Technology today has made the world a smaller place.. in fact it's tiny. We can watch TV from signals beamed from satellites. We can record major projects in the back room of our house. We can shoot and edit video and turn out projects in hours with nothing but an iPhone or "Flip" video camera. What used to be a big deal, is kind of routine these days. The technology that has made all of this possible and somewhat easy has also made it more important to make what you do better than ever.
I can remember my first recording studio experience. It was in 1980 at Producer's Workshop in Oklahoma City. We thought this was a fairly big deal, and I guess it was. We weren't great players but we had some good songs. We fired up and played them with our eyes closed, with lots of country boy feeling and raw enthusiasm. What came out the other end was a 33 1/3
L. P. with lots of reverb and screamin' guitars. BUT we were the only band on our level that had one. So, that automatically kind of made "Jade" a big deal.
Now days everyone has a CD, everyone has songs on iTunes, everyone has a web site and some sort of video. So what you release to represent you and your music must not only be top notch in your home town, it must be top notch around the world.
Today our little record label "Way Out West Records" will release a Shawna Russell video of the new single "Get Right Or Get Left". It will premier on one of the top internet video sites in the world, www.yallwire.com .The song was recorded using the best musicians in Nashville, the best engineer, and the best equipment. The video was shot by an esteemed director using great gear for shooting and editing and is being promoted by one of the best in the business. In today's world this is what has to be done to filter through the "static" that is every other musician and artist in the world that has a Flip video or digital recorder in their bedroom.
The beauty of it all however is that it can be done from a spare bedroom on a dead end road in Okfuskee County. We have an office in Nashville and I can keep in touch with Clif (our partner in the record label and Shawna's co-manager) with a key stroke on a Blackberry. We can publicize to the entire world in seconds for free. We can listen to mixes sent from the studio in seconds and have feedback for the engineer. We can see different edits of the video in a bus moving at 70 mph down I-40!
15 years ago all of this was only a dream. If you wanted something done, you had to be there to do it. Internet was expensive and slow. Cell phones were sketchy and there was no facebook or youtube. But now it seems that the impossible has become possible. The "Big Deal" is the norm and sometimes real art hides in the shadows. As I sit here at my Macbook in my underwear getting ready to hit the "send button" that will launch this piece of writing out in to the world I'll leave you with a couple of thoughts.. In this world, in this time in history you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.. because... EVERYONE is watching.. and thank God I don't have the web cam turned on right now! :)
Watch the world premier of Shawna Russell's "Get Right Or Get Left" video at www.yallwire.com and remember.. it was made possible by the biggest record label in Okfuskee County Oklahoma..
