Ari Herstand

The simple answer is: alienate your audience. This is exactly what Michelle Shocked did last Sunday at Yoshi's in San Francisco.Shocked had built a career over 30 years of activist folk music that targeted a progressive, LGBT friendly crowd.Then, in a moment, she did the equivale...

Everyone watch Amanda Palmer's brilliant Ted talk. I'll wait the 13 minutes.Ok, now that you're in tears and are just as inspired as I am, let's take something away from this.No musician in the world is a better asker, connector, motivator or promoter, in my opinion, than Amanda...

Darren Campbell wrote in (via the Request a Topic below) and asked I write on this... so here it is!'The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now' - Zig ZiglarSome people claim that college is about the party. College isn't...

The night of your album release show should be the biggest night of your career to date. If you've done your job right, the show will be packed if not sold out. The reason more people typically come to album release concerts than your Wednesday night 4 band bill show is because i...

Holidays are especially stressful for musicians. This is the time that uncle Joe always asks with a condescending smirk 'so how's the music thing going?' Aunt Jane then chimes in 'you should try out for American Idol! You'd be great.' This is either the point where you smile, nod...

Scott Palahniuk wrote in (via the Request a Topic below) and asked about cover songs and how an opener should order their set. And Ian J wrote in asking: 'they ask you to play for three hours, but having that much original material is hard. Is it singer/songwriter suicide to sing...

I was going to write an entire post about the world of music PR and discuss when it's time to get a publicist and what you should expect to pay and WHAT THEY DO (most musicians have no idea), but I figured why not just interview a successful music publicist (and one who I have wo...

I know basic US music copyright law. I mean, I'm no lawyer, but I studied it in college and just spent a couple hours on the US Copyright website to brush up. Technically as soon as you put your song in a fixed form (paper, cd, digital counts - performing it does not) then it's c...

I've played countless 'local' gigs with a 4 band bill where everyone had an equal draw, many 'opening' gigs where the headliner clearly brought the majority of the room and I've headlined (both locally and on tour) where I clearly brought the majority of the room.When you're just...

As much time as you spend in your rehearsal space perfecting your sound, it won't mean anything if it's botched coming out of the PA. All the money you spent on new pedals, amps, guitars and strings doesn't matter if the mix is off in the club.The sound guy (or gal) is the most i...