Silly me.

It finally happened, after almost a year of updating two websites, having two FTP log-ins...for a short time janapochop.com looked a lot like susangibson.com. Except without graphics. I'm kind of amazed it hadn't happened until now, what with two index.html files floating around and easily mistaken for each other. I finally get to use this photo, though: Luckily it was easily fixed and as popular as I wish my blog was, no one probably even noticed. Carry on! I'm going to see Imogen Heap tonight. More on that later.

Austin City Flippin' Limits!!!!

Ok. So I grew up on PBS and after I got into playing guitar at age 11 I grew up on Austin City Limits. One of the draws of working at PBS/KNME-TV in college was that they aired ACL, even though our station had nothing to do at all with the filming of it. Something about the mystique of that show stuck with me. Mary Chapin Carpenter has been on it quite a bit, which was my big harbinger of coolness back in the day...and of course everyone from Johnny Cash to The Dixie Chicks to Bonnie Raitt to John Prine to Alison Krauss etc. etc. has graced that stage. I own a coffee table book about ACL for crying out loud. Some people came prepped with chairs and reading material. So I was pretty stoked when we got the chance to see a taping yesterday for Band of Heathens. There's a process you go through to get in, and since I work 8 jobs but none of them have a precise schedule I was free to stand in the 106 degree heat outside KLRU at 4 PM to snag a couple of numbers for Katie and I. The numbers allowed us to come back that night and they let us in the studio until they ran out of room. We made it in no problem and I spent the night gaping at that famous stage. In line! Happy! It is pretty much exactly like it looks on TV. There's the skyline backdrop, the trees (are those fake? I always assumed), the piano on right side of the stage. During the taping they named just a few of the people who have played that piano...Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino...crazy the amount of history. The ACL studio will be moving to a new location downtown soon, so I'm thrilled I got in to see this stage before it shifts locations. I'm sure the new one will be awesome, but I'm a little stuck on nostalgia with things like this. The most amusing part of the evening was that we were to turn off our phones for the taping, and in fact have them off in the building completely. But of course I can't stop Twittering things, especially things as cool as this, so I tweeted a photo of the stage before anything started and then turned my phone off. Afterward I checked my replies and the producer of Austin City Limits had tweeted, "You are so busted." Hehheh! Of course they have a search set up for ACL stuff. Too funny. I told her when I play their show I will tweet from the stage. She said no one had done that yet, so I hope no one does until...you know...2020, when I might get my shot. Anyway, the power of social media at work: proven. Famous skyline! MCC with the same famous skyline! Wee!

Days off are expensive.

Since I spend so much time trying to get the exact right shot for documenting things, as evidenced by the photo above, I splurged today on our day off in Parker, Colorado. (Actually that shot is evidence that I drop stuff in the wheel well while driving and have to contort myself in my seat to get it...anyway). When we were in Missoula, Susan was interviewed for the Montanan. Editor Brianne and crew were great and they introduced me to the joys of the Flip video camera. They filmed the sit-down interview as well as a walk-around campus and I was enchanted by the tiny gadget. When I researched them and found out they have an HD model and they don't break the bank...well...let's just say the boss indulged me by letting me stop at Best Buy today. She's such a gadget enabler. Pretty excited to road test it! I'll get my chance because after one more day in Parker, we'll jet for a set of gigs in Cuchara CO, Taos NM, Lubbock, Amarillo, and San Antonio. And then this month of touring will be done. Not sure what my land legs will look like...probably wobbly.

The iPhone as a Songwriting Tool

Ok I'll stop the iPhone love gush one of these days but I've had mine less than a week so this is allowed. Here's why this thing and all it's magical little apps you can download are awesome. Today I'm working on a new song... 1) I pull up some words I had jotted in the notes section this week. None of them actually got used this round but oh well. 2) I emailed some buddies from the phone to fact check a scenario for me...as in, "This line makes sense, right guys?" Jamie nearly responded with a spreadsheet and graph because she's so on it (she's an editor). They said I was in the affirmative. Phew. 3). I use Biblical references sometimes. So I pulled up the app that contains every version of the Bible...in several languages even. Did a content search of the whole thing and pulled up a story about Joshua to make sure I had it right. 4). Then I downloaded a rhyming dictionary app to get some help. 5). Then I decided to take a photo of my large piece of paper and blog it. All from the phone. The only reason I left my bed was to get cereal. Thank you Apple. But you don't get royalties. Yet. Blogged from Outerspace

Neither epidemic nor riot...

