Hi Folks,

Sitting here in my nearly bare office is bizarre. As I mentioned a few days ago, I removed all the Awards CD's, the documentation, tables and storage bins, genre tubes and clutter associated with it all and I am left with 2 bare walls, another wall with a photo of Cindy Alexander, Corrinne May, Todd Herzog, Harold Payne, Kerry Getz, Melody Guy, Me, Susan Gibson and Joe Rathburn from a Pre Awards Showcase we did a few years ago on one wall and on the other is my Silk Sculpture of a Birchwood Forest I bought myself last summer with the money I got from my Songwriters Market Article and a photo I took of a similar real life scene next to it. I am waiting for my giant wall map to go behind me and I am contemplating getting a projection TV to shoot onto the wall opposite my desk (I had an older one there but it's crap and I am thinking of getting one that does hi-def). Before you think that's expensive, it's actually not. You can get a cool Sharp projector right now at SAMS for 800 dollars even that will do hi def. We use on in our living room that makes the wall into a a 126 inch HI DEF TV. It's pretty cool. A few of you have seen it.

I am already mulling over the next awards, not sure if they will still happen in 2007 or 2008 as we are planning. If we tried to do it in 2007 we'd have to have all the music almost immediately and the only way that could happen is to get it all digitally. I am going to ask Derek if that's something we can consider. Not sure of the tech issues (beyond needing gigantic hard drives) but it seems like a much easier task than pulling, packing, shipping, receiving, upackaging and checking in 25K or more CD's. There would be new problem to overcome such as keeping full albums together, keeping track of original versus cover songs (since we wouldn't have booklets, that would be a big big problem, especially in more traditional categories like Folk, Bluegress, Celtic, Blues etc.). If I can figure out a way to overcome that hurdle (and frankly there may not be a way to overcome it) then it's not entirely impossible for us to consider at least getting the next awards done by Spring of 2008 instead of December of 2008. Of course if we start the awards up again, there no way for me to tour. That's the biggest trade off.

That's what I am mulling over today. What about you?

Brian

Brian Austin Whitney
Founder
Just Plain Folks
jpfolkspro@gmail.com
Skype: Brian Austin Whitney
Facebook: www.facebook.com/justplainfolks

"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

"It's easier to be the bigger man when you actually are..." -Brian Austin Whitney

"Sometimes all you have to do to inspire humans to greatness is to give them a reason and opportunity to do something great." -Brian Austin Whitney