I completely understand that bands need to promote themselves to get themselves out there. All that is fine and cool. However, when marketing yourself… you don’t need to be all fancy and special looking, ya know? You don’t need professional band photos. You don’t need to go buying facebook likes or to try to get as many people to join your pages as possible. You don’t need to talk in the third person when marketing yourself. You don’t need a long list of tour listings. You don’t need to be selling merch or try to get people to pay for your live video streaming performances. You don’t need to enter every contest and try to get your fans to vote for you. You don’t need all that to make yourself look good.

As you can see, I never promoted myself that way. Whenever I get a show or written a new song, I’ll just put it out there and see what happens. That’s all you really need to do. I don’t promote myself for self-flattery like so many bands seems to do. I don’t care to be all special when promoting. I know I’m just a local musician and don’t take myself so seriously.

I don’t do music for fame or popularity. I play for myself pretty much, and I also play for those few out there who really do support my music.

I use social networking sites to get honest feedback on my songs. I never force people to pay to listen to them ’cause I always believed that music should be listened to for free. Musicians in social networking sites can be arrogant and selfish animals. When will music be about the fans and not about them? I can tell that musicians can be arrogant and selfish. I try to support other bands as much as I can and don’t seem to get much support in return from some of them.  That’s why it’s sometimes good to only support yourself in music and not worry about supporting other bands.

Bands try to make themselves look like famous people these days. I totally blame that on media and reality TV shows (like American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The Voice, etc.). Bands & musicians think they’re gonna get national fame by pretending to be famous when they’re not. That’s why they do what they do. They think their marketing ways is gonna get them a record contract to either an indie label or major. In my opinion, this kind of marketing is not gonna make you famous. You get famous if you don’t take yourself seriously and just play the music. The fans don’t realize how egotistical these bands are being but sure enough… they’re gonna eat up everything they do and everything they post.

With that being said, the world of social networking in music is pretty whacked.

I would like a lot more people to like my music and to support it sure but I’m not going to shove my music in everyone’s faces. I like to let the music speak on it’s own. If people like it, great. If they hate it, that’s great too. That’s the way to do things, in my opinion. I don’t care to have a lot of fans. It’ll be awesome to have a large following but I’m not worried about it. I just play ’cause it’s what I do and what I love.

To be honest, I can’t stand those bands who are desperate for fame and popularity. I give the most respect to bands who don’t care about fame & popularity — they just want to play and rock out. If fame and popularity is what you do this for then you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons. Who needs fame? Who needs to get signed and make it in the industry? The music industry is a freakin’ joke, anyways.

Kev

There are a lot of bands & artists who mistakenly believe they need to leave their personal lives out of things. Well… not exactly. Being more personal with your life can actually be a good thing. You want to let the people know who you are. Your fans want to get to know you more than just your music. You don’t necessarily have to get too deep and too personal about your life… just simple things like express what you like to do outside of music. Your hobbies and interests.  There are plenty of famous artists out there who do the same thing. They like to talk about other things they like to do other than music.

Here are some perfect examples… Neil Young likes to collect old cars. Zakk Wylde likes to go hunting. Jimmy Page enjoys art & black magic kind of stuff. David Bowie enjoys art and he likes to spend time with family. Lars Ulrich is also a fan of art and he likes to watch movies. Kirk Hammett is a big collector of horror memorabilia. Ted Nugent is a gun collector and he likes to go hunting himself.

You get the idea right?

As a band and artist you also need to be more personal and direct with your fans. Like I previously stated before, you need to reply with everyone who writes to you. When you’re promoting your projects online — you need to sound more personal and direct. Instead of sounding like an automatic spam message… you need to write something that will get fans to respond.

That’s the key here. If you want to get the fans to like you — gotta be more personal and direct. Don’t just promote your music all the time. Interact with your fans & supporters.