This week is flying by. The music school life is hoppin' and while Susan is off gigging in Atlanta and writing in Nashville, I have a lot of business stuff to attend to back here...like designing posters, for instance. And making sure they get to the right venues. And making contracts for upcoming gigs. My favorite line from an old contract we pulled out is, "if the Artist is unable to perform as required by this contract because of acts of God, strikes, illness, riots, epidemics, or accidents, they shall not be in breach...". It's nice to know we have an out if there's an ebola outbreak or perhaps a riot over who gets the last hoodie. In other news I welcomed a new iPhone into my life and I'm not quite sure what existed before it. Truly a useful tool, truly a good investment, truly going to make me a good booking agent in training, among other things. I think my business card would say: "Jana Pochop: In Training" for the next 60 years, if I had a really honest one printed up. Except I'm an expert at mailing posters.

Clean Clothes

Won't some aspartame-filled diet cola product sponsor me?? Come on. Anyway, greetings from the laundromat. It's kind of shocking how wifi'd up most places are these days. I get internet at home, at Red Leaf, in the merch van, at venues, and while doing my laundry. I get personally affronted when there isn't wifi, or when it's not free. Maybe I need to unplug. There's not much bloggage because there's not much to report beyond the usual routine. I'm still getting up early when I can, unless I roll into town at 4 AM like I did Sunday night. That would be madness, though it might invoke some interesting lyrics that would be unreadable the next day. As always, 2009 promises to be a year of big change and I hope, big progress. 2008 was definitely that. And here we go getting all year-end sappy. I had better put my clothes in the dryer.

Live from Tomball, TX

Susan Gibson and Shelley King are songswapping at Main Street Crossing in Tomball, TX rightthisveryminute, and Susan just told the crowd that I had already probably blogged about them.  So I took that as a challenge and I plan to show this to her when they take their set break.  BOOYAH, Suz. She's actually singing the song we co-wrote together right now.  :) And the show is great!

Hello, Charleston

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not aware, there is a GAS CRISIS. From Georgia to North Carolina to Tennessee to wherever the heck we are right now, pumps are covered in plastic bags and cars are lined up out onto the street when a gas station is actually open. It's kinda of creepy. We actually filled up in South Carolina today where diesel was cheaper than gas, and Susan paid the lowest diesel price she's paid since March. Meanwhile cars were lined up for gas at $4.09 a gallon. Weird. Luckily, I have my two souvenir piggy banks on the dash for good luck. I am transferring Susan's Outlook files from her PC onto her Mac...more nerdiness in the van. Might as well be comfortable doing it, right? Gig tonight in Charleston!! Might be the last one...Baton Rouge is a bit up in the air at the moment. We might be back in Texas sooner than we thought. It's still a long haul from South Carolina to Austin, though.

Hello Mississippi

We just crossed over the Mighty Mississippi River...we're in Vicksburg and again, THANKS TO THE POWER OF THE SHOTGUN SEAT INTERNET, we reserved a room in Jackson for the night. The Boss took this photo of the Merch Girl hard at work on two laptops. Yes, we had a situation that required a PC and Mac. They got along well.

