled thing is just over the next horizon, music is available to be searched and found, listened to at any time and collected in organized fashion – all for free.

This puts a serious dent in the ability to maintain a company that sells recorded music.  Oh yes, I know, there are still people who want to actually own their favorite music, still people who want to play their music on their CD players and hear the music at its quality best, but unfortunately they are a rapidly dwindling few.

Case in point:  We have one lovely man and wife set of “customers” who absolutely love WFM Radio and are often found writing us and suggesting new programming, updating of our channels and new ideas for better radio.  They are devoted listeners to our free radio.  They have never bought a single download.  They’re happy with what we give them, but do not buy.

I look at all this and wonder…

Where do we go from here?

Over the next months we will continue to watch, listen, work and pray.

This Christmas I have a new CD, Goin’ Home, coming out that is presently the hope of our company.  We’re going to do new things in new ways that we’ve never done before.  We’re going to try to do everything in our power and imagination to reach people with this life-changing and life-supporting idea.  We’re going to spend more money than ever before on promotion and packaging and quality.

My favorite quote from music blogger Bob Lefsetz sits before me here on my desk.  “But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?” It’s all I think about these days.  I will tell you this:

We’re gonna give it a shot.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• By The Numbers?
• Phoenix Rising
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now

“I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.  I want you to get up right now and go to the window.  Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’  I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’  Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to … stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Back in 1976, newsman Howard Beale, played by actor Peter Finch in the movie Network, uttered these immortal words that, for those of us who saw the movie and Finch’s riveting performance, have stuck with many of us for a quarter century.

Back then it was a grand idea as, in the movie, thousands rushed to their windows and did just that.

Today it’s really happening.  And it’s a good thing!

Bloggers now take down selfish companies.  Egypt’s people stage a peaceful revolt and take back their government.  Bank of America abandons its plan to charge customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards for purchases. Only a month earlier, the bank had announced the new charge, immediately setting off a huge uproar from consumers.  The Occupy Wall Street movement grabs the attention of millions and whether you’re for it or agi’n it, you have to value it as the great American dream of free speech in action.

Netflix‘s video subscription service lost 800,000 customers in the third quarter —the biggest exodus in its history— even as its earnings rose 65 percent.

The losses were larger than management had previously warned. The unwelcome surprise, contained in financial results released, was compounded by a forecast calling for millions of Netflix Inc.’s DVD-by-mail subscribers to cancel the service in reaction to dramatic price increase that took effect last month.

The bad news bruised already battered stock as the shares plunged by more than 26 percent.

Netflix lost its luster among consumers and investors by raising prices as much as 60 percent in the U.S. and bungling an attempt to spin off its DVD-by-mail rental service.

The people spoke.  The people acted.  The people won.  The people sent signals.  They got up off their chairs, went over and opened their windows, stuck their heads out and shouted, “WE’RE AS MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Why is this so possible today 25 years after Network?  Because we now have a tremendously effective network called the Internet.  Instant communication banding together the peoples of the world.  Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and a plethora of other social communities organizing hundreds of millions of people to form a voice of the people.

We’re not always doing it right yet.  We’ve still got a lot to learn, but we’ve now got this amazing tool that makes peaceful revolution possible.

Let’s use it.  Let’s send a signal.  No longer do we have to take it on the chin from big business.  No longer do the rich have to get richer as the poor get poorer.  No longer do dictators have to control entire countries.  No longer do we have to throw open our windows and scream our protests into the night.  We, the people, now have a tremendous meeting hall.  It’s called the Internet.

Use it.  Send a signal.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• How To Handle A Liar
• The Atheist
• Tempo
• Words Of Wisdom
• Straight ‘A’s

Note: The following is a compilation of several posts and some new updates intended for newer readers of this blog.  Much has been written about our new project, Goin’ Home.  If you’ve been following all along, you may find some redundancies here; however, if you’re somewhat new to the project, you’ll find here a summary of events and thoughts that will bring you somewhat up to date.

What if today you could go over to your neighborhood grocery, grab that cart and shop for anything your little ol’ heart desired, then, instead of getting into the checkout line, skip that and just head home with your groceries – steak, shrimp, Haagen Daz, throw in a little Kobe Beef, some chocolate truffles and perchance a tin or two of Almas Caviar.

When you got outside with your overflowing shopping cart, the police would be there, but would just look the other way as you passed by chuckling gleefully, licking your chops.

What a great idea!  Why don’t we do this?  Food should be free!  I think most of us would agree that life would be a lot easier if food were free.

Trouble is, after very little time, maybe the next time we went back to the supermarket, the aisles would be empty, the shelves bare.  “Hey, all the food is gone!” you might cry.  “Well, let’s go back to the farmers and get more,” the store manager would say.

So we’d go to the farmers and say, “Hey farmers, make more food!”  They would respond like this:  “Without getting paid, it’s just too hard.  Sorry, but there’s just no more food.  We’re gonna go do something else.”

Well, essentially that’s what just happened to the music business – except for one problem.  Of course the farmers equal the artists in this little analogy and the artists, who love to make music, are still saying, “Oh cool, you like my music? You actually want to listen to my music?  OK, I’ll give it to you for free!”

So it’s gonna take a little time before this situation is righted.  Give the starving artists a chance to really starve.   Then they won’t be able to make any more music no matter how much they love to do it.  Cuz we all gotta eat!

We are, today, living in that era of empty aisles and starving artists.  The music business has collapsed under the weight of horrible leadership. (The four majors ignored the power of the Internet for so long that now they’ve missed the boat.) File sharing and outright stealing have become the norm for millions of young people.

The unfair treatment of artists by the companies has long been legendary (the companies themselves would always make back all their investment before the artists ever saw a cent of their royalties), and now development money has completely dried up as both the major record labels and the indies struggle for survival.  Where would the pharmaceutical industry be without research and development?  Nowhere.

