January DownTown Newsletter
Rock’n’Roll spoken here!
Happy 2017!! Here’s to a better year than the last one! 2017 started in a Mercury Retrograde. We had to get new phones thanks to the planet of communication’s havoc. One minute they were working fine, and the next one they weren’t working at all. Such is life when dealing with a Mercury Retrograde. The good news is that’s all over and it’s time to move forward again. Just in time for my birthday!!
NEW NEWS…2017 is off to a rockin’ start. In the last newsletter of 2016 we mentioned there was talk of a European release for the Rock’n’Roll Romantic CD in 2017. We’re happy to confirm that we’ve agreed to a deal with a UK Label. We don’t want to steal their thunder, but needless to say, more to follow!!
DownTown Mystic has donated the song “Way To Know” to the Rock Against Hate Project as part of its 68 song Digital Compilation to raise awareness and money for Planned Parenthood and The Trevor Project. $10 for 68 songs is a pretty good deal and all the money will go to good causes. Here’s a link for more info: http://wherenjrocklives.com/rah.html
Whenever January come around it seems like a good idea to look back on the year that just ended. That’s what we’re going to do starting with this newsletter. We’ll finish our review in a couple of weeks with a 2nd January Newsletter.
2016 In Review: Part 1
As crazy as 2016 was for the world in general, it turned out to be a very good year for DownTown Mystic. As the year started, I had this feeling that something “big” was coming. I don’t know why that was, but I could definitely feel it. In 2015 I was focusing on a strategy to release the Rock’n’Roll Romantic album. It felt like the absolute right time for it, but I decided to take a long term approach, promoting digital releases such as singles and EPs to build up to the release of the album.
Now that 2016 was here, I knew I would have to finally release the album. In January, “Way To Know” was released as a single in Europe. It had been released there in December but an error had caused there to be a problem with the upload to Radio. Luckily, I caught it and had the problem remedied with a new release in January. “Way To Know” steadily climbed the Official European Indie Music Chart, eventually making it all the way to #1. In late January, the video single She Said, She Said, celebrating the 50 year anniversary of The Beatles REVOLVER album, was released exclusively on YouTube.
A pattern of doing 2 releases at the same time was starting to develop. With the release of "She Said, She Said" as a single, a spring release for Rock’n’Roll Romantic was scheduled. Rock’n’Roll Romantic would be the 1st full album since the self-titled DownTown Mystic album in 2013. Being that it was going on 3 years since DownTown Mystic had been at Americana Radio, there was a worry that Rock’n’Roll Romantic might not be Americana enough for the format. It was around this time that a new idea popped up.
The new idea was to create and release something that would be more conducive to the format. That release would become the DownTown Nashville EP. The original idea I had was about creating a CD to send to the music industry people (A&R, Managers, Publishers, etc.) in Nashville. I had some songs plugged down there and with the sound of modern country going more rock & pop, I wanted to introduce the music of DownTown Mystic for publishing purposes. But the idea soon morphed into creating a CD release at Americana Radio. This would create a story to interest the music people in Nashville and set up the release for Rock’n’Roll Romantic.
I had recorded a bunch of songs with Steve Holley & Paul Page (the rhythm section from Ian Hunter’s Rant Band), along with additional help from guitar ace Lance Doss, that were inspired by the many influences I had gotten over the years from the music made in Nashville. The more the idea for the release began to become clearer to me, the more I wanted to make a statement with it. I needed something iconic for the cover art, something that everyone in Nashville would immediately recognize. Then I realized that I had the perfect cover photo from my last visit to Nashville—the famed Oak Bar Men’s Room in the Hermitage Hotel! It was perfect! I had visited the Men’s Room one afternoon when it was empty and was busy taking photos when the cleaning lady showed up. She was nice enough to take one of me since my selfies weren’t too good.
Now that I had the cover, I wanted to be able to fit the song lyrics on the inside, but that meant I would only be able to fit 5 or 6 songs. That made an album out of the question and the DownTown Nashville EP was created. I decided to release the EP digitally, but only print up 100 CDs, and make them for RADIO ONLY. This would tie in nicely with the visual on the cover (my graphics guy Larry Bentley did an amazing job!). Meanwhile, the single "Way To Know" kept gaining momentum, climbing the Top 20 in Europe.
In early March I mailed out less than half of the cds to less than half of the Americana radio panel. For the 1st time I would be promoting the release by myself and I decided to just concentrate on the stations that had played me before, plus some of the stations that weren’t there 3 years ago with the DownTown Mystic release. I had scheduled the DownTown Nashville EP for release on the 1st day of spring—at the Vernal Equinox.
On March 21st DownTown Nashville debuted in the Top 5 Most Added on the AMA Chart…the 1st time that had happened! In just 2 weeks it broke into the Top 100, something that took the DownTown Mystic release from 2013, 8 weeks to achieve. 2 weeks later it was at #60, blowing by the 2013 release, which took 12 weeks to reach #65!! DownTown Nashville would reach #53 and stay on the AMA Chart for 7 months, becoming DownTown Mystic’s best release at the format yet. DownTown Nashville would also be #1 on the AirPlay Direct Top 50 Global Radio Rock Albums Chart in March and April, beating the mark set by the DownTown Mystic on E Street EP the year before as DownTown Mystic’s most downloaded release on APD!
Meanwhile, "Way To Know" was about to start a 3 week run at #1 in Europe. It was only April and the year was rockin’ in a big way and there was still the matter of releasing Rock’n’Roll Romantic.
To be continued…
SOCIAL MEDIA…Stay up to date with DownTown Mystic via Social Media. Hook up with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shalaman and https://twitter.com/DTMysticBand
Until next time…Here's to a very ROCKIN’ 2017!!
PS. Sha-La Music has a new website: http://sha-lamusic.com
DownTown Mystic Website: http://downtownmystic.net/
LIKE us on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/DownTown-Mystic/33506110940
DownTown Mystic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/DowntownMystic1
DownTown Mystic on SPOTIFY: https://play.spotify.com/artist/19VD3b7cxZuylUNNUP9sdm
AirPlay Direct: http://www.airplaydirect.com/music/DownTownMystic/
ReverbNation: http://www.reverbnation.com/downtownmystic
NumberOneMusic: http://www.numberonemusic.com/downtownmystic
