New Video, Shot and directed by Megan Jean in Nashville, TN, featuring Sarah Clanton on cello. Enjoy!
Blacksburg tonight. #mjkfbpicoftheday
'Corners'
What does it take to be an artist?
Not a person-who-creates-art. We all know lots of those. I'm talking about a person-who-creates-art-for-a-living. We all know considerably less of those. So, what does it take to be a working artist?
That's the question I get over and over. From young people trying to figure out what the hell to do next. From older people trying to figure out what the hell to do now. After 8 years of making my sole income from music, I guess they think I have some kind of special insight into the music business. But that's just the thing: I don't.
Let me say that again. I am a working artist, and I have no special insights as to how to make a living as a musician. A college professor once told me:
"Being an artist is all about being backed into a corner and finding a way out of it."
At the time I was a struggling college student. Working a full-time job with a full course load, playing gigs at night and paying rent in Brooklyn. I've always been a compulsive artist. I can't help it. If life has me hurting, or joyous, or angry-I have to write a song about it. Happens whether I want to or not. It's just the way I make sense of the world.
So it struck a chord with me. I was perpetually backed into a corner. Sometimes it was called rent. Other times, tuition. More often than I care to remember, the corner was feeding myself. Looking back, it's hard to imagine a better training ground for an aspiring artist.
Making art is easy if you love it. The business end however is nothing but an endless maze of corners. The second we're out of one, we're in another. The industry, our circumstances, the gigs-they are always changing. It's like trying to rely upon the wind. Sometimes it can thrust you forward, other times there is nothing there at all. The trouble comes when we THINK we have it all figured out. We stop asking questions. We start assuming things will always be the same way. We begin living in absolutes. But what happens when we get backed into a corner, and our old methods don't work? Do we stay there forever? Is this where we live now? In some dumb corner like Baby in Dirty Dancing? NO. NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER.
This is why knowing is bad. We in the arts are all Jon Snow. We know nothing. (Game of Thrones nerd, right here. No shame). Knowing nothing means asking questions. Asking questions means considering multiple perspectives. If we know nothing, everything is an experiment. If everything is an experiment, there is no failure. Only more data to consider as we contemplate our next move.
In music, the corner can be the next record, or a new tour van. Other times it's is too many bills and not enough gigs. On the worst days it's the will to get up and sing when all you feel like doing is laying down and giving up.
All you have when you are stuck in a corner is the ability to look at your skills and ask yourself questions about how those skills could get your ass out of that damn corner.
We make, and write, and do because there is nothing else in our arsenal. Then we find a way too sell it. In the street, a dive bar, a fancy venue, an art gallery, online, or on consignment in every little town you visit. It doesn't matter. The struggle is our muse, and the art is our salvation.
That's it. That's our secret. We make art and figure out how to sell it. Over and over and over. At the end of the day, I can't change the world, or the music industry for that matter. I can only change how I exist in it. I can only ask questions.
Winter is a mess of corners for a band like us.
So, we did what we always do.
We took Photos
Byrne had his first art show at Gallery 788 in Baltimore MD.
We block printed T Shirts
We booked shows to sell 'em at.
We did as much as we could, and proudly set off in search of our next corner.
-Megan Jean
#NowPlaying Songs that stick with you by Megan Jean (I made my first playlist and it will make your day).
Source: Spotify
#NowPlaying Songs that stick with you by Megan Jean (I made my first playlist and it will make your day).
Source: Spotify
New commissioned piece. If you'd like to commission one of these, I have room to take on a few more orders for the holidays! Email meganjeanfamilyband@gmail.com and we will work it out!
Tour Dates and Turkeys
Hello from Park Circle, South Carolina! We are at the tail-end of a summer vacation spent on an idyllic goat farm just south of Raleigh, owned by two dear friends who are want to let lovestruck hobos park in their yards for little spells here and there. We toured all over the east coast this summer and it was time to take a small break.
Byrne and I spent our time observing our friends' small flock of Turkeys. Three females, and two males. Turkeys are the most ridiculous birds I've ever experienced, hands down. The two males are best friends as far as I can tell, but spend their days locked in a dance-quest for the attention of chicks, man. One male spits and fans out his tail feathers cocking them sharply towards the other, as his frenemy raises his own in reply. The two turkeys circle one another, gobbling and screeching, shaking and dancing, in what can only be called a machismo turkey slut strut. If the design is to attract the ladies, it doesn't seem to work. The dudes get all red in the neck folds, and they both end up hitting on the same chick at the same time. All of the strutting has puffed them up, and they come on a on a bit too strong, ultimately scaring her off. They go back to being best friends immediately after. It took a few days to see that these male turkeys shared the exact same relationship as Will Farrell and Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury. That movie is essentially an anthropomorphized male turkey struggle for manhood. Mind. Blown. .
I'm not sure if a song will come of this, but if it does, it will mimic What is Love, by Haddaway
We head back out into the great blue yonder for most of September, hitting North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Sep 4 Peasant's Pub, Greenville NC Sep 5 Blue Bourbon Jacks, High Point NC Sep 6 185 King St, Brevard NC TICKETS Sep 9 Melting Point, Athens GA TICKETS Sep 10 Motorco, Durham NC TICKETS Sep 11 The Whiskey, Wilmington NC Sep 12 Southland Ballroom, Raleigh NC TICKETS Sep 13 Blind Tiger, Greensboro NC TICKETS Sep 19 Sycamore Deli, Blacksburg VA Sep 20 Revival Fest, Savannah GA TICKETS Sep 26 Dante's, Frostburg MD Sep 27 Hippie's 4th Annual, White Haven PATICKETS
Doubtful Thomas is not your friend.
