Friday, June 30, 2006

Jon's music on the radio

Exciting news! The local public radio station will be playing a couple of cuts from my CD, "Wordlessly"!

The songs will be played a little after 3 p.m. Saturday (July 1) on WBOI, 89.1 FM. It'll be played during WBOI's "All That Jazz" show.

If you live somewhere other than Fort Wayne, and you have a decent Internet connection, you can listen to the radio station live online: Go to http://www.nipr.fm and click on the little WBOI logo in the black bar near the top of the page. Or just click this link.

And remember: if you know of anyone who would be interested in receiving these occasional emails, just direct him to my website at www.jonswerens.com, and follow the simple link, "Sign up for email newsletter." Or just click this link! And you should get no spam!

And thanks for your interest!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The CDs are here! The CDs are here!

I heard the familiar rurr-rurr-rurr of a diesel engine. I looked through the upstairs window and, behold! A UPS truck was trying to negotiate the tricky corner at the end of our street. (Why did he even try that alley?)

Are there any songs about the UPS truck coming to your house? I think I could write a couple about now.

And don't think I'm too weird. In the musical "The Music Man," an entire song is sung about The Wells Fargo wagon a-comin' down the street.

And by reading the lyrics, you can also find out how exciting it was in the not-that-distant past just to get unusual produce via wagon.

Unusual stuff like grapefruit and raisins.

So I took the 18-pound box from my friend, the UPS man, and of course opened the box right away.

(There were three smaller boxes inside the big box, in case you think that the small box to the left could possibly weigh 18 pounds.)

I've gotta hand it to the folks at TuneCore, who reproduced the CD for me. The CDs look awesome. I am stoked, as the kids say. (Not my kids. Other kids.)

I am right now listening to the CD, keeping my ears open for technical glitches. I'm up to track 9, "Conner Prairie Air." Everything is fine so far.

I just really want to thank everyone who has been in any way supportive of my music. It was your support, even in little way like with comments after I played the hymns at church, that gave me the confidence to even attempt this project.

And certainly thanks to my brother Jeff who asked for this music for his wedding reception. I think you will like.

Oh, and of course, I'm looking for venues to play, especially in Northeast Indiana. For example, I'm trying to find a place to play up in Angola, Indiana, but the coffeehouse I've played before has moved and no longer can host musicians. Write me if you'd like me to come to your neck of the woods!

Baklava to the future

This is a strange post, only because it has nothing to do with my CD.

But it does have a lot to do with my first video voiceover.

Photojournalist Steve Linsenmayer at The News-Sentinel put together a great three-minute video of local women putting together baklava for the Greekfest. But it needed some descriptive audio to go along with it. So yesterday at work, I cajoled information from coworkers, took a crash-course in iMovie, spent 60 minutes writing three minutes of yadda yadda, recorded the voiceover and saved it in some QuickTime-friendly format.

You can see and hear the video here. Opa!

The CDs are coming

Sometime today, a box of 75 "Wordlessly" CDs should arrive on my front porch.

If not, well then, I'll get them later, I guess.

Details as events warrant...

Thursday, June 8, 2006

Waiting for Minnesota

The "Wordlessly" CD is out of my hands.

I shipped a CD from my own computer yesterday to a company in Minnesota to press the CDs, print the tray cards and booklets, pack 'em together, shrink wrap them and ship them to me. Hopefully, all before my brother's wedding on June 24.

This has been a fun, but tiring, project. There was a real rush at the end to get finished because of my total lack of experience in mastering a CD. That's the last part of getting a CD ready to get pressed.

And now, all there is to do is wait. I'll let everyone know when the CDs arrive!