Sparks from the Fire

When I was a kid and would buy an album, one of my favorite things in life to do, I couldn’t wait to rush home, plunk myself down in front of our Hi-Fi and give it a thorough listen – and, of course, while listening the first time, read the liner notes.

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.” (more…)

I’ve always loved Christmas songs.  Who hasn’t?  They are iconic references and symbols of one of, for most of us, one of the real highlights of childhood – and then we get to repeat it all in a slightly different fashion as parents years later.  These songs take us through these enchanting times and play in the background like a movie score.

Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul.  They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months.  Who can write Christmas songs in June?  What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church.  She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning.  Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her.  This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up.  At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?”  Where would I ever find the time to do this? (more…)

Naturally, with great interest, I have watched closely the evolution of the music business.  It is my life.  Inspirational music has become my mission for the past 15 years and in that time I’ve watched this business of music spin out of control, crash and burn and then try to rise from the ashes time after time only to crash and burn again.

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. (more…)

This morning as I sit and drink my hot chocolate, I watch the sun come up pink on the buildings of a new day – and a city that never sleeps.  What a time for Inspirational music!  If the Missus weren’t still sleeping, I’d go into my studio, throw open the windows and crank up the volume.

Perhaps a song called Faith, perhaps Who Will Heal The World, perhaps Julia’s Upon The Mountain.  I’d play my ‘hood, Hell’s Kitchen, awake and stand on my terrace overlooking Lower Manhattan, the Village, Wall Street and the Statue Of Liberty and holler, “Wake up, New York!  We’re alive!

Last night I looked out on a new building springing up down where the Twin Towers once stood.  It was lit majestically in red, white and blue.  It stands where once, not so long ago, there was nothing but a hole in the ground.  Hope re-kindled.

This morning the sun rises on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I wasn’t in NYC ten years ago this morning.  At first I counted it a blessing.  I was in my other home in Colorado sleeping with the Missus when the telephone rang to tell us of the unbelievable news.  We spent the rest of the day, just like the rest of you, glued to our TV and watching the images over and over in disbelief as they burned into our brains for all time. (more…)

Here at Watchfire Music we like to say that a love song is an Inspirational song.  The category of Inspirational music is just that wide an umbrella.  What’s not inspirational about love?  It’s probably the most inspirational concept in the minds of mankind.

So it would be only natural for me to post the lyric of one of many love songs written over a lifetime.  But instead, I’ll post a new song, a song I’ve been working on for some time now and just finished over the weekend.

As a result of a very powerful healing I’ve just had, I decided in my life work that I needed to focus on loving people a lot more.  In purifying my thought, as I’ve had to do, it became quite evident to me that I simply needed to love more.  Now it’s easy to love The Missus more, but where I needed to focus was on the average Joe or Jane – let’s call it the people of the world – those known and unknown by me.

So I’ve been reading and studying this word “love’ and all its ramifications.

I came across an article written by a Christian Science lecturer, one Grace Bemis Curtis, C.S.B. of Pittsburgh, PA.  In it, she talks in depth about the power of love.  The article became the flyleaf of a workbook that I’ve been carrying around the house from room to room lately as I snatched a few moments to read and study between otherwise activities.

The article definitely inspired the following song that I finished yesterday and presented to The Missus today as a Valentine present.  This wasn’t one of those songs that made her swoon or tingle, but it did touch her heart and she will be singing it in good time.  It’s about the stirring of the human mind to a change of base, to a higher state of thinking.  For me it’s about getting a firmer grasp on my own spiritual sense.

Here’s the lyric:

Love Is The Reason For Living

Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

We dwell in the arena
Of immense conflicting forces
Our lives are swayed by counsel
From a million diff’rent sources
As we near each troubled crossroad
With a rising tide of fear
And wonder what becomes of us
When the tidal waves appear

We cannot help but turn to God
To summon His defense
To stir instead the floodtides of love
His sustenance
His deliverance

And so we strip away the falsehood
From the truth of who we are
And commit our lives
To innocence once again

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God forgiving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living

We long to stand the summit
In the pinnacles of spirit
Where death no longer finds us
No and we no longer fear it
And the light of life surrounds us
With its infinite embrace
And love pervades our consciousness
And evokes its change of base

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God life-giving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living

I wrote the date on a check the other day and it was 1/1/11.  I thought to myself, “Now that’s a real beginning.”   As CEO and Creative Director of Watchfire Music I thought that I ought to take stock of our company and see how this idea of Inspirational music is doing.  If there was ever a time for re-evaluation, it’s 1/1/11.

