Sparks from the Fire

Note: The following is my response to a recent customer question.  Occasionally we print these to clarify to all what might be otherwise misunderstood.  The question from customer was, “Why can’t the sampled songs on your website be full songs instead of only part of the song?” The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dear Bart,

Your letter came to me this morning from our customer service department.  I’ve asked that these kinds of responses come to me occasionally so that I could help handle them and help clarify confusions.

As CEO of Watchfire Music and one of its composers I would love that you could hear a full sample of my music on the site, but unfortunately we, as well as the rest of the industry, have learned that if we were to put the full sample on the site, then three generations of people would then steal such and never actually purchase it.

Unfortunately I have to eat.  I’m working on overcoming that limitation in life, but I just haven’t gotten there yet.  As it is, we live in a world where now much of what we create as musicians and composers is either free or stolen because of file sharing and hacking.

Your short note came across to all of us here as critical.  We pride ourselves in our giving.  We sell songs that take tens of thousands of dollars to create for 99 cents in a world where music is now even becoming “free” — thereby reducing our much loved occupations to the level of hobbies.

I guess you got me on my soap box here, but when I come across moments like this of such misunderstanding, it usually, these days, puts me right back on that box.

We do offer every possible tool we can think of to help you discover and understand our music.  Perhaps you might rethink this in terms of going to the movies.  Let’s say they were forced to let you see the movie for free and then, if you saw the whole thing and liked it, then, and only then, you would have to pay for it.

It’s a good analogy. (more…)

I was channel surfing the other night on the tube and I came across a rock concert on AXS TV, my new favorite channel on TV’s great wasteland.  It was an AC/DC concert.  For those of you unfamiliar with AC/DC, they are a high voltage rock ‘n’ roll band that has been consistently selling-out concert tours for over 40 years now with global sales totaling more than 200 million albums.

I was surprised to see an audience full of young people following this group because the group looks “old.”  The rock and roll, drug induced, no sleep lifestyle unfortunately does not produce baby faces and ever-young images.

The kids in the audience were having a ball though, and I was glad to see that groups like the Stones, Metallica and AC/DC were still happinin’ and appreciated.  After all, these are the guys that had a large hand in creating rock and roll to begin with.

The stage was replete with today’s necessary light show, fireworks and other pyrotechnic effects, and number after number went by projecting basically the same theme over and over – Hell, fire and brimstone, the devil and all things dark and spitting from the center of the earth.

Probably the typical message of many bands preaching to teenagers revolting from too much parentally enforced Sunday School.

As I watched, enjoying the power of the music, I began to tire of the same theme over and over.  They had given out little red devil’s horns for everyone in the audience to wear and even some of the musicians in the band wore them  — actually rather dopey and goofy looking …

I began to wonder, “What is this really all about?”  Devil worship?  Revolution from the good old straight and narrow?  Even worse, some sort of pagan ritual played out on a Saturday night?

The band, and especially the lead singer, screamed constantly the same message and the stage effects backed it all up, but then I began to look deeper at the whole scene.  The audience was simply having fun.  They were smiling, joyful, singing along, all standing throughout — they in their little red devil horns were one of the happiest groups of 20,000 I’d seen in a long time. (more…)

I’m going to ask each of you to do something personal, something that will cost you, something that you would do selflessly for us, but something that I can almost guarantee will enhance your life on one level or another.  Ready?  Here goes …

Click here and go purchase Julia Wade’s new CD, Silk Road.  If you like, go listen to the samples first, but please don’t stop there – that’s not really fair to either Julia or me.  The samples are meant to be teasers.  Be teased, then buy it.

It’s a CD that we are so very proud of and have worked our tails off completing for this Holiday season.  It is absolutely some of our best work as a team, and actually everything we do – Watchfire Music, Link Recording Studios, Classes that we teach, The Watchfire Music Listening Room productions (I could go on and on) – is centered around the release of new music in CD form.

It’s why we do all the rest, including our very successful WFM Digital Sheet Music division.  We live to produce recorded music.  I know you know that and just want to take this most special moment to re-enforce the purpose of our lives.

What’s the album about?  It’s about a journey that we’re on down an ancient/modern path/highway.

Where are we going?  Forward – into new and previously unexplored territory.

Will it be a totally new Julia?  Yes and no.  It’s an evolution.  It’s a widening of the highway.  It’s an exploration of new ideas while at the same time hammering the old into new shapes and sizes.

As you who read this blog regularly know, I tend to write long.  This time I’m going to keep it short so that you might take that time to go check out and support us in this precious endeavor.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks for following.  Thanks for listening.

We’re now in the final throes of recording and mixing Julia Wade’s new CD, Silk Road – Inspirational Journeys Across Planet Earth.  Some of the material of this new work was actually started nearly two years ago and then the project was tabled when we developed her Solos CD as a farewell gift to the Christian Science community when she finished her tenure as Soloist in Boston.