Why do you think I post on a blog? Why do you think I’m honest on everything? It’s just my way of getting people to know me other than music and keeping people entertained. If you have a twitter account — don’t just use it to promote your musical projects. Say interesting stuff. Talk about the movies, politics and whatever the hell you freakin’ want! When I post online, I try to be careful not to get too deep into my personal life. I’ll just mostly talk about the things that I like to do other than music.

For example, most of you know that I love to watch movies. Being a huge movie buff is what I am other than a musician. I’m also a bodybuilder and weightlifter. Another favorite hobby of mine other than music is reading books and writing. Photography I like too.

I want to interact with people and get them to know who I am. I don’t want to be looked at as a spam bot when promoting my music, ya know? What I can’t stand are those bands that look like spam bots when promoting their shit.

There’s nothing wrong with getting personal about yourself. People eat this stuff up.

When promoting a gig you don’t want to be a spam bot by posting something like, “Venue here – price – time”, like a lot seem to do… you want to be more personal and direct about your show to get people interested… something like, “Hey guys, I have a show coming up at this (venue) here. Would you come out? Gonna be a great time!”. You get the idea, right?

Being a little personal about yourself is a great thing to do. I won’t talk about my sex life, my financial income, problems in life, and family stuff but the things I like to do are okay. Being more personal with people will help draw more people to your music.

Just something to keep in mind.

Kev

I prefer the DIY approach when it comes to music. It’s better that way. That way you can have total control of your music, your own ideas, and you can be your own boss. There are quite a bit bands & artists out there in local music who mistakenly believe they need to rely on mangers & promoters to get somewhere. The truth is, you don’t need to. There are plenty of successful bands and solo artists out there who have made it to the next level in their career without relying on mangers & promoters. It can be done! You can get a bigger fanbase, get bigger opportunities and go on tours without the use of managers & promoters. You can simply be your own manager & promoter for your band.

When I was gigging in the past, I never relied on any of this stuff. I played on gigs by doing it all myself. I can do it all over again when I get new music written here. When I’m ready to perform live again — I’ll still do it the DIY way. Once you get a manager/promoter doing the stuff for you —  your band is no longer DIY. You’re having this person doing all the work for you.

In my opinion — don’t take this the wrong way, just my humble opinion – I think getting to the next level in your career with a manager/promoter is cheating. It’s almost like winning the lottery and they go, “Hey, here you go… here is free success & fame for ya”.

You’ll get more respect as a musician and as a person if you get yourself there with no help at all. If you rely on managers/promoters… then you don’t know what you’re doing with the marketing/promoting side of things and the booking process. They don’t want to admit it and that’s why some bands/artists get managers/promoters to make themselves look good.

This post is not aimed at any band in particular… I’m just being real here.

You can get success with your music on your own just by working hard, promoting yourself to death and you can manage your own money if you’re good at mathematics. I just think relying on managers/promoters is just the wrong way to do it. I understand you want to move forward and get heard but you can do that on your own. You just got to learn how to do it and do it right. I know plenty of bands & solo artists who have gotten success on their own and they didn’t rely on someone else.

To manage your own band or solo career… it also requires a professional attitude and learning how to talk to the clubs, labels, etc. This post might ruffle some feathers some but it just needed to be said. You can get into a label signing and get yourself into the industry without use of a manager. You just gotta learn how to do this stuff on your own. There are tons of material where you can learn the DIY approach from by reading books, the internet, etc. DIY is the best way. If you have someone else do the work for you — it’ll make you look kind of lazy and you don’t know what you’re doing.

I like giving the most respect to the bands/artists who do the DIY approach. It shows they work extremely hard and shows that they love what they do.

