NEW RECORD UPDATE – "BLESSED"

Please accept my apology-certainly no disrespect to anyone was intended-I hope, and believe that most in here know that. I made that statement fully expecting that I would have an update the next day-in fact I had already started to work on it but ran out of time before I was finished so I quickly posted the short message- and then couldn’t get back to it-nice job on my part.
Not an excuse -but right now we are at the stage where everything is being proposed, scheduled and coordinated so it all fits together like its supposed to. When I say “everything” I am referring to the record, the artwork and packaging, the tour, the website and all the marketing opportunities and ideas that need to be timed around these to make it all work. This is the time everything changes daily and when one thing changes it is a domino effect with all the others. I don’t like to come in here unless I have solid or at least reasonably solid information to share and when we have a delay in getting the record across the finish line the result is that there isn’t much info to share until the record is done because everything is planned around the the release of the record. Nobody gets more frustrated than me when i come here and say that the record is coming on xx date and then it doesn’t. Anyway, enough of all that, here is what I know right now:

THE RECORD-
The good news is that the Bob Clearmountain mixes came out fantastic and then of course the new mixes had to be remastered and that’s where the delay came in. In the last month we have mastered the record 2 1/2 times with different mastering engineers and I think we finally have it sounding like we wanted it to. To say this was frustrating is an understatement and i’ll leave it at that. In any event, we having a final pow wow with Don and the plan is to officially deliver the record to the label early next week.
Right now the release date we are trying to make is 2/8, but it is more likely to just say Feb. as there are time variables with some of the things we want to do. One of those things involves the record package -I have proposed not only a deluxe version but also a limited super deluxe version- we are currently figuring out what that will be and the viability of doing it. I am really hoping it can happen as I think it would very unique. The only drawback is that deluxe packaging takes a little longer to make and we definitely want the to versions to be released at the same time, so that is one reason for the possibility of a later release date. I can also add that we have a very special artwork idea that everyone is very excited about, and it will play very prominently in the marketing plan.

THE TOUR-
I do have at least a little solid info on the tour front. We will definitely be doing two dates in Toronto opening for Levon Helm at Massey Hall on March 4 & 5. We will also be doing a show in Austin during SXSW 3/18 or 19 I think that will be part of a special Lost Highway Records 10th Anniversary event. That should be quite a night as I know they are reaching out to a lot of special guests to be a part of that. It would be safe to assume that there will be dates that will take us from Toronto to Austin but at this point I don’t know what those will be. We have also discussed dates prior to Toronto but until the record release date gets set those will be tentative.

MISC.
In general I can say that I have proposed many things to the label for the set up and marketing of this record -a bigger undertaking than we’ve ever tried to do before. I am really hoping that all of the ideas or at least most of them come to fruition, but nothing is solid enough to say much more than that at this point-but one of them may be a full hour PBS TV show taping in Dec.
We are also planning to completely redo the website, and have been wanting but the holdup is that we have to wait for the Blessed photo shoot to be completed so we have new images etc. to use.
I do also still want to create a fan club before we go on sale for next year’s shows -or at least have some mechanism in place so we can do special pre-sales etc. I know I have asked before but I do again welcome any ideas anyone has -or any things that you’ve see someone else do that you thought was great and effective.
As you can see there is a lot going on -and i’m very excited about what we’re trying to do.
Again my apologies for the delay in getting this posted -it was my f up. Hopefully there will be a lot more things soon to update.
Thanks always for the interest and support-it only happens because of that.