Hey BLOG Peeps! Working hard on a short week between travel dates! Was in Nashville all week last week and have M-TH to get as much as I can done before leaving for South Dakota Friday morning!
Lots has been going on, but that is not that unusual. I have been working on CD stuff with a
new label, moving forward on releases and catalog releases this week.
Innervision Records is my new label home and I am very excited about working with Adam Leibovitz and my new family of amazingly talented label mates! Feeling very blessed these days!
The label just signed a new distribution deal and
Smooth Jazz Classics shipped today! Pretty cool! I also found another problem with no stock for my
Emotion CD, I am working on a short run to stock the distribution and have them around for holiday sales. I guess that's a good problem to have!
With Christmas marketing busy with activity going into the Christmas season, I have also been working on a
new Christmas Website which is now live.
SmoothJazzChristmas.com will be home primarily to my one
Smooth Jazz Christmas release and future Smooth Jazz Christmas recordings. Check it out and let me know what you think. It is not totally done yet, but is coming together nicely.
As a sad aside - Tax season is way up in my face and somehow, I need to get a few weeks of shabby accounting done in a few days while being out of town way too much this month. I have grand hopes of breaking every record and having taxes in by Oct 15th! They are grand and hopes though....
On a personal note - been reading a great book (by the suggestion of a business mentor of mine, John Maxwell) and I am loving it.
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is an amazing, engaging and hard to put down book on the life and times of
Abraham Lincoln. If you don't include the over 150 pages of notes in the back, the book is only 750 pages long. With everything going on, I have been picking it up in every break to get a little more. I have to admit I seldom read books this fat and it will be a while before I am done with it.
Interesting things I have learned thus far - Death and sadness was a way of life in the mid 1800's. Women and children seemed to be dieing all the time of illness or in childbirth. Salmon Chase (ran against Lincoln) lost 3 wives and 2 children in 11 years and was deeply effected by such personal loss. Grief and illness followed Americans on short leashes while the hardships of life battered the fledgling new nation. That was an eye opener.
One other observation was the political parties of that day. They were in constant upheaval. The politicians of the day seemed to move around thru party affiliations like a kit in the sky. Chase, for instance, was a member of 5 different parties in his political career. It seems, people would start a party with a specialty concern, and then guys would change there party. Pretty crazy.
Odd thoughts - The old party that became know as the Republican party was called the Whig party. Wonder if that is where the term "big Whig" came from? Other funny note is some of the party names. There was actually a party called the Know Nothing Party. How lame is that. I am wondering if we can just rename both of our genius political parties
Know Nothings and forget about them?? hahaha!
Some things never change.....
Peace out,
SAXBOY ~ Greg Vail