So I’ve spent the last couple of days mulling over the direction and progress of our company and I’ve decided that this year should not be about starting over, but rather, finishing what we started.

I think that last year we started far too many projects that we simply did not finish.  In a sometimes almost desperation to be successful and make money, we too often hop-scotched around searching for the golden ring and consequently were not as productive as we could have been.

As it turned out, we had the best year we’ve ever had, but there was still, clearly, room for growth and progress in the right direction.

So this year we have reorganized, cut back spending on what are now deemed superfluous activities and are focusing now on the original idea of Watchfire Music – how we can inspire people’s lives with music.

About a month ago I wrote down a new purpose for our company.  I’ll admit to being inspired by one of the music bloggers that I read daily, Bob Lefsetz, who writes an often crass, but astute insight on the music business.  Much of what I wrote down I took from one of his more prescient posts.  It went like this:

The opportunity

to build something bigger than ourselves,

something worth contributing.

The ability to make connections,

to lend a hand,

to invent and create.

The chance to Inspire.

We’re full of God’s great ideas.  Sometimes there’s more than we can handle.  So we have to be more selective.  Go with what we know in our hearts and minds to be true.  Go with what our customers need and want.

There was a great period of time where, admittedly, we were trying to build a hundred million dollar company.  When you have investors, when you have business school leadership, when you have entrepreneurial spirit, one can sometimes get suckered into this kind of thinking.  I’m not saying that this kind of thinking is bad, mind you.  If we were building widgets, that would probably be the modus operandi.

However, we are in the business of Inspiration.  Perhaps last year taught us that this business should not be dollar driven, but instead, different than the norm.  So we’re going to chance to be different.  Perhaps we won’t sell the company in five years and all retire to the good life.  Perhaps we’ll work it for the rest of our lives and hope for the best.

But that hope needs to be the hope to inspire, not to make a financial killing.  Of course we need to make money to survive, but that will no longer be the forefront thought to our existence.

If we “Chance to inspire”, we clearly take our chances, but if we are successful at inspiring, then it seems more than likely that the financial part should take care of itself.

Another great Bob Lefsetz quote that I typed out and pasted to my desk is this:  “But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?”

Here is the answer to good business – not advertising, not better promotion, not bigger staff, but simply a product that will draw people to us.  Well, our product is Inspiration.  Can we better inspire you?  Can we inspire you so deeply that you are drawn to us on a daily, weekly, monthly level?

That’s our objective.  Build a better mousetrap.  Write better music.  Think more deeply when it comes to lyric writing.  Inspire a world.

We’re gonna give it a shot.

It was a very good year for Watchfire Music, your Inspirational music company and on-line music store.  We are grateful to list the year’s accomplishments and positive growth below:

The creation of the Watchfire Music Collection – thematic compilation CDs featuring the best music of Watchfire Music artists.

Send To A Friend – Send the gift of music to a friend along with a personalized seasonal gift card.  It’s easy and quick!

Catch up on Sparks From The Fire – monthly fliers featuring the best of posts from the past month.  Easy to follow and comprehensive.

Accompaniment tracks from our DSM division for vocalists everywhere.

(more…)

Christmas in Central Park

Christmas in NYC!  There’s nothing quite like it.  Truly beautiful, but sometimes a bit too much about Santa and not enough about Jesus.  Each year I go back to the same moment years ago when I first wrote this song to try to rediscover the essence of Christmas.

I’ll share it with you now:

Christmas In My Soul

Music and lyrics by Peter Link

It looks as though

There won’t be snow on Christmas

And the holly and the mistletoe

Were sold out long ago

The midtown rush was just a little too much

And this year Santa and his reindeer

Never left the pole

Suddenly it just don’t seem like Christmas

Suddenly it don’t seem so natural

(more…)