Vanessa Wheeler at El Cid | Photo by Hannah Verbeuren Last Monday I judged an open mic contest at El Cid in Silverlake. There were 22 acts who signed up in advance of the night (many curated by El Cid's booker Michael McCarthy). I'd never been to El Cid before and was pleasantly...

It only took Twitter about 10 years, but they have finally opened up account verification to the non-elites. In the past, the only way to get a Twitter account verified was to know someone at Twitter. Seriously. I once asked a musician with the magical blue verified check mark ne...

I want to clear up a few things after yesterday's 9 Times It's OK To Ask Musicians To Play For Free bombshell. 99% of you got it was sarcasm. But for the 1%, heyyyyoooo! I got your emails. And also, I posted it to Digital Music News to reach the broader music community - namely...

I got a an email from one of my favorite singer/songwriters yesterday. I've been on his email list for a couple years now and I go to his shows whenever he plays in town - which is often because he lives here. In this email he discussed that he had all the songs written for his n...

I just released a music video (see above). It cost me exactly $0 to make and it looks pretty darn awesome if I do say so myself. Well, I can say so because I didn't make it. I kind of had nothing to do with it - other than writing and recording the song of course (and showing up...

I'll admit it, I'm a Facebook junkie. Hopelessly addicted. If I don't get my daily (hourly) fix I start to have withdrawal. It's pathetic. I fully admit it. But alas, this is the world we live in.I was invited to a friend's record release show Event today on Facebook. I had seen...

A lot of musicians want to play colleges, but most don't really know what that means. As someone who has played over 100 official university sponsored shows around the country, it's a field I know quite intimately. From the schools surrounded by a hundred miles of corn to the tho...

So as many of you know I was off the grid last month in New Orleans on a (book!) writing retreat. As much as I love LA, it's very difficult to block out all the distractions of my daily life and solely focus on a creative pursuit. Meetings and (acting) auditions come up and it's...

On December 28th, 2015 long-time streaming foe, David Lowery, who runs the Trichordist blog and fronts the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, filed a class-action lawsuit seeking at least $150 million in damages against Spotify. The lawsuit alleges that Spotify knowingly, wi...

I'm a 'curator' on Fluence. That means, if you want to pay me to listen and review your music (with the possibility of sharing it), you can pay me to do it. 80% of the submissions I get are not very good, 15% are good, but not great and then occasionally I receive something so st...