But we knew we had something really interesting going in Silk Road and we couldn’t wait to get beck to it.

The CD is due to hit the streets in early December and will be our major impetus throughout the holiday season.  She has just two more vocals to complete, all the orchestrations are completed and by the end of this next week I’ll be half way through the mixing.

It’s simply a most special project.  You’ll say, “Aren’t they all?” and I must answer, “Of course, but this one’s, for both of us, particularly transforming.”

Silk Road marks Julia’s arrival at the threshold of a new evolution in her music.  Her departure from her past carries forth her commitment to inspire through song not only on a sacred level, but also with an in depth look at the issues of our world at large and the individual human condition.

So it’s an album of songs that will continue to inspire her growing fan base with fresh new looks at spiritual reach through songs like Thinking Made It So and Julie Gold’s When He Walks With Me, but it also ventures into new territory dealing with the issues of our world today.

For the first time she now tries her hand at lyric writing and scores instantly with her own thoughts on What Peace Looks Like from the perspective of three children of the world from Uganda, the Sudan, and the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica.  The title song, Silk Road, promises a comparison of the ancient Silk Roads spanning China, Tibet and Europe with the modern day impact of the Internet.

And then there are the songs of love … (more…)

Here at Watchfire Music our customer service staff recently forwarded to me the following email from a most gracious lady.

“Hi.  I appreciate your emails and input, but I have a very large library of solos and do my own research for each Sunday’s solo, and your prices are very high … so, unfortunately, much as I appreciate your work and input, I have been doing the same for myself for 20 years and cannot afford to add the cost of your product … Thank you and God Bless you.”   J.K.

Upon reading I had no objection to the fact that J.K. was not interested in using our Solo Thoughts product, choosing instead to do her own research within her own church library – my wife, Julia, who was the soloist at the Christian Science Mother Church for the past seven years and is the Director of Digital Sheet Music for WFM did not even use the product all the time, preferring also sometimes to work from her own enormous and well organized library of music.  For Julia, Solo Thoughts was a great back up, like a good insurance policy.

To each his/her own.

We certainly get enough praise from grateful soloists and Music Committee chair people all over the world.  The letters seem to pour in nearly every day.  In fact what struck me as odd was that this was the first letter we had ever received from someone telling us that they did NOT use our product.  Why would someone take the time to do that?

Curious …

So upon second reading, I began to look at it from a different angle.  Then it hit me.  This was not a letter telling us that they did not use our product; this was rather a letter complaining that our prices were too high.

Well, that really got me going.

Musicnotes.com. the largest digital sheet music company in the world and consequently the standard setter, sells their music in a range of $5.25 to $5.75 per title.  That’s for one song, one song download.  We sell our titles for $6.95, but that gives the buyer the right to print 2 copies – one for the vocalist and one for the pianist/musician.  That’s actually $3.48 per title.  On the average about $2 less. (more…)

The Aladdin Hotel – Las Vegas – Yikes!

This is Part 9 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

Epilogue to Iphigenia:
One day, around five years later, I received a telephone call from Ralph Alswang, a prominent theater designer, who told me of a national contest for The Best Rock Opera being staged by the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas.  They were just completing a new 7500-seat theater at the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas and the show winner of the contest would receive at least a year contract running nightly in Vegas,

I laughed at the thought of Iphigenia, a Euripidean classic and Greek tragedy to boot, in Vegas, but after he explained that if I won, it would make me a rich man for life since I was the sole owner of the piece and would receive 5% of the gross, I reconsidered the strange idea.  My lawyer felt that it would not be a bad move at all.  Lawyers well understand the dollar signs.

Ralph Alswang, having seen Iphigenia at The Public Theater, felt that I actually might have a pretty good chance of winning it if I were to submit.

To make a long story short, I took a couple of weeks and reworked a new draft of the piece with Ralph’s suggestion that Iphigenia become one performer (instead of 12) with a large 40 voice chorus of women around her.

We also renamed the piece, Masquerade.  To this day I have no idea what that title meant and what it had to do with Euripides’ play.

I was flown to Vegas, pitched and sang the idea to a bunch of Italian-type business-men in suits and won the contest. (more…)

Madge Sinclair and Girls

This is Part 8 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

The New York Opening:

We went to London a nervous group of apprehensive American performers hoping to receive some sort of nod from the English masters of classical theater with our experimental rock opera based on a famous Greek tragedy and came home swaggering with a hit show.

The people of London ‘got it’.  Even the critics ‘got it’.  The critics, with their well-written reviews has pointed us in several directions that we wanted to fix before opening in NYC, so our producer, Joe Papp, once again put us back into rehearsal – this time for a month.  Doug Dyer, our wild, avant-garde Texas director was full of new ideas far too exotic to even attempt in that short period of time.  What we needed was to have the rough stone polished to a high gloss.