That’s the old record business.

But all is not lost.  Never before in the history of the world has music been more proliferate.  Everywhere we turn, there is music.  “The day the music died” is a virtual impossibility.  Music is simply that much a part of the human consciousness.

So, as part of the natural order of things, a new world emerges.  Out of the ashes of the old one rise new ideas, a more fair treatment of the artists by now paying royalties on first dollar earned, and a cutting edge approach to new ways of approaching fans and customers.

It is a renaissance time in which the artist is now asked to be both business person and artist.  Not only must he be able to play his guitar, but he must also be able to understand the constantly changing evolution of the Internet and its powers.

In most cases today, the artist must be his or her own investor, marketing department, graphics designer, videographer, accounting department and retail store.  Selling from their own websites, many artists have almost been able to accomplish the near impossible.  Where most fail is on the all-important level of promotion.  By the time the new music is finished, mastered and manufactured, there usually just isn’t enough money left to promote the product.

So the music sells to a few friends and family and sits quietly on a website among millions of other sites that perhaps receives a hundred hits a month, if they’re lucky.  And the music languishes on a virtual shelf.

One thing we know for sure: Acts who tour, sell.  Acts who don’t, don’t.  So we must tour.  Touring is expensive, however, and the money is gone.  Often, many artists don’t even get to this point, running out of money before the CD is actually completed.  It’s a frustrating scenario.

However, now there is the hope of companies like Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, on-line companies where artists and entrepreneurs with creative projects can raise money through crowd-funding from leagues of possible friends and supporters from around the world.

We are exploring this very real possibility right now with a new CD, Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond to be released in November of 2011 and promises to be an in-depth look at a subject that many of us spend most of our lives avoiding.  Here is a joyful, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, exploration of the transition from this world to the next.  It’s really a celebration of eternal life.

The CD’s purpose is to open our eyes to the timelessness of our future.  The vision is to take an open-eyed look at an eventuality we all will face one day and face it head on.

The music is drawn from both original compositions, and also from the rich tradition of beloved Spiritual songs and Gospel lyrics from the past hundred years of the American songbook.

Great traditional songs like In Dat Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’, When The Saints Go Marchin In, the title song, Goin’ Home, with Antonín Dvo?ák’s timeless melody, and even Spiritual classics, I Ain’t Gonna Grieve My Lord No More and I Got A Robe all receive new fresh approaches and orchestrations and tremendous performances by a powerful cast of New York session vocalists and guest artists.

The choir alone is worth the price of purchase.  Led by double gold album R&B/Gospel vocalist, Jenny Burton, it’s performers comprise an ‘A’ list of world-class back-up singers who have sung with just about every major star in the music business – from Celine Dion to Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Sting, Bobby McFerrin and even Luciano Pavarotti.  The list goes on and on.

They are flawlessly organized by vocal arranger, Margaret Dorn, (Bette Midler, Jennifer Lopez, Carly Simon, Michael McDonald, Garth Brooks, Diana Ross) and together create a sound that blends with both a rich meticulous warmth and also can get up and shout down the rafters when needed.  They are: Angela Clemmons, Keith Fluitt, John James, Kevin Osborne, Catherine Russell, Vaneese Thomas and Darryl Tookes.

Guest artists joining this gathering of superb talent include: Julia Wade, who with seven Inspirational solo CDs under her belt is Watchfire Music’s best-selling recording artist, Tom Tipton, who served for 29 years as a soloist at Reverend Robert H. Schuler’s internationally famous Crystal Cathedral and has sung for four U.S. Presidents, Barry Danielian, one of New York City’s most in-demand session players recording with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, and James Taylor, and AHMIR, the #1 most popular R&B group on YouTube with over 50 million views.

We also close the CD with a new song recently penned by Grammy award winning songwriter, Julie Gold, best known for Bette Midler’s version of her song From A Distance which won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991.  Come To Me As A Bird is a heartbreakingly beautiful new song that is sure to capture the imagination of millions.

Watchfire Music, www.watchfiremusic.com , an Inspirational music company and on-line store, will release this CD and be the machinery behind the product.  Without the machinery, it’s pretty much a dead end road no matter how talented you are.  That machinery is almost in place.  The company is now in the black and running off earnings and no longer investor monies.

However, we’re not a rich organization.  We have to find special funding for special projects.  This new Kickstarter concept is most interesting to us because we have such a loyal and appreciative customer base.  We receive letters every day from people around the world expressing their gratitude.

With the projected Kickstarter money we will hire an Internet publicist, who knows these new and far less expensive ropes very well.  We have little overhead.  We run our company from virtual offices in four cities across the country over Skype, the Internet and email with a little telephone thrown in.”

It’s a different world, but I truly believe we’re on the cutting edge of it.  The Internet is the new way and we’re using it and understanding it.  It’s an exciting new Phoenix rising that fascinates me every day.”

So, once again we mount another CD, another show, but with a stronger machinery behind us.  With the success of Watchfire Music over these past 6 years during the roughest period in the history of the music business, we have been able to put together a strong on-line presence, a smoothly working delivery system to tens of thousands of loyal customers and have an Inspirational record company and on-line store to back this project.

Let’s be honest here, however.  The future of the music business, with all the file sharing and “free music” concepts, is a very tough road ahead.  The Internet is the new Tower Records and the hope is that this new and challenging world will provide a new start and a better way.

We’re small, but nimble – perhaps not yet a supermarket, but rather an elegant deli finding it’s way through this new world.

A three-city tour and subsequent Internet webcasts of the live performances are in the planning stages for 2012.

To find out more go to:

http://kck.st/o9vUvR

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Spiritual Scientist
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• Looking Back on 2010
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4
• The Changing Scene