Kev

If you’re a music artist and want to get yourself out there — you have to learn to be honest with yourself and just be yourself. That’s the trick of getting yourself out there. Yes, when you get yourself out there — you’re gonna come across all kinds of negativity and bullcrap in the music scene. Tempers will flare across other musicians, you will get bullied, be made fun of and harassed — best thing to do if you want to move forward in your music is to not care about any of it – the drama. Don’t get into anybody’s drama and just stay out of things. Just screw everybody, and just do what you love to do. Don’t worry about if people don’t like what you say or who you are. The world is not about pleasing everyone.  I’ve always had this attitude for years and still do. If other musicians and people in your music scene don’t like who you are — fuck ’em. You will meet plenty of people who pretend to like you when they don’t really.

Playing music should be for you and you shouldn’t let people bring you down. It’s no secret that too many musicians out there have short tempers. That’s a big part of why I don’t socialize and network with other musicians too much ’cause they can be a bit too crazy.

I’m never giving up my music — doesn’t matter how much negative criticism I get out of it. I love what I do, and I’ll never stop playing.  Just ignore all the negative stuff and focus on the positive. It’s real funny how musicians concentrate on you and worry about how you are when they should be worrying about themselves and their own music. I have been done with music drama for years now. Don’t really enjoy being dragged into it.

Kev

There has been a lot of confusion over my, “How to Write Songs” post previously. There has been quite a bit of response to it. Allow me to clarify some things so you may understand better.

Yes, pretty much all musicians have different ways of writing songs. Even the professional musicians who do this for a living have different ways. However, when I say things like “Songwriting is better when you think of songs in your head” — what I said is true. It’s true that musicians start writing a little bit of a song and then take their time with it. Start writing and finish it until it’s perfect. The point that I was trying to make that most songs have come from people’s heads. Most guitar riffs in rock songs and some of the most famous solos have come from their heads. Yes, they write little bits and put them together while editing them in the studio — I did the same thing with a lot of my own songs. Write little bits here and there and finish the song later. When musicians write — they already have a vision in their head of what they want their song to sound like when they get it on recording.

If you aren’t able to write songs that you hear in your head and you’re just playing random stuff on the instrument until it sounds good — that’s the wrong way to do it. In other words, not being able to get a song off your mind and get it on recording. Some musicians seem to be banging out random stuff and say, “How does this sound, what do you think of this?”. Not good.

Songs do come from the heart and the mind. That’s where most of the great songs in the industry have come from. Especially, the classic rock era. The real way to play music is play whatever comes out. Play with feeling. If you don’t play with feeling then you don’t have what it takes to be a real songwriter.

When I wrote that post, I’ve gotten slammed by some musicians and it turned out to be a controversial post. Some accused me of being selfish and told me, “You shouldn’t tell how others how to write songs just because they don’t write the way you do…” blah blah blah. The thing is, I wasn’t being selfish and wasn’t trying to tell people how to write.

I’m just speaking the reality of songwriting when it comes to the industry.

Think of it this way… have you ever hear a guitar riff idea in your head and or even hear a vocal melody and you want to get it out of you? That’s the way songwriting is done. That’s the point I was trying to make from the beginning. Believe me, I used to write random stuff without thinking them in my head but that’s rushing things and songs will sound like crap if they’re written that way (that’s how amateurs write).

Over the years, I learned to write songs out of my head and songwriting is so much better that way. It’s not me being selfish, I’m only trying to help you become a better songwriter. If I’m getting musicians slamming me about this — then that means, they can’t write like that and they have a lot of learning to do as a musician. Seriously, the world of music is no joke. If you want to enter the world of professional musicians… they’re gonna expect good musicianship. So you gotta know your shit and be ready. If they find that you don’t have the professional songwriting skills… you’re not gonna get anywhere.

Learn to play things from your head. It requires improvisation skills. You don’t necessarily have to learn music theory ’cause there’s a lot of professionals out there that don’t even know it. You just have to have a good ear. There’s no other way around it. Hope, I made myself a little clear.

