Slowly building a support base

1 week after the release on my live album “Resonance Experiments 1-2” and the feedback has been even better than I had hoped. 100+ streams in just a few days.

Funnily enough my first EP only had about 300 streams total. Which means I may outdo myself in just a few weeks!

For some reason my first EP didn’t generate any real interest. Some friends listened to it but it seems only a tiny handful of people came back to listen to it again.

It may have had something to do with my own attitude towards it, seeing it like a polished demo dump, something important to me but not something I was bursting with pride for.

This one was different.

This live album marked a milestone for me, as it’s the first time I feel my style actually reflects what I want to express. There are still lots and lots of things I want to improve and you can only do so much with a live recording, but when I listened back to this for the second or third time I fell in love with each and every track.

Most importantly for me, I feel I have broken the confines of acoustic guitar folk music. I’ve finally gotten comoftable enough at electric to start expanding outeards with my style. I finally hear the nuances of texture and tone that completely evaded me before. I can see through music a lot better now than I was once able to. I know how to manage delay and reverb a bit better.

This feels like a documentation of my transition to a being a solid artist, not just a good one or a decent one but one who I would look up to. I can’t promise other people will feel the same thing, but it certainly is moving in that direction.

People aren’t just skimming through it or listening to a song or two and giving up. It seems most people listened to the full album and the ones who didn’t had a favorite song they repeated.

The goal for now (aside from writing music I love and recording it well which is always the main goal) is finding my 100 people, what they call superfans, the ones who really want to support you. I don’t see them as fans but as supporter-friends.

I think I’ve found 4 or 5 already with another 30-50 people who are on the fence. The way I distinguish them is that if I had shows once a week, they’d make an effort to come once a month. If I sold something decent at a reasonable price twice a year, they’d buy it.

That’s what I would need in order to move on to the next level (touring without worrying about being able to break even every time, organizing shows with 3-4 artist line ups, letting work revolve around music instead of the other way around).

Playing a big venue still isn’t appealing to me but being able to arrange a small tour in Japan and invite other artists and not come in at a loss is ultra exciting.

My goal for this time next year is to be able to spend book 3 weekends of shows in Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Shiga, Kobe) and spend the two weeks in between just chilling and getting to know the scene better. I will try to have a show in Osaka before the end of the year as a test run.

4/100 suporter-friends sounds like not a lot but the first 20 are the hardest by far. If I can reach 20 by the summer I am already in a good place. Eventually I’d like to have 100 in Tokyo, 100 in Kansai, and 100 in Sichuan, Fujian and Guangdong so I could do East Asia tours frequently. I don’t know anyone many people in Thailand, Indonesia, Korea or Australia but I hope I could meet more in the process and tour this whole side of the world by 2028, and maybe join other bands in Europe for small gigs just as an excuse to travel there. Africa and South America is always on my radar but I want to bring Africa and South America to Japan first if I can.

My secret dream is to organize a small scale music festival that connects artists from around the world….shhh. It’s too big right but for the first time I feel it’s actually possible. I actually know 3-4 people already doing it and I feel it won’t be long until I am invited to play at one.

I don’t like huge venues but most of them have side stages I’d be happy to give a memorable performance for.

For now 20 real suporters in Tokyo will be a huge step forward.

And I will be appreciative for each and every one of them all the way through to 100. I use these numbers to motivate myself. These are not numbers though, they are people who are not only people I love but who are helping me work towards my dreams.

You can hear Resonance Experiments 1-2 on al strwaming platforms now!

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