

Kurt Fortmeyer / Blog

"Fans?" What's that mean?

So, yet another "fan" has contacted me here on ReverbNation and asked me to "fan" them back, and maybe listen to their music. That seems more than a little bass-ackwards to me. I would think that I should listen to somebody's music first. If I like what I hear, then I become a fan. Correct? Apparently not in ReverbNationWorld. I suspect that fandom is somewhat akin to "friendship" on other social networking sites. When I first signed up here, ReverbNation was not a social networking site. It was a music site, a place online where a person could load mp3s to share with other folks through the internet. Once Facebook became a juggernaut, ReverbNation had to jump on the cyberbandwagon, asking silly questions (really, who cares what my favorite color is?), ranking artists by how many of their silly hoops they are willing to jump through, and setting up a faux-Facebook sense of faux-community. If somebody "fans" you and sends you a private message, you cannot even respond to that person without first becoming one of their "fans". What if their music is not good, or worse than that, sucks? You can't even respond to tell them that you appreciate their interest in your music, but that you are not on here to socialize. People who know me trust my taste in music, or at least know what to expect out of me when I say I like something. If I start randomly becoming a "fan" of music I don't like, what does that tell people? That my standards are slipping? I don't want to go there. I also notice that a lot of folks who request that I "fan" them have ten to twenty times as many "fans" as I do. As often as not, their music isn't anything like mine. I suspect that they are just gathering "fans", or as I've heard it referred to on MySpace, they are "friend whores". So, you listened to one of my songs, and decided that we have some kind of deep soul connection? Really? I'm having doubts about that. Go work on your music at least half as hard as you work on collecting names in your database. Maybe then I'll have a reason to "fan" you.

"All Fall Down"

Dave Isaacs (http://www.reverbnation.com/daveisaacs) and his band DI3 have given the jam band treatment to my song "All Fall Down" and included it on their latest CD. They will celebrating the release of the CD with a live show on Thursday, September 15th at 12th & Porter in Nashville. The show is free and open to the public, and includes guest performances by Rebecca Hosking, Tommy Tietjen, and Kristen Cothron. Doors open at 6:30. DI3 will play around 8:30. Come on out and celebrate!

"Dead End Road"

The Chris Lane Band, based in central North Carolina has just released an EP which includes a song called "Dead End Road" that I wrote with Greensboro, North Carolina native John Griffin. Chelsea Sorrell does the lead vocals on the tune, and she pure-t (as we would say back home) sings the (expletive deleted...just in case Mama's reading this) out of it. You can hear clips and/or buy downloads on iTunes. http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/chris-lane-band-ep/id409537080 I met John Griffin in Nashville through one of my former co-writers named Bo Thomas. They had been writing a little bit, and Bo wanted to do a three-way session with John and me. The day we all got together, Bo copped some kind of an attitude and decided he's rather go to the mall than write a song about a road, so we wrote it without him. We never did finish it, but it looks like John did. I saw a Youtube of him singing it at some venue in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Then I saw a video of Chelsea and him singing it in a hotel room when she came out to Nashville to try out for American Idol. The next thing I know, John emailed me to ask for my publisher's information on the song, since he had just gotten it cut by The Chris Lane Band. I'm liking that! Back when we owned the Hyphen Coffeehouse, I turned John down for a gig there, based on a CD that his manager had sent me. After meeting John, I went back and listened to the CD again. I still wouldn't have hired him for that place. He's real good. He just didn't fit the vibe of the music that I booked. I'm glad he doesn't hate for that. All this to say...Go buy the EP by the Chris Lane Band! http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/chris-lane-band-ep/id409537080