Kev

There are a lot of bands & solo songwriters out there who would release full length albums on a yearly basis. Out of every album, they would pick like two or 3 songs that they would consider to be “hit singles” for radio airplay or to make professional videos of. There are also some bands out there who don’t care to make “radio friendly singles”, they’re more worried about making good music. So which is more important? Making hit songs that people can never get out of their heads and sing along to or just making art?

I would say the art and the good music is way more important. All the songs I’ve written in the past, I never called any of them hit songs. There is no such thing as hit songs in the world of local music. I’m more worried about writing the best songs possible. If other people happen to call certain songs a “hit song” and would consider radio friendly, that’s all fine and good. That’s how you want to do it. You don’t want to call any of your songs “hit songs”. You want to let the people do that. You can tell if your song is a hit by the popularity of the people and the  big reception the song gets. You never go, “Oh, this song would make a good radio single, lets put it on”. You want to let your fanbase pick the songs that deserve popularity. You know your song will be a hit if it gets a lot of plays online (I mean a lot of them at least somewhere around 10,000 – 1,000,000 plays or over — same with videos — or if the song gets a large audience reaction from your shows).

Other than that, I’m not too worried about writing radio friendly music like a lot of bands seem to be obsessed with. I just want to make music, ya know? Put it out there, and see what happens. Let the music speak on it’s own. I understand that bands want to make radio friendly music just to get somewhere with it and they know that hit songs help make the money but if you focus more on the art part of songwriting — the people will still support your music as long as they’re good.

Don’t worry about writing hits. You want to make all of your songs great. I don’t care to get radio airplay or make official videos. I just want to make good music that people can enjoy.

Speaking of new music, I should start writing again soon. I’ve read enough poetry so I should start writing poems/lyrics as soon as possible. I want to make new music this summer. They will probably end up being mostly topical and political songs.

Kev

You gotta love the way local musicians post in social networking sites. Musicians who have their own personal pages and I’m not talking about their band pages — their personal pages. The way these musicians post in their pages is absolutely crazy (not naming names). A lot of them would have somewhere around 2,000 to 5,000 friends or way more. They would add all kinds of random people and then they would pretend to have a huge “fanbase”. They would also use their personal pages to promote all kinds of band stuff when their personal page is originally used to be more “personal” with stuff. I’m noticing a lot of musicians don’t reply to people that write to them ’cause these musicians think they’re too good for people to get a response. There are some musicians that do respond to people but when they do it’s usually either a thank you or a thumbs up to their facebook posting, not much of a response. So basically, what I’m saying here is that a lot of musicians like to jerk themselves off with their self importance. It’s because they think they have too much “success” with their music and then they have a celebrity-like attitude about it. It’s pretty ridiculous, all of it. They can be pretty arrogant people.

I’ve never had that attitude. I’m not a celebrity, a star, or a “legend” like what some people mistakenly call me. I’m just a simple human being enjoying life and playing the music. That’s the kind of attitude you should have. Leave your ego at the door. Be approachable and humble to people. I never had that attitude where I pretend to be “popular”. I never acted like I am the better musician than others ’cause I know there are musicians out there that are way more talented than me. I never acted like I play so great ’cause in fact, I’ll have to admit that I’m not that great musically — I play ’cause I love it. Playing music is what I do. I don’t do it for popularity or fame like so many local musicians get so obsessed with… I don’t care for that kind of dream.

If I have a large fan following, great… if I have no fans, that’s great too.

If you’re getting so much success, great opportunities and other accolades with your music… congratulations… I’m happy for ya but you don’t need to act like a big shot about it. It doesn’t make you any bigger — you’re still a local musician like me.

On the internet… I’m willing to respond to everyone who writes to me. I won’t wait to respond to people with silly, “Q&A” sessions. I’ll respond to people personally all the time. I won’t make silly youtube videos or facebook postings with a bunch of nonsense “thank you notes”, thanking fans for the support. This isn’t the freakin’ Oscar awards. I won’t respond to people to promote my music with them, I’ll respond to them directly — treating them like real people.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried writing to so many other local musicians and got no response back ’cause they think they’re too good for you to get a response from them.

