A successful 2020. How in the world can somebody call 2020 a successful year? Are you crazy? This is the year that the song, Bye, Bye, American Pie came true. This is the year that the music died. In my hometown the Heartland Stampede was canceled. The famous bar, Douglas Corner, in Nashville where many songwriters have played closed it's doors for good. There was no way they could survive with being closed and then reduced hours. The world famous Bluebird Cafe is closed and will probably not be opening any time soon. The Bluebird only holds about eighty people and with social distancing they might be hard pressed to have a crowd of fifteen. The goal of a business is to make money but sometimes you can lose less money being closed than being open. Bars in Topeka are closing at 9pm with the recent up swing in positive Covid cases. It has been a terrible year for the music business.
Despite all that is going on in the world. 2020 has been my best year of songwriting success. I got to admit it all depends on your view of success. There are many songwriters who would not agree with me. When I say success, I am obviously not talking about money. I am talking about baby steps in the right direction.. (Forward not backward.) I did receive a check from CD Baby for last year. When you combine my album sales with my streaming income, I could buy two Starbuck mocha's. Yeah, my deposit into my bank account was ten dollars and some change. Now might be a good time to hit me up for a loan before I spend it.
Let me share bullet points of my success.
- Played at a Open Mic night
- Met an A@R manager for an independent music publisher
- Sent three songs to the A@R manager
- Signed single song contract on two of the three songs
- Had my song pitched to country artists
- Signed contract on a new song I wrote
- Signed contract on a co-write with the A@R manager
- Have another song that the publisher is interested in signing
- Co-writing songs on Mondays with the president of the publishing company.
- Received a songwriter to watch award from NSAI
- One song won first place in the Walnut Valley New Song contest
- One song won second place in the Walnut Valley Song contest
- Played winning song for virtual concert for the Walnut Valley Bluegrass festival
- Played virtual concert (one song) for the Kansas State UPC council
I am very thankful to God for all of the success's he has given to me in 2020. Looking forward to a better year in 2021.