Hey, friends.
Another summer day, and I'm feeling relentless.
No, not relentless. I'm feeling "Alexa Shoen singing Jack Johnson in full makeup with three cameras on her" relentless.
That's right, angels. Mars is out of retrograde* and I'm headed back into the studio to start recording tunes once again. As soon as next week, actually. And definitely all fall.
The longtime #entrylevelboss crew will remember back fondly to last year, when I crowdfunded The Human Jukebox Project and let people randomly vote on songs that I then made into an album and toured around Europe and America.
The whole thing turned out pretty well.
But that was last year. And it's already July. And now it is time to begin again.
And while the #entrylevelboss newsletter is sadly not an all-access VH1 reality series of my musical exploits, you know that I always do my absolute darndest to keep you in the loop and tell you what I'm getting up to along the way.
Why? The same reason I always tell you what I'm getting up to, really, whether it's music-related or not.
It's to remind you, with complete transparency, that the only person who's giving me permission to do any of this is me.
The only person who's organizing any of this is me.
The only person who's in charge of my career is.... you guessed it....
To anyone who self-classifies as an aspiring creative, and to anyone who thinks there must be a genetic difference between the glossy magazine people and whatever you secretly wish you were doing with your life:
The only thing to do, really, is just make a decision about what you want to accomplish. Figure out where you're going to get the money, if you even need any. Make a list of what needs to get done. And then, if you feel like it, go do it.
And for me, this month, that meant I decided it's about time to record a new EP of original music.
And so I called a singer-songwriter friend who I knew would have a recommendation on studio spaces around town. And I went out to see that new basement recording studio in northeast Berlin.
It means meeting and feeling out a new producer and seeing if--budget-wise and vibe-wise--it was going to be a good fit to start listening to my song ideas and creating arrangements.
It means randomly stopping what I'm doing to write down a couple song lyrics in a new Note on my iPhone.
It means fielding emails from my musicians, and coordinating their schedules with the studio schedules. And asking my bass player if he will find a drummer he prefers working with, instead of me chasing down someone totally random.
And yes, I do occasionally feel like Eminem in 8-Mile when he's like, listening to beats on the subway with his game face on.
But mostly I just feel... like I have a relentless, self-imposed to-do list.
Because, when you decide to build anything--whether it's a career, a song, a business, an event, whatever--you set your own schedule.
And then, as they say in England, you just crack on with it.
Big love,
Alexa
PS: Want to hear some of my tunes? Find me on Spotify, SoundCloud, iTunes, or Bandcamp.
PPS: And while you're on Spotify, please follow me on my artist page! I need a couple more Follows to get verified, and then I can get control of my own page and release all my rockin' playlists, etc...