Failure Ice Cream.

Troubles in our online paradise first started with some depressing results from a quick experiment. In short, if you post on your Facebook page anything promoting your blog or other channels - it gets cut severely, but not to zero. Just enough to make you think you're the problem. If you post anything else - engagement is normal (the difference is ten-fold). Another reason for us to try to get everyone updated on the important stuff like gigs and releases. Please subscribe to this blog or one of our channels if you see this and haven't already, we'll be repeating this every chance we get. The other trouble is that we need to change our blogging platform. We're migrating our blog to Blogger from Ghost.io. The reason is that the latter doesn't offer a free version and we don't need as of yet support for 1000 subscribers or our own website (already got one). Took two hours to complete, no biggie.

We meet up at least once per week to rehearse and get stuff done. Some weeks, usually during summer or after a busy period, we may skip one or two. Outside of that we still run into each other. Not any longer at the office since Tony and I (Schwartz) are no longer part of the company, while Orli and Ali work mostly remotely and Kalo works at his own studio. I run into Ali regularly in our neighborhood as, by chance, we live on the same small street. Orli teaches at the university close by. Kalo, Tony and I are family friends and have known each other since we were students, so our circles of friends intersect quite a bit. Do we talk about the band each time? No. I'd even say rarely. It seems like we've compartmentalized it as a topic. There's often some tasks/questions to go over, but that's usually over quickly. But sometimes it's good to talk about the band from outside the band and check the mood about this side hustle. During rehearsals you're trying to get things done, so you'd usually focus on that. We do have organized getaways 1-2 times per year at a house in the mountains where we can both rehearse and chill together. The next one is past due. Hopefully, we'll have the next one before year's end.

Our online merch shop is non-existent. We've been trying to set one up together with a seamless process forever, basically. Right now, people send us a DM and we coordinate the production and shipping manually. It's an engagement and revenue stream that involves a third party, but we just haven't been able to find the right partner for the production/shipping/finance part. Many things in Bulgaria are complicated in this respect. We haven't given up and are looking for the right setup (we have something in mind again), but it's kind of embarrassing and quite certainly frustrating. We do have some nice merch and we do sell quite a bit at the gigs, but we'd like to raise a level above that. It's not a problem endemic to our band - many, if not all, independent artists have a similar issue. We'd like to help solve that. Meanwhile, if you DM us and get a hoodie, shirt, vinyl or whatever - just know that it was carefully and personally brought to the courier office by yours truly.

Now, about our gig at the Kapana Fest in Plovdiv. The location was quite nice. Kapana Fest had its 10th anniversary and the city's main street definitely knew about it. But it was the first time an entrance fee was introduced which inevitably hit the attendance numbers. Even a headliner like Ostava (usually easily getting 1K+) didn't help move the needle much. But habit is a powerful thing and saturation with (free) festivals over the summer didn't help either. It's easy to de-individualize and blame the audience, but ultimately we the role players on the local music scene must figure it out. Starting with ourselves, but also organizers, PRs, club owners, producers, staff... It's not about getting rich, it's about keeping the scene alive and being able to sustainably support generations of new bands. One of which is Mono & The Stereos who opened the evening and have a relaxingly refreshing air about them. On and off the stage. Although they already sound great, they didn't stop asking for advice and ways to improve.  There was some knowledge sharing, but each band's journey is different, so we try to steer away from direct, comprehensive advice as if we claim to know the truth. We don't. We still are rookies ourselves. It's one foot in front of the other type of thing for all of us, but I hope they felt supported, because we certainly want to support them. At the end of the evening we realized it was Ostava frontman's, Svilen, birthday past midnight. The mood was positive and it was privilege to be part of the greetings-and-hugs queue backstage. Our team off-stage did a fantastic job, the people in the crowd were amazing and we felt their presence. Playing in front of a relatively small crowd always brings a relaxing, homey feel to a gig and I believe we wallowed in it start to finish. Thank you all for your wonderful support!

Once again, we didn't record the performance audio. At the Rebel Rebel festival, we started recording, but lost the files because the mixer was turned off before we stopped. This time - we didn't even start it. Tony took on the challenge of solving this human error conundrum that's been following us for years now. Most painfully at our big album promo event last year. But it's a collective lesson to be learned. On top of that, we didn't make a single backstage photo or video. The 360 camera I forgot in Sofia. Phones never left our pockets. I like to think it's because we were having fun and thinking about that Plovdiv ice cream... 

After the gig, the logistics were smooth once again thanks to Mitko allowing us to use his van once again. We don't take it for granted. But kudos to Mitko and Orli taking care of bringing the gear back to the Red Room after a long, late drive post-gig.

Now it's time for a bit of a break, finishing up the Toaster video for the release (some hiccups their with the color correction specialist's busy schedule), gearing up for the showcase conference and gig and continuing work on the new stuff (probably starting with a meeting with our new producer still TBA). Most important part of this seems to be having things to look forward to and we have plenty of those.