We’re unsigned musicians, ya know? That’s all we are so stop taking yourselves so seriously.

Kev

It is amazing to me how some musicians write songs. I look at musicians in facebook on how they write original songs and other musician forums — I notice a lot of them have different processes of songwriting. Some musicians will play their instrument and will keep playing stuff until they find stuff that are good. Some will even go as far as writing stuff down on paper like chords and tab to write songs. Some will even write little by little and later put all the pieces together to make it a full song. People have different ways of songwriting.

If you write songs the same way described in the above paragraph then I believe you are doing it wrong.

The real and true way of songwriting… is writing from the heart. If you hear a song in your head that’s when you need to get it out of you and get it on recording right away. People mistakenly believe that you should start writing songs… people miss hearing songs from you or people will start giving you musical ideas. In my opinion, songwriting doesn’t work that way.

You see. Your mind is like an FM radio. You know how when you listen to an FM radio in your car and a song plays one after another? Well your mind is pretty much the same thing. You’re always hearing original music in your head, all the time. That’s why you see musicians with mini-recorders or if you would hear them humming an unknown song so they won’t forget it when they are not at home. It’s their way of not forgetting the song when they get back home to record it.

That’s how songwriting is done. Playing whatever comes to your mind. If you’re the type of songwriter that say things like, “I think I’m gonna record some music”… then you’re not a real musician. You record right away when you get a song that comes to your head. You hear an original song in your head and it will never leave you — you can forget it easily if you don’t record it at all. You start writing songs when you’re absolutely ready to write. To be able to play songs of what you hear in your head: it requires a good ear, music theory and improvisation skills.

You don’t take your time with the song and write it little by little. You record the whole song from start to finish. If you can do all that, you’re an actual musician, and know exactly what you’re doing.

That’s how I always recorded music. When I hit that record button, I don’t plan ahead. I don’t go, “Oh, I have a pretty good idea already” and got a few good riff ideas — I don’t do that. When you record, you never know what you’re going to come up with. You let your fingers and your mind do the talking. As soon as you hit that record button — away you go. Your mind is pretty unpredictable.

People want me to write new songs. While it’s flattering, I can’t just pick up the guitar and write random stuff ’cause people want me to. You write when the inspiration hits ya. When you hear new songs playing in your head, that’s when you want to write. I hope I made myself clear pretty good. I try to write new songs but inspiration hasn’t hit me yet. I wouldn’t exactly call it a writers block, however. It’s just that you’re not ready to go.

That’s why so many musicians and singer/songwriters out there are great songwriters ’cause most of their songs come from their minds. If you don’t write like that, chances are, your songs are not gonna be great.

When inspiration hits me, that’s when I’ll start writing like crazy again. For right now, I just don’t have the inspiration for it yet but give it time, it’ll come to me before you know it.

Kev

Over the years in local music, I’ve seen some pretty crazy things with other bands and solo performers. I really do believe some music artists take themselves way too seriously. In this post, I’m about to explain what you do need and don’t need when performing on the stage whether it will be a full band or just an acoustic performer.

What you don’t need on the performing stage…

• Props & gimmicks – You don’t need stage props. Get rid of ’em. You don’t need ridiculous smoke machines or any of those silly DJ/stage lighting. You don’t need microphone scarfs.  You don’t need ridiculous banners with your band name on it to hang up behind you, don’t need scrims, and you don’t need your band name on the drum head either. Bands use all kinds of silly props on stage. It’s nuts. On top of that, I find smoke machines pretty silly and too distracting. I played a show where it had a smoke machine once and I almost wanted to stop my performance because of it. I understand that smoke machines try to make you look cool and badass but the smoke distracts your playing.
  
