My response to the “gun control won’t end gun violence so why have any gun control” argument is that we never hear anyone say that underage drinking laws don’t end all underage drinking, so we should just have no underage drinking laws. People did at one point argue that seatbelts didn’t save all lives, so we shouldn’t have seat belt laws. We have in time seen that we are much safer on the road wearing a seat belt than not. Still we have seat belt laws even though they don’t save all lives. Fewer people die with them than without them.

If gun control legislation saved one life per year, would it be worth it? If one answers “no,” fine, we can agree to disagree. If one argues that gun control legislation will not even save one life per year, then one may be letting one’s ideology interfere with one’s rational thought.

BTW, did I see you on the ISIM schedule? I’ll be there as well. We should make a beverage hang.

The first time I heard about Kickstarter, I thought it was brilliant. Then I started seeing musicians asking for crazy amounts of money to make a record. KS became the new way to get some “major label largesse.” If it costs $14k to make a singer/guitarist solo folk record, you are doing something wrong.

I like the KS campaigns that have reasonable expectations. I guess like any other tool, some will use it well, and others will be greedy with it.

But when thought of in more practical terms, at least KS projects support the ideology that artists and art need to be financially supported. Not that they should be, but they need to be, which is more than we can say for so many restaurant and bar owners who feel it is a privilege to simply play for free! And really, as far as the bandleader and musicians go, wouldn’t the $15 spent for the food/drink minimum be better served as a donation to their project, in which the donor will get at the very least a digital download of some sort?

I don’t know… will the economy in the shape that it is in and our leaders incapacity to do much about it, perhaps a change to the KS method of financial support isn’t such a bad idea.

I fly a lot domestically, and it always boggles my mind when the same carrier has varying policies flight to flight.

I bet the folks over at FlyerTalk (www.flyertalk.com) would love to hear this story! The FT community is made up of frequent flyers (most log well over 100K miles/year), pilots, clueful FAs, mileage junkies, and airline nerds from all around the world– they’re bright, insightful, and snarky, and they love a good story like this. I’d bet you’d get some interesting feedback, or just some good old-fashioned commiseration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5V-6yCbpg

How have you been? I’ll be in Belgium soon with Hamid Drake. Maybe we’ll see you?

All the best,

Jason

Maybe nurturing an audience is the wrong term. Good music will find the ears that want to hear it, if we give it a chance. We need to stop “protecting” people from good music.

BTW Lucas clarified that he hoped the Kimmel audience would dig C. Scott. I think I misread his intention a bit, not that that changes anything I wrote.

“It is not our job as musicians to guess what people want to hear, it is our job to make the music that we hear, and do it honestly.”

I wish I could be as optimistic in general when it comes to the idea of good music nurturing audiences. (Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I am — sometimes even excessively so.) It’s hard to avoid being influenced by whatever microcosm of the music industry I happen to be inhabiting on a particular day.

I guess the bigger point is that audiences are never monolithic, and that sometimes they come to the table with ears open to change, and sometimes they don’t. And when media people go into the relationship with the assumption that audiences should never be challenged, that can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just riffing here, but I really like what you wrote.

But you’re right. Change the name because there’s no different jazz or blues. At least Jessie McBride got a gig.