Pros of the business include the enjoyment and satisfaction
I get from making music and having it appreciated by fans. The cons include the fact that it is expensive to do this when the odds are stacked against ever making a profit from it. Another con is the whole bit about dealing with PRO’s and constantly wondering how much they’re ripping you off @KKpatterson11
Live Interview
Episode #379 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avaliveradio/2016/10/26/episode-379-ava-live-radio-behind-the-music-with-jacqueline-jax
GETTING TO KNOW K.A PATTERSON
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio
K. A. Patterson / K. A. Patterson, Songwriter / K. A. Patterson and the Paradise
Pros of the business include the enjoyment and satisfaction
I get from making music and having it appreciated by fans. The cons include the fact that it is expensive to do this when the odds are stacked against ever making a profit from it. Another con is the whole bit about dealing with PRO’s and constantly wondering how much they’re ripping you off.
My struggles will turn to triumph when one of two things happens, or both.
1) Someone finally recognizes that many of my songs can be hits on “mainstream” Country radio, and I make enough to retire on from Mechanical Licensing and Performance Royalty on a couple of my songs.
2) I achieve the objective of number 1 above by finding a way to break through the oblivion of being one in a zillion Indie acts and bypass the whole “mainstream” thing by figuring out how to sell multi-millions of track downloads.
Alan Jackson or Martina McBride.
Alan is a great writer and singer who has been able to remain Country in a market that resists letting you be actually Country. He’s a nice guy who’s very real with a lot of the same struggles most ordinary people have. Martina is a great lady and wife and mom who still has had an amazing career while living in an industry known for destroying all that. She’s one of the best singers of all time, and grew up learning to sing by imitating another of my all-time favorites, Pat Benatar.
I am the owner of a 37+ year career in things related to Electrical Construction
Engineering, during which time I’ve also engaged in several unrelated side ventures, including Music. I’m an internationally certified Lighting Designer and past Vice President and Treasurer of the Nashville Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES). I also currently serve on the Board Of Managers and as a Committee
Chair for that non-profit educational organization. So, unlike most Songwriters you know of, my “day job” is actually my real job, and I am a Musician in my “spare” (what a joke!) time . . . LOL
I’m a bicentennial year graduate of Choctawhatchee High School in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
I attended a Christian college in Temple Terrace, Florida for one year and received an Associate Degree from Northwest Florida State College in December of 1978.
Although my first song was penned at age 11,
when I was still known to most folks as Keith, the first commercially viable song was produced at age 14 in 1973, which was before I owned or could play an instrument. That song, “I Still Love You So”, is part of my “Montgomery In The Rain” album. I wrote a lot during 1973-1983, before things got busy and hectic with first the Engineering and then marriage and kids. I wrote only occasionally from 1984 through 2003, and my 1988 relocation to Nashville was about being closer to family and advancing the Design career – having nothing to do with music.
In early 2004, an Engineer friend encouraged me to pursue Songwriting,
although he hadn’t heard a song of mine. He assumed that the same work ethic and creativity he’d seen me apply with success in our Engineering endeavors translated to my Songwriting as well. (Today he’s an avid fan and says I should do less Engineering and more writing.) So in 2004 I began writing with greater regularity and taking serious steps, for the first time, to pursue Songwriting professionally. My music is often described as “unique” and difficult to “pigeon-hole” in terms of comparison with other popular writers. The list of Songwriters, singers, and bands influencing this musical style during the formative years of my Songwriting career reads like a “who’s who” of the Country, Rock, and Pop genre’s of that period (late 1960’s to early 1980’s).
My music is basically Country,
but a uniquely styled Country that appeals to all lovers of good music, without strict respect to genre boundaries. And the Country in my music is most often decidedly slanted toward carrying forward the “Traditional” or “Classic”
Country sound.
“K. A. Patterson and the Paradise Band” is a project I created
and have used for several years to gain exposure for and establish a fan base around my style of making music. Since early 2012, KAP&TPB has amassed several thousand fans on Jango Airplay internet radio, and we’re experiencing a similar level of popularity on Pandora. In 2011, AM-FM and online venue airplay began to take off. That was accelerated through my promotional affiliation with Dixie McCorkle and TripleStrand Productions beginning in 2012. KAP&TPB today enjoys significant airplay in over 100 countries and all 50 USA States.
I’ve been greatly blessed and give thanks to God
for not only my own writing ability but for being able to put together the right combination of Musician, Studio, and Producer participation to make KAP&TPB recordings everything they should be, even as an Indie Artist operating on a limited budget. Regarding that, all of you aspiring Songwriters and Indie Artists out there need to check out A Writer’s Paradise. I’m an award-winning BMI affiliated Writer and have Publishing Management through TuneCore, both of which I now receive regular quarterly Performance Royalty payments from. Most important are the fans. Without those people out there who appreciate good music and are willing to support what we’re trying to do here, this wouldn’t work and would have to be given up on. So thanks to the fans for helping me to see enough light
at the end of this tunnel to make it worthwhile to keep on keeping on.