• Image – You don’t need to look all pretty and special on stage. The women don’t need to be wearing make-up and they don’t need to make their hair look all gorgeous when I’m sure they already do look gorgeous the way they are. As for the male musicians, they don’t need to be looking all that pretty on stage either. Men don’t need to be wearing make up either. Men have worn makeup on stage and even eye-liner. As for the tattoos, that’s alright ’cause you can’t do anything about the tattoos and that’s who they are but you don’t really need to worry about how good you look at all. If you don’t take your looks seriously, the audience will tell you if you look good or not. Don’t force the looks onto you.
• Strict guidelines of clothing or fashion – I’ve seen bands who will wear nothing but a suit and tie at all of their shows. I’ve seen bands who will wear nothing but black leather. I’ve seen punk rock and glam bands who will wear the goofiest clothing ever. There are tons of rock bands and in different genres that wear the strangest clothing on stage. I understand that you need to dress to fit the genre of music you play but in reality, it doesn’t matter. I never cared what I wore on stage. I’ll just wear what I have on now. The only times you want to play dress up is when you play a wedding reception or a school dance party. Those are the times when you want to play dress up occasionally but other than that, you don’t need to play dress-up in local music. This isn’t WWE or the circus.
• A lot of gear on stage – I’ve seen plenty of bands who brings out all kinds of gear on stage, and when I see this, I’m like, WTF are all these toys for? They would bring out so much shit. More than just amps and a bunch of pedals. Quite honestly, I really think some bands brings all kinds of gear on stage just for show. Being show offs, nothing more. Especially the really expensive gear. All you need is a few guitars, a few amps, a few guitar pedals. They don’t really need to be expensive equipment either. Being a local musician you don’t really need to be buying $5,000 – $10,000 equipment when you can really get good enough sounding gear for the stage with a budget around $300 – $700.
• Long speeches or stories in between songs – I absolutely hate when bands & artists do this. Ramble on and on and on and on… please. A lot of musicians would like to tell the story behind the song. Even worse toward the end of their sets, they would take a long time introducing each band members and a bunch of thank you’s. You don’t need to take up so much time explaining yourself. All you need to do is just say the name of the song and just play. I remember when the Ramones were around, they never talked in between songs on stage. They played one song after another with no breaks. We need more bands like that. If you want to tell a story behind a song and how you wrote it, just make it brief and quick. You don’t need to make it into a 10 – 15 minute speech.
• Dancing girls who are not musically talented – I’ve seen plenty of bands where they have hired girls dance on stage with them, and they actually consider them as a member of a band even if they are not musically talented at all. They don’t even sing or anything. They just dance on stage for show. Quite frankly, this could be the only reason people come to see your shows, and not for the actual music ’cause of those hot dancing women you hired. You don’t need girls to dance on stage with you if you want people to appreciate your music. If you have dancing girls at your shows, then you probably suck musically.
• Drinking on stage – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed this over the years. Too many drunken bands out there! You don’t need to get wasted to put on a good show. Seriously, guys. Please consider this. Try playing on stage sober for once. I’m pretty sure you would be able to play a lot better!!!
• Having an attitude on stage – Don’t swear too much. Don’t say too many offensive things. Don’t respond to the hecklers. Leave your ego at the door. Shut up and play the music!
• Uncut guitar strings on stage – I’ve talked about this before and still stand by it too. I also, still see this going on. Whether you’re a guitar player or bass player, bands just don’t care to cut their strings. They just let ’em hang out or curl them on the headstock of their instrument. You don’t need to be looking like that as it can be annoying and it also kind of shows that you don’t know much about guitar when you think you do. You must cut your strings. It should only take a few seconds to grab a pair of wire cutters and cut the tip of your strings on the headstock. Not only that you look silly with uncut strings, it’s also dangerous as the strings can easily poke someone in the eye. I believe these bands don’t cut their strings ’cause it’s their way of trying to look cool and badass. It’s just rude and disrespectful. Don’t do it.
• Hiring expensive videographers or photographers – It’s cool that you want better quality videos of your live performances and live photos but you don’t need to be hiring overpriced videographers or photographers. Since technology has gotten so popular these days, you should let the fans take the pics of you and record your gigs with their mobile phones instead — a lot of that stuff seems to be going on these days. Fan photos and fan made videos may not be as good quality but that stuff is cheaper too.