Unfortunately, we wasted two of the weeks trying some of Doug’s ideas and finally, a frustrated Joe fired director Doug and brought in Gerald Friedman to direct and work with our brilliant young choreographer, Lar Lubovitch. Gerald was the guy he should have brought in as soon as we got back from London.  He was an experienced Broadway professional who really knew the theater.

One of the biggest disappointments was that neither Joe nor Gerald had seen the show at its best in London and though the hearsay was excellent, neither had a strong sense of how well it had worked for the audiences.  Nonetheless, Gerald went to work in the two weeks remaining and did wonders cleaning up and polishing the show and readying it for the NY critics.

The Achilles character was cut and Iphigenia’s potential husband was only talked or sung about.  What worked was the music and the girls and Clytemnestra (Madge Sinclair) and Agamemnon (Manu Topou) were strong classical performers with the size to match our Iphigenia of twelve.

We went into NY previews with an even better show than in London with the additions, deletions and savvy corrections of our new director.  Oh how I wished he had had the chance to work on the piece longer, for his work was smart, sharp and just what the piece needed.

Previews were a smash.  The audiences went wild every night and Joe was most excited to present NYC with still another big hit show.  But Gerald and I were wary.  In New York, in the 70s, you had to get the NY Times critic to love you or else you would never have a true hit.  Without The Times rave review, you wouldn’t have a blockbuster. (more…)

Les Girls of Iphigenia

This is Part 7 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

Les Girls of Iphigenia:

Twelve young starlets play one classic role in the same opera.  Twelve variations of the same young girl facing her death at the hands of her father all in the service of her country.  We wondered if it would work, if the audiences would ‘get it’.  They had no trouble with the concept and the musical/rock opera rode on the giant wings of these twelve amazingly talented women in every performance.

How I loved these women!  Twelve of the top talents in NYC to work with, to write for, to arrange for.  It was a composer’s dream come true.

Over the couple of years of the run, first in workshops in NYC, then in London and then again in performances back in NYC, there were a number of other women who came in and out – understudies, swings and replacements, (Broadway star Patti Lupone was one) but the core twelve were something special and over the years, after the run of the show, I had the gratifying opportunity to watch nearly every one of them blossom into a star on a major scale.

Jullianne

Julianne — Julianne Marshall was our rock.  She was there for the entire run of the show and I can’t remember that she ever missed a performance.  She was a beautiful presence on stage, one of the quieter side of Iphigenia, but the leader of the kettle drum choir – six of the twelve learned to play timpani and would erupt periodically throughout the show in a grand tattoo of rhythmic pounding which represented the war around them.  Julianne would radically change in an instant from demure to powerful when she got those mallets in her hands.

Nell

Nell – Nell Carter was our trumpet.  With a voice that would cut diamonds and shatter glass she was a tremendous presence.  There were moments when I could put Nell on the melody and everybody else on the harmonies and Nell’s voice would still cut through the other eleven and state the theme.  And she was funny – probably our one true comic relief in the cast – with her wide body and her crazy spirit, she could have handled the role by herself in another production.

Nell in Ain’t Misbehavin’

Nell went on to win a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway musical Ain’t Misbehavin’, as well as an Emmy Award for her reprisal of the role on television.

She also received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her starring role in the long-running 1980s’ sitcom Gimme a Break!.

Sharon

Sharon – Sharon Redd was simply beautiful and talented.  She had the fire and had one of those classic R&B voices that you heard on the radio.  Often it was Sharon, singing on commercials, as one of Bette Midler’s Harlettes and finally having a most successful career as a background vocalist, most notably with the group Soirée, which also included among its members Luther Vandross and Jocelyn Brown.

Trish – Trish Hawkins was the vulnerable side of Iphigenia.  Trish always felt to me like a fresh breath of air from the country.  She was the strongest actress of the group and, consequently, the turn-to girl that handled most of the spoken lines.  I secretly fell in love with her in the course of the run because of her natural beauty and great presence.

Trish with Judd-Hirsch

Later in life she became Lanford Wilson’s female lead in his Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play Talley’s Folly, as well as his Broadway plays The Happy Hooker and Fifth of July.

Marion

Marion – Marion Ramsey was the energy!  Here was a blast-‘em-through-the-roof R&B/Gospel singer with serious chops and the great ability to get the audience standin’ up and clappin’.  Her big number was a song called Gate Tender which never failed to bring the house down.

Marion in Police Academy

She seemed always happy and ready for a laugh and was one of the most popular among the girls. She was later a regular on the TV series Cos but is best known for her role as the timid Officer Laverne Hooks in the Police Academy movies.

Pamela

Pam – Pamela Pentony was our Janis Joplin.  The music of the show covered many pop genres and Pam’s number, I Wonder, was a screamin’ gut wrenching rock n’ roll moment that she just tore up every night.  One wondered how she could sing like that whiskey-voiced and rockin’ and rollin’ night after night.  How could her voice possibly hold out?  But it did – 8 performances a week for a couple of years.  Pam was special.  Everybody loved her because she gave it everything she had night after night, night after night … (more…)