Trials of the CAPTCHA

(This is a pretty tongue-in-cheek essay about what a musician has to go through to be all networky on Myspace these days, all for the sake of anti-spam safeguards. Please don't take it too seriously...because I certainly don't). Ok, so I'll own up. I spend a lot of time on Myspace. I prefer to think of it as "networking" and "discovering new artists" rather than wasting time...and it can suck you in. You find a great deal of neat people and music, and as is now the vernacular, you want to "friend them." And then maybe you want to leave a comment. Innocent enough. Except I guess evil comment-making robots have taken over the internet, so Myspace (and a great number of other sites that allow commenting and the like) now require you to sometimes type in a CAPTCHA to prove you are a real person. In fact (nerd alert), CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" (thanks, Wikipedia). Wow. Of course. So when you're up late at night, maybe like I was, deciding to friend some people because you like their tunes, and did I mention it's late and you had a long day with a 3 hour gig and then maybe you saw your friend's band play and it's...late? So here's how it goes for me, and why the CAPTCHA probably needs to die. (Note: I don't know how real CAPTCHAs are made so just bear with my lame examples). First time...an annoying string of letters, usually readable: I will occasionally screw this up. Maybe a "J" looks like an "I", or something. So it spits out another CAPTCHA at me to try again: For whatever reason, I swear it's always longer and slightly more askew. This skyrockets the chance that I will type this one in wrong, too. Sure enough I screw up, and now my humanness is in question. Try again: WHAT. Instead of the CAPTCHA machine thinking, "Wow, this might indeed be a human but a slow one...maybe we should lighten up," we inevitably get an even longer one with twisted letters and symbols that don't exist on a keyboard. At this point I get annoyed and bang out something approximate. I just want to comment on Katie's wall that her new cat photo is cute. That's all I want to do! Next: Oh that's nice. In a fit, I probably type something like, "HJA592QJAJDJ34SDJ4224FJ#)$*@)#*$@." Because that will fix it. Now the CAPTCHA wants to play games. Right. So I guess Katie will never know her cat is cute. Not due to me, anyway. And that Indistrial-Folk-Punk band from Glasgow I wanted to friend? Didn't happen. I hope you're happy, CAPTCHA. You have denied my humanity.

Live Webcast on Sunday - from San Antonio!

Y'all -- I'll be sprinting to lovely Leon Springs (near San Antone) this Sunday to feature at the Scenic Loop Cafe open stage run by my lovely and talented Life's A Song workshop roomie Kelli King (see? I told you we workshoppers travel in packs). The whole shebang gets webcast every week from Kelli's site and you can log in around 6 PM Texas time on Sunday the 9th to see moi...but it all starts at 4 PM so log in early, grab some popcorn, and hang out. You can even chat with us...I plan on bringing my laptop and being a tech-nerd, too. I know, shocking. Wild West Webcast: j.Po onstage Sunday, March 9 at 6 PM (that's 5 PM if you live in New Mexico. Mom.)

Thank you, technology.

My usual meeting style. Yesterday was face-to-face breakfast meeting time with Josh, or what I like to call "The 2nd Annual Sol Bourn Records Christmas Party," haha. We had a 2007 wrap up meeting by phone earlier this month, but not surprisingly the shape of 2008 has already changed within the last couple of weeks, so we were excitedly thinking ahead as well as reflecting over our bagels and fruit. As Josh said, it's cool to think that in 6 months we'll have an official business, and Sol Bourn will have LLC written after it, or whatever it will be (can you tell one of the things on our docket is researching this whole thing?) I was just thinking it is amazing that this even works on a logistical level. Twenty years ago we'd have to plan our long distance, across-state-lines meetings to a certain time and make sure we were both around our landlines to answer them. Documents would have to be snail mailed instead of saved as PDFs or emailed. We'd have about 45,000 fewer contacts than we do because we've met a lot of cool people through the wonders of social networking on the internet. It probably wouldn't work to be in different cities without all of these awesome tools at our fingertips. Now we Twitter and Jott and blog and upload documents to Zoho and check our Google calendars. Pretty amazing. But really, nothing beats an in-person chat...with all of the technology around us, it only facilitates the real life stuff, never replaces. That's a good thing. It'll keep Sol Bourn in business for years to come.