What you do need on the performing stage…

• Good music – After all of the above, all you really need is a good set of songs and performing them live on the stage. You don’t need the stuff explained above. All you need is your instrument and the songs you need to perform them. People won’t care about the garbage I explained above… they just want to hear the music. It’s just as simple as that, folks!
  

Enjoy!

Kev

A lot of bands & solo artists struggle to get successful in music. They try to promote themselves the best they can, and they try to play everywhere they can but… they still seem to get lack of support. Only very few fans come out to their gigs or only few support their music. Why is this you may ask? Since I have been a part of local music for years, I have came up with another observation about things. It seems that the only way for bands & artists to get successful these days is that you must make music that alcoholics can dance to. That’s pretty much it, really. That’s how all those successful and established bands get so successful & huge. They make pop music that the drunks can dance to. The reason why bars & clubs have a lot of local bands play is because they know that drinking alcohol is so popular. Pretty much everybody out there seems to be into the drinking. That’s all people want to do these days, and that’s what pulls people in the bars & clubs to see bands is ’cause of the alcohol. This is also a huge part of why cover bands & original country bands get so big than the rock bands ’cause this kind of music is what pulls the drunks in to get their dance on.

The bands that mostly struggle are the original rock n’ roll bands and the songwriters who just want to make art. The ones who don’t care to make “pop” music; those are the acts that people ignore. When bands & artists struggle to get recognition that doesn’t basically mean, they suck. Unpopular bands & artists can be pretty amazingly talented, I just wish people would pay more attention to them but they won’t. All people seem to care about is wanting to get hammered so they can get their dance on. So they look for bands who plays good originals or cover music that gets people dancing.

When I make music, I don’t care to make pop songs that people can dance to. I’m one of the ones who just want to make music; I’m about the art. The songs is what should be all about. Once again, there are venues around here that don’t involve alcohol like cafes, bookstores, etc. You just gotta find ’em. It’ll be nice if people can appreciate music for the music, not for the alcohol and dancing but whatever… people are whacked when it comes to music. Bars are all over the Capital Region and they have bands play in almost all of them ’cause they know that these “dance” bands helps make them the big money.

It’s real sad that’s all people want to do is get hammered while watching local music but what are ya gonna do? There are alcoholics all over the area. It is what it is. There are not too many non-drinkers out there and I’m one of them. I think getting drunk is fuckin’ stupid, in my opinion. Nothing cool about it. It’s overrated. It doesn’t make you a cool person. You can still have fun and not drinking anything. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to have a few beers once in a blue moon but I don’t get drunk.

Going to bars are lame. I don’t really enjoy the bar scene. I can have a great time and have a fuckin’ blast by not drinking anything at all, ya know? I don’t agree with everybody drinking all the time but it’s a free country, can’t do anything about it. That’s what the media and advertisements do. They draw everybody into drinking heavily. When I don’t drink, people give me a “WTF” look and say I’m crazy for not drinking anything but mostly drink water. People do look disappointed when I refuse a drink offer from them but whatever, ya know? The world doesn’t have to revolve around drinking. I like staying sober and proud of it.

I used to get drunk quite often when I was younger but a lot of bad experiences with it so that’s why I gave it up. Plus, it’s not healthy for the bodybuilding. Building muscle and alcohol don’t mix. Bodybuilders think they can drink alcohol all they want to while lifting weights but it don’t work that way. You can still build muscle mass while drinking but you’re still gonna look fat and flabby as hell.

Drinking is overrated, it really is. That’s why you see bars, liquor stores, beverage centers, etc. all over your town.

Kev