I think the great social experiment for musicians has finally come to its conclusion. At least, for me, it has. I’ve been playing music for the entirety of my adult life. During most of those years, I’ve performed with bands or in solo projects. And, throughout the course of it all, I’ve leveraged MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Blue Sky to try to connect with you all.

But, things need to change. I wanted to explain my exodus from the social platforms, but first thanking you all for the time and support you’ve shared as I’ve taken stage and worked on creating music. A musician needs an audience, and I truly appreciate all of the love and support you’ve given virtually through these platforms and physically as you’ve attended shows or picked up copies of music.

But, social platforms simply don’t work for musicians like they used to. The algorithms are designed to feed you what pays the social channels owners. And, that’s fair. But, the outcome has been far less visibility on anything that a musician wants to put out there. Some folks are making it work, but if they’re being truthful, I suspect they are putting way more into trying to make it work for them than it actually is working.

At the core, folks like me just want to share the art that we’re working on with you all. We want to be able to invite you to come hang out, hear some music and take a break from the daily grind.

I also feel like by putting my focus into this site, I’m better able to share with you the type of content that I want to create, in whatever form that is, without the limitations that many of these social platforms have put in place.

And I’ll readily admit, this is an experiment too. The idea of moving away from a built in feed that delivers content to you and trying to create a new feed is daunting, to say the least, but it’s a gamble I’m willing to take.

I set up a NEWSLETTER function that you’ll find at the bottom of the site. I’d encourage you to sign up. I’ll use the newsletter to periodically send you an invitation to a live event and let you know when I’m about to drop new music. While the outreach will be limited, I think it’s a better way for me to try to connect with you directly. I just need a name and email address. Your contact information stays within the system. Of course I won’t be sharing it with others. It’s just a better way for me to alert you to the cool stuff that is around the corner.

But the biggest part of this move is that I simply can’t support platforms that I think are doing more harm than good. I don’t know that we ever age out of the addictive nature of social media. And, it is addictive. For kids, but for adults too. No one is spared the pull of social media’s algorithm that is customized for whatever you want, whenever you want it. What platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have created is something that has polluted our attention spans, but also allowed a few to profiteer off of your attention, your information and your desire to stay connected in a world that feels evermore separated and siloed.

My timeline is to shut down my Instagram profile at the end of the month. I’ll have transferred content over here and will have good stuff posted for you to check out, and hopefully return to and/or remain connected. I will also be handing out cards with site info at upcoming events. I’ve been fortunate enough to connect with cools folks like yourselves over the years. I think it’s time that we evolve our channel of communication to something that is less addictive and healthier for us all in the long run.