Community Online and Offline

Jana, Josh, and Kina I had a really awesome warm fuzzy gig Thursday night at Club 115 downtown. I got to songswap (and meet, for the first time) Kina Grannis; she just moved here from California. Austin is such a town of transplants, but I think that's what makes it happy to live in. People aren't very involved in geography or customs here, so we can all just get down to the business of making music. Kina has wonderful songs and a powerful voice...she'll fit right in here. Kalu James was kind of our herder for the evening...he got us all booked and onstage at the appointed time and no one had to be booted out for inappropriate behavior. Always a concern when you book me, folks. JUST KIDDING. Kalu hails from Nigeria by way of Rochester, New York. See what I mean about transplants? His voice will knock you on your butt. No, I did not drink anything to obtain said warm fuzzies, that's water. Josh Britt swapped songs with Elizabeth Hobbs...go to Josh's Myspace page and listen to "The Hatchet." It is my favorite song ever, and you should hear it. Elizabeth is full of totally clever lyrics and gorgeous voice to go along with it. I am slightly reminded of Lisa Loeb when I hear her, and that's a compliment from my camp. Camp Loeb. Or something. Have you listened to Josh yet? DO IT. Kalu then swapped with Miguel Briones...which, if you compare their styles...is a really interesting combination. Both being really powerful voices to the stage in very different ways. That's the joy of these collective songswap nights...it's like getting a scoop of butter pecan WITH your mint chocolate chip, or whatever tingles your sweet tooth. And I am piecing together, as we have nights like these, that the point of all of these online communities like Myspace and Facebook and Twitter and Flickr and whatever...the point of them all is to share and bring people together in this Brave New World of technology. I think somewhere along the line people got kind of stuck at home at their computers, playing round 87 of Minesweeper, and got really lonely. So all of these social networking tools are not made to reject this new way of life, but to make it better. And then the obvious continuation of that is...apply it to the OFFLINE life. We all still have those, right? Gather according to interests. Educate each other. Build each other up. The more your friends succeed the better off your world is. I feel that connection with all these fine songwriters. We gripe about the perils of finding paying gigs and we swap stories about flakey booking people, but we also find encouragement and strength when we all do what we love to do...together. So thanks, Kalu-Josh-Miguel-Elizabeth-Kina! I'm glad you're in my offline world...and that you accepted me as a Myspace friend. ;)

My Heart is all a'Twitter

Not like you need another way to keep up with me. Isn't a calendar of all my musical engagements, a Myspace to comment your heart out, a Flickr photo pool of things that happened, and a blog that is growing to be gargantuan (well, ok...7 months worth of posting anyway)...ENOUGH? No. Silly. If you're not familiar with Twitter yet, gather the kids around the computer and prepare to be amazed. See that box over there? Over there. On your left. It's green. That's my Twitter Box, where I twitter. They're kind of like mini-blogs, though you will really get a look into the randomness that is my brain this way. There's no editing, and each twitter can only be a few sentences long. Useful how, you ask? Check in that Twitter box and I will be sure to post the latest gig news (venue locations and times are always nice to know but fluid in the musical life)...or maybe a good show you should attend around town...or maybe when I'm sitting at a truck stop in Amarillo I'll twitter you all and gripe about the hash browns. You never know what kind of excitement will pop up in the folk 'n roll life. If you're not always attached to the internet, you can get my Twitters via text message on your phone, too. Or set it up to have them pop up as an IM. I really don't ever want to be as far apart as we have been ever again, dears. This is forever. Here's a Twitter FAQ for more reading goodness. Here's a cool artist named Sara Bareilles whose album just exploded all over iTunes, and she has a Twitter page. It's nifty to chart the life. She misses her plants. Check out her tunes on Myspace...good stuff! That's Sara B. She Twitters.

Friday Nite Movie: Four Eyed Monsters

This is awesome for a variety of reasons...one being that it is the first feature film available for free on Youtube and various other sites online. FREE. MOVIE. And it's doing well, and the filmmakers are rocking it, and this is the future of Web 2.0. Check it. Join Spout | Buy DVD | Watch Video Podcast | Get Code

RSS...R-E-S-P-E-C-T

All right kids. The migration over to a dedicated host for janapochop.com means the RSS feed for the blog has changed. Click that fabulous orange...thing over there on the right to make sure you're subscribed in your RSS reader. Or click this giant one: I can't make that any easier. But Jana, what is an RSS feed? What is this reader thing? Watch this highly creative and entertaining video from Common Craft (which is just a great company all around), and learn all about this crazy thing we call the internets. Vast amounts of information are at your fingertips! Click To Play

Excuse the Funk...Enjoy Some Red Bull

We're migrating web hosts, folks! Soon jp.com will be a dedicated site and not cross-hosted and all that jazz...in case you cared. I don't foresee it being an ordeal but if you find some broken links in the next few days...don't panic. Just step back from the internet, grab a cup of coffee, maybe a Red Bull, and sit tight.

The World is Flat

Today my business partner "J" and I had a video conference meeting, nearly 1000 miles apart from each other, in different time zones, sitting in our respective home offices. I am amazed at technology and life and how the two meet to form community and create productivity. My guitars are my main tools, my car gets me to gigs, but the internet...kind of facilitates it all in some cosmic, overhead sense. Welcome to Globalization 3.0.