Martin Atkins

I totally neglected to mention that last weekend RS, CT, and I went to a one-on-one coaching session with Martin Atkins at Madison Media Institute. We went to talk to him about next steps for td and cj.

Synopsis:
-after our album release show, td should record an ep every three or four months and have a party/gig where we give them away
-cj ought to learn to screen print and sell a bunch of shit. He wasn't sure of copy right issues with our logo (offered to make us part of his new book as a case study) but RS did some online research and it seems that if your logo is an obvious parody of another logo (and effectively promotes the original thing) than its aok. And that's totally what ours is.
-cj could record an album of Pixies songs and sell them so long as we pay licensing fees...which turn out to be quite affordable if you are doing a run of less than 500 copies.
-cj could and should book shows in Milwaukee, Chicago, and other regional cities. We shouldn't overlook places like Sun Prairie, Middleton...really close but not Madison proper. The suburbs, it turns out, have people in them. He and the gal with him gave us some ideas for places in Milwaukee and Chicago (he said we could name drop him).
-cj doesn't need to fall over itself to prove our value. But basically just need to not suck (we don't) and the concept sells itself. We ought to be able to book anywhere that books cover/tribute bands and doesn't have some super specific focus (like metal or country or whatever)
-td will have to work harder to book in other cities, but it isn't impossible. But we should be more proactive in building an email list and really engaging those folks. He even suggested that we send fans in other cities gas cards to come watch us in Madison!

I think that for sure the experience reassured us that there is a market for CJ and that we just need to put in the minimum work to grow. It lit a fire under us for sure. We'll see if that translates to action. I think the guys are excited about the screen printing. I think that they did all of that for The Escapists and Faghat back in the day and just got tired of all the work with no pay-back. But I think with CJ there WILL BE payback. We'll make a little money...get a little love. It will be worth it. So hopefully we'll go for it.

With respect to td, I guess I feel like that's really j's band...so lots depends on him.