I remember I wrote this song called, “Take A Little Trip With Me” in 2008 and as you can see this video got a little over 3,000 views. So I guess you can say that this is one original that kind of went viral. Listening back to it, I’d say I’m proud of it myself. I think this song would be cool to be played in a full band w/ electric instruments. That’s how I visioned the song in my head. It was meant to be a full band electric song. If I ever get myself a band someday, we would definitely play this one at gigs. I think it’ll be fun to dance to.

Kev

Seems like everyone on the internet is doing Throwback Thursdays in social media and blogs so I figure I would join the bandwagon. Here’s one of my older live performances back in 2006 at a venue called the Flavour Cafe in Troy. This is around the time when I first started gigging. It’s hard to believe that this performance was about 8 years ago. I look back at this performance and I feel that I’m pretty proud of it. I’ve had many different versions of “Evil Fred”.

There’s a song on this performance called “The Boneyard” which is a song about zombies and I really like that one. I’m thinking of re-learning that song so I can bring it back for the internet album. My idea for the internet album is that half of it will be new songs and the other half will be old songs.

Looking at this video, I realize how much I miss performing on the stage. I wanna get back to that… soon.

Kev

I figure if I want to get more views in youtube and get more facebook music fans… I need to promote myself and market myself better. It’s getting worked on. I’ve been plotting out a plan.

You know how in the last few videos I released, at the end, I showed the “www.kbrocking.com” address with fade in/fade out effect and then you hear thunder throughout the outro? Well, that is just part of the marketing. The thunder sounds I just downloaded from a free sounds effects site. I wanted to try some different creative marketing ideas. Something cool and different. I think I’ll end every video like that with the “www.kbrocking.com” text appearing at the end and with the thunder sounds.

I’ll make my facebook music page a little better and I gotta come up with a plan for that. If you want people to see and hear your material, you gotta promote yourself and get the word out.

I’m going to try to think of creative ways. I would like to do a new photoshoot soon so I can make promotional photos and stuff… that’s gonna get worked on. I’ll come up with some ideas.

I kind of want to get myself out there a little better and gonna do all I can. Maybe this is why a very small amount of people support my music ’cause I haven’t been promoting myself that much. I’ll think of something.

Kev

As some of you probably noticed by now in my Pete Seeger tribute, I did a little acapella singing in the beginning of “This Land Is Your Land”. Honestly, I was a little nervous putting that out there ’cause I was worried of the kind of feedback I was gonna get with my singing without an instrument accompanying it. It seems that people seem to be enjoying it. In facebook, it’s gotten several likes and on youtube the video went straight up to about 40 views pretty quickly.

After the positive feedback, I think I’m definitely gonna do more acapella singing. I hardly ever did acapella singing in the past so I decided to give it a try. Thing is, if you can sing okay without an instrument and do it well, then you can sing.

While I think my singing has gotten better, I still have work to do though. The key to singing better is getting the head voice, the buzzing sensation… if you feel that vibration in your head, then you got it. Getting all of that sound out. My goal is to sing high. I would like to try and become a screamer too. This stuff takes practice and hard work. My vocals used to get criticized negatively in the past but these days, I haven’t seen anybody say anything negative about my singing so it’s going good.

Acapella singing is fun so I think I’m gonna do more of it.

Kev

The reason I wanted to change my songwriting direction to a more positive/family friendly direction ’cause I didn’t want to be too obsessed with writing dark and controversial songs. I really wanted to cut back on this stuff and kind of wanted to try something different, ya know? I grew tired of writing dark songs. I wanted to see what kind of reaction I get with the positive songs. I don’t want to get too obsessed with writing dark songs or else people are gonna start accusing me of being satanic, hating god, and life. You get the deal, right? Sometimes my dark material were pretty questionable and people have asked me about them. Do you think it was easy for Black Sabbath to get accepted? No way. Back in the day, Black Sabbath w/Ozzy struggled to get recognition and fame ’cause they scared the shit out of everyone with their music. It took them YEARS for them to be finally accepted in the music industry.

I could continue to write dark songs if I wanted to but I was afraid that people would see me in a wrong way, you know what I mean? Maybe writing dark songs won’t be a problem. Sometimes controversy helps get you more recognition. If the dark songs is what helped me get heard more musically, then maybe I will continue to write dark songs. I will continue to write positive songs too, I’ll mix it up.

Most of my dark songs are purely fictional anyway. They were just horror stories told by song. “Evil Fred” wasn’t the only horror story in a song. There were several others: “The Boneyard”, “The Nightmare Has Begun Today”, and maybe some others I can’t think of them right now.

For now, I just wanna focus on more positive songs.

Kev

Blast from the past!

I got more songs from the past coming soon as well songs like “Mr. Tough Guy”, “Time Bomb”, “The Dark War”, and several others.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld3DoSGPpvk

Kev

I’ve been rehearsing the song, “Evil Fred” all day. Haven’t performed the song in a long time so I need more practice on it. I rewrote the lyrics to the song some so it can sound a little more sense and the re-write is 10x’s darker than the original version. I don’t want to upload this video performance until the vocals are perfect. After performing this song too many times at gigs, I’ve realized that this song is a bit of a challenge for me. I’ve changed the finger picking style of the song around a little bit.

I think it’s amazing that my loyal supporters still like this song to this day. That’s part of why I’m bringing it back. I’m hoping this video could go viral in youtube ’cause the lyrics might be more “controversial”.

My longtime supporters may already know the song but there are so many out there that still haven’t heard it. I’m hoping to put this song out there in a big way.

I know I was gonna stay away from dark & controversial songs but sometimes I can’t help it. Gotta write what comes to my head and give whatever makes the song work. I’ll keep pushing this song out there. I may get tired of it but as long as the fans like it and if that is what it’s gonna take for me to get recognition, I’ll make the song big again.

Kev