Once upon a time a loan officer friend told me that we would never be able to get a loan for a new vehicle or a house as musicians, surmising that "if two people came in asking my bank for money saying 'I play music for money on the streets,' (side note, LOL if you look down on busking) there is no amount of begging would convince me to give two bums a loan. I'd probably just laugh at them." This, coming from one of my oldest friends. I did not take it to heart. I listened to the words and waited for them to sting, but they did not. In my heart I knew that we had grown so far apart that it was time to move on. That was several years ago, and since then I kept my focus on the things that make me happy. Love and Music saved my life quite literally, and I knew that they would take me where I needed to go. We recently qualified for an extremely low-interest loan from Mercedes Benz, and converted it to a beautiful tiny house on wheels, all bought and paid for by our music income, and the credit we have maintained. I will admit that the encounter with my loan officer friend crossed my mind. That person would love to drive a Benz, status-obsessed as they are. If I may: I urge you to Ignore any and all detractors in your quest to achieve your improbable, impossible, and illogical dreams. They are not silly or self-indulgent. They are not delusional, or ridiculous. They are yours, and that burning itch to follow them will never go away. The time will slip away whether you are following your true calling or not. I doesn't matter if it's for fame and fortune or personal satisfaction. One day will eventually be your last day on this earth. You have this one life, don't waste it doing the safe thing. Hold onto it, work for it, bleed for it, sweat for it, be indefatigueable, but never ever listen to the doubters. They are nothing but distractions from your happiness, and their criticism is of themselves, not you. When someone looks at you and says "you can't do that," hear them for what they are really saying: "I can't do that." You will get where you are supposed to go, which for me is unbelievable love and happiness in a Benz down by the river.
The Kläy Family Band #mjkfbpicoftheday
Hello From The Road!
Hello from a dear friend's homestead in Shepherdstown, WV, where we have our home currently parked next to a converted old school bus. Byrne and I are practicing and resting up for the weekends travels, grazing occasionally on the wild foods growing by us. It never ceases to amaze me how nutritious the weeds growing around truly are. I have been spoiled in my travels these past few weeks, foraging on the richness and bounty of the upper AppalachianTrail.
Tonight 'll be making us a salad of wild chives, mint, spinach, and tart wood sorrel .
Wild Spinach (left), wild garlic (upper right), Wood Sorrel (middle), and Spilanthes, a medicinal herb used to treat gingivitis. It makes your mouth go all crazy!
We will be playing tomorrow night at the Shepherdstown Opera House, and Friday we back to beautiful Asheville, NC to open for our pal Zach Deputy. It will be our first appearance at Asheville Music Hall, and we can't wait to celebrate our wedding anniversary in the mountains. Ticket links below, and much love from the Klay Family.
Thursday, August 21st
Shepherdstown, WV
Friday, August 22nd
Asheville Music Hall
Asheville, NC
As always, you can check tour dates, tell your friends we are coming to town, buy merch, and look at art at www.meganjean.net
So much bourbon... #mjkfbpicoftheday
#mjkfbpicoftheday
Domestic Bliss. #mjkfbpicoftheday
August 2014 Newsletter
All told we have lived half a million miles on the road. We did it all out of the back of unwanted old leftover cars, and sleek little toasters. We shuffled in and out of an endless stream of hotel rooms and living rooms. After a while, the one living room you're in becomes all living rooms. This hotel room is all hotel rooms that will ever be. We did it happily for music, and for each other. I would do it again. After three-and-a-half years straight on the road, we finally decided to have a place to call our own, in the form of a bluish grey 2013 Mercedes Benz Sprinter Cargo van named Vandalf The Grey (LOTR OBVI). We have it built out as a little bedroom on wheels, with a dresser, a queen-sized bed, and art from the past 7 years of touring covering the walls. It is paradise, and we are obsessed with it. Home is where the gear is.
The biggest differences are the smallest ones. Dressing for the day, which used to consist of a careful choreography of gas station bathroom floor-avoidance is now simply: pull clothes from drawer. Put them on body. Be dressed. We camp in driveways and State Parks, and we are about as content as two lovestruck kids could ever be. Music is happening, and we are so excited to bring it to you.
August will take our little home all over Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and North Carolina. We'd love to have you over sometime.
xoxo, Megan Jean
August tour schedule available at MAKE LINK www.meganjean.net, or www.facebook.com/meganjeanandthekfb
August 8th Hanover, PA- The Winner's Circle
August 9th Bedford, PA- The Wills Mountain Music Festival Tickets
August 10th Williamsport, PA- The Bullfrog Brewery
August 14h Washington, D.C - Gypsy Sally's Tickets
August 15th White Stone, VA -Wilaby's
August 16th Fredericksburg, VA - A. Smith Bowman Distillery Tickets
August 21st Shepherdstown, WV - Shepherdstown Opera House Tickets
August 22nd Asheville, NC - Asheville Music Hall Tickets
Froggy went a' courtin! # mjkfbpicoftheday
#mjkfbpicoftheday