WOW, we are so happy about this! You know, it is a cliche but it is so true; It really was an honor just to be nominated. No matter your line of work, everyone likes to be recognized and appreciated for what they do. All of us on that stage last night, and thousands more across the Carolinas, sit in our homes and try to craft songs that we hope people will hear and appreciate. In honor of that process, we are so happy to receive this recognition. The purpose of the Charlotte Music Awards is to promote music in the Carolinas, and we will do our part to continue to support other artists and live, local, original music.

This was our first time at Elwood's Music Hall.  It is one of the best venues we have ever played;  Good monitor mix, nice stage and lighting. Very professional sound and production. The night went very smoothly, and Jeff Cheen and Julia Dixon really made everyone feel welcomed. We met most of the performers before the night began, and we walk away with several new friends. We ended up pulling out an excellent performance, but so did several of the other artists. Each artist performed for 20 minutes, and at the end of the night, the judges handed in their ballots voting for who they thought was the best singer/songwriter of the night.

We awoke to the news this morning on the Charlotte Music Awards website that we were indeed the winners of last night's competition. We are looking forward to the Red Carpet Event and more publicity opportunities later in November, 2010. Thank you to everyone who came out to cheer us on, and for those of you who couldn't be there, but were pulling for us from home. We love and appreciate you all!

Today we went to our monthly

The event was held at Tyler's Speakeasy in Carrboro, NC. It was the perfect venue for our group. The staff was great and we were right at the windows, so we got some outside interest as well. There were several non-members who came to check it all out. They all seemed to enjoy learning more about the Co-op. We hope many more folks join the Co-op and take advantage of the many programs that are offered.

We really enjoyed meeting everyone that came. We saw old friends, and made many new ones. The Co-op membership is a musically varied group of folks, with all levels of experience and musical goals, yet we all have songwriting in common. It is great be part of a group of people who are afflicted with the same illness as yourself!  

Also, John designed a flyer to give out at the meeting so everyone could be aware of all of the things they can participate in (OK, I'm proud of all his hard work). Several people said that they had no idea that we did so many things. 

The current Coordinator, Dwight Sullivan, has served in that role for 5 years and was a member for 3 years before that.  He has served the Co-op very well and leaves it in a great position to move forward under the capable leadership of our new Coordinator, Patricia Franklin. Also, we had our official "swearing in" as Board Members and look forward to serving in our new role at the Co-op. 

Here are some pictures from the day.

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Each year, the Charlotte Music Awards presents a Showcase Series that culminates in an annual Awards Ceremony. The first Awards Ceremony was held in September 2007 at Ovens Auditorium. This event celebrates the best of the Carolinas’ vast and diverse musical talent. Awards are presented for all types of musical accomplishments across a broad range of genres. We were chosen to showcase for the Singer/Songwriter event to be held next week and are up against some pretty great artists. Below is a list of all those who were nominated for the 2010 Singer/Songwriter showcase.

• Paul Atkinson
• Jeff Luckadoo
• Jennifer Spengler
• Janet Barnes
• Summers
• The Cloers

We will be competing for the title of Best Singer/Songwriter 2010 at Elwood's Music Hall in Charlotte, NC on Thursday, February 25, 2010 @ 8:00pm. Tickets are $8.00 and are available online or at the door the night of the event. We hope some of you guys will come out and cheer us on. It's going to be a great night of music!!

This month we had a guest speaker via Skype to speak with us and field our questions. The guest was Thom Shepherd. He wrote (and/or co-wrote) The Only Way He Knew How, Redneck Yacht Club, Djibouti, Riding With Private Malone, and many others. He was very personable and open about his career. 

After working through several publishers, he is now in an arrangement where he has a single investor who puts up the costs of producing demos, plugging songs, etc. Then any proceeds from songs that get cut are split between himself and his investor. 

It seems that he is doing a version of one of the alternate routes for songwriters today. That is, rather than being a staff writer for a publisher, he is the writer AND the publisher and he uses an outside publisher to administer his songs. This is exactly what we are doing with our publishing company, 800 Square Feet Music. We own the publishing, but we are using an outside administrator. Administration of a song catalog is a ton of work, and they deserve a cut of the proceeds. On a side note, we did not perform a song this month because we are so busy preparing for recording that we cannot write right now.

Below is a video of the song, Redneck Yacht Club performed by Craig Morgan. It really makes us long for summer even more than we already were!

This morning, we got up extra early so we could drive into downtown Charlotte to attend a time management workshop hosted by our local

Lawd knows that we needed this class! We have never been lazy, but we do have trouble completing tasks sometimes. We always have so many things that need to be done, that we get lost in what HAS to get finished and when. Many artists suffer from the condition known as, "interested in too many things, want to do too many things, start too many things" syndrome. I love being an artist because, just like children, we get excited about everything! But, there aren't enough hours in the day to satisfy all of our curiosities, so we must, MUST focus!!

As you all know, we are beginning the recording schedule. We thought the ASC time management workshop was the perfect time to sit down and make a rigid schedule that we will follow until the CD is done. We learned how to make a "doable" schedule, how to break up a project into tasks and how to organize those. And most of all, we learned about how time is a commodity. Saying yes to something is ALWAYS saying no to something else. This was a key point that we really needed to hear and take with us. We have been saying, "yes" to so many things, that we have been saying, "no" to recording our CD. 

And the last lesson, TIME IS $! We were encouraged to figure out what an hour of our time is worth, and begin charging that when we are asked to do things. It just makes sense! Musicians ESPECIALLY seem to not see their time as valuable as other artists. We would NEVER dare ask a painter to give away a painting to a local coffee shop, but we are told that musicians should mostly play for free. We love doing charity benefits, but our other jobs should pay at least minimum wage for work that we do. Lesson learned.

On Sunday night, we performed the last public show we will play for a while at Yn Wine Cafe in Charlotte, NC. We were part of an emerging songwriter series that Yn created, and they hope it will begin a relationship between the cafe and local performing songwriters. Also on the bill that night was our good friend, and fellow songwriter, Jamie Kay.

We did this show as a "writer in the round" style event where The Cloers and Jamie Kay took turns sharing song insights with the audience, then performing the songs that we talked about. The show went well, and the staff said that they enjoyed having us out. 

We felt a little sad for this to be our last full show before our CD is finished, but now it is time to take the next step in our music career, and begin working on our project. We will begin recording in a couple of weeks, and will be doing more video blog entries instead of written blog entries during this time. We will still be attending some events, but we are keeping our schedule very rigid during this time so we can finish recording in the time frame that we proposed to the grant committee.