Unto The Dust
The song has a 1-minute instrumental break in the middle of it,
against most “mainstream” recommendations if airplay is desired. True, that and the “atmospheric intro” do drive it to an overall length of 5:13. Due to a 5:00 time length limit for the contest, the atmospheric intro is omitted from the track submitted to the John Lennon Songwriting contest, where the song was a Grand Prize winner in 2013.
http://jlsc.com/winners/2013a/winners.php
Support Artist: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kapattersonandtheparadis2
The reason that full minute of instrumentation adorns the middle of the song
is that the song is pretty much built around it. I had been playing with this rift for a couple of years from 2007 to 2009, without seriously working on any lyrics or trying to construct a complete song. So I shelved it for a couple of years at that point. During Summer 2011, I was out here in Dallas, working at my Engineering job as an
independent contractor, living in an extended stay efficiency. One Saturday afternoon I dragged a guitar out and started messing with that instrumental rift, thinking maybe I could work on some lyrics and the rest of the music. As I was working through the first verse, I was headed toward that Genesis 3:19 phrase being in the last line of the verses and the chorus. Consequently, it became the obvious title. Within a couple of hours, I had written the entire first verse, most of the chorus, and had a start on verse two. I had not specifically intended to write a spiritual or inspirational song, but that’s the direction it took. Within a few days, there in my one-room shanty, I had completed
“Unto The Dust”.
During Spring of 2013, back in Nashville working full-time
for an Engineering firm downtown a block off Broadway and three blocks from the Ryman, I began preparing
to get with my Co-Producer / Studio Owner friend to develop the recording now available, which was released in June that year. The day the song was uploaded for sale, I began creating the video. After spending about 84 hours on it over the next four days, the video was also released.
Our female vocalist, Amber, was going through a lot when we cut this recording.
She sang her parts 6 months pregnant and completely bald from chemotherapy, having been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year, about the same time she learned she was having a baby. She had been recently wrestling with the gut-wrenching decision of whether to save her own life by having chemo while carrying a child, thus
risking the life or wellbeing of the child – or – protecting the unborn child from the dangers of chemo by not having it until after the birth, almost certainly condemning herself to death. She had decided to have the chemo while pregnant – and pray. Amber’s baby, due in late September, was born six weeks prematurely, in early August. The child was and remains perfectly normal, and the early birth allowed Amber to receive the surgery she needed at an earlier time than she would have been able to had the baby waited for its due date, possible saving Amber’s life. Maybe this outcome was the result of the prayers?
My songs are always about life – real life and things about real life
that real people can relate to. That’s why one of the meta tags on my classic-country-kapatterson website is “Writing Life”. To quote from the last paragraph of my introduction on the home page there, “These are the type of songs that, like a lot of Traditional Country music, endear themselves for generations to regular folks facing real
life achievements, dilemmas, and tragedies. Listen and hear LIFE — complete with its ecstasy, its pain, its love, its despair, and its hope — woven into each musical story. Listen and enjoy. Listen and relate. Listen and be moved. I’m K. A. Patterson, writing LIFE . . .”
I currently spend most of my time in the Dallas, TX area,
because I work out here in the Engineering business. I have no idea what the music scene is like here. There are frequently good concerts with big name acts at the Choctaw Casino up in Durant, OK. That’s about 90 minutes north of Dallas. I’ve been up there once, but not to a concert. Billy Bob Thornton has a place in Dallas where a lot of acts from the past come to play in a smaller and more intimate setting. Since my real home is Middle Tennessee and the Nashville area, there’s not much to say about the music scene there that everyone doesn’t already know. I like going to the Grand Ole Opry at the Opry House and the Ryman, as well as other music shows in both venues. Scarlett and I went to Glen Campbell’s farewell tour performance at the Ryman in January of 2014, and saw Ricky Skaggs and some other well-known stars in attendance.
From working downtown in Nashville, I know that the area around lower Broadway,
Fifth Avenue and the Ryman, etc. is very active and busy with music related pedestrian and vehicular traffic, even into the late evening on weekdays and most of the night on weekends. Since my bills are paid by the Engineering work and I’m not much of a partyer, I usually leave the bar-hopping and karaoke singing down there to others. 6, 7, 8 I feel that I no longer have a genre in music. With very few exceptions, what is marketed as Country Music today by Music Row and the east and west coast music centers is not the music that I create. Those gatekeepers and powers that be have zero interest in my style of music. I feel that they are leaving a lot of money on the table by intentionally underserving (almost totally ignoring) a significant segment of the consumer base. The thousands of online fans I have made, the worldwide airplay in “Indie” venues and foreign over the airwaves AM/FM, and the comments I get from fans, all speak to the demand for our style of music and its limited supply and availability, due to what I believe is poor decision making by those controlling the “mainstream” product.
Social Media Links:
Website: http://kap-americana.net
http://classic-country-kapatterson.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6duk0EqlzVQr6IyzuobsTg
CDbaby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kapattersonandtheparadis2
Jango: http://www.jango.com/music/K+A+Patterson+and+the+Paradise+Band
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kapatterson2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@KKpatterson11