Puttin' all my eggs in the LITD basket (for the time being, anyway)

As of April 10, what has ostensibly been my "main" site, Barney Quick, Musician & Writer will cease to exist.

I just looked at the monthly Yahoo Small Business charge on the latest American Express statement and then asked myself if I was getting that much value from having the site up there.

For one thing, the last few times I tried to go in and tweak things, or even update my gig calendar, there was some kind of hose-up, and when I'm presented with hose-ups, I'm generally on the express train to Damn-It Land.  Figuring stuff out is not my strong suit.  And in the past few years I've developed blood pressure issues, so the gates of Damn-It Land is not a good place for me to go.

But for some time I've also thought about the way I want to brand myself.

The site is hardly slick; it's pretty bare-bones, in fact.  And the music clips are not necessarily the best music I've recorded.  The writing samples linked on the page for that are old and woefully unrepresentative of the breadth of what I now crank out all the time since that's become my day job.

Then there's the matter of the fine line that anybody who is simultaneously a "creative type" and a conservative must walk when presenting themselves to the world.

I love music so much, but I am utterly uninterested in the nature of what is left of "the music industry." I have accounts with a few of those "build-your-fan-base / get-your-music-heard-by-big-time-players-and-entertainment-producers"-type sites but it's been ages since I attempted to get anything going with any of them.  (Even writing about music is something I no longer seek out.  There's a photographer who is making a bit of a name for himself taking concert pictures.  I did a little work for him a while back - interviewed an up-and-coming band in our area - and now he's all the time texting me, seeing if I can go hear so-and-so with him, get in free with a press pass.  I'm always relieved when I check my calendar and find I've scheduled some previous activity.  Two recent shows were Bob Dylan and the Avett Brothers.  I hope he enjoyed himself and got some good shots.)

Am I jaded?  Perhaps so.  Another good reason for taking a deep breath and considering this matter in its largest context.

In the meantime, I have no problem blogging my tail off here, so this will be my main presence.  And, like all human beings in 2013, I'm on Facebook and Twitter.

When I ask myself, "What is important for me to do?", the answer I keep coming back to is "Whatever you can to help save Western civilization."  So, for right now, it's full-tilt LITD, baby.