Hey hi!

Once again I find myself feeling like this website has changed a lot since its inception and I just wanted to touch base about some of those changes and where I see it going from here. CF, like us as people, is always in flux.

CF started as a single band project website with big dreams; an open space of communication where we could dig into some topics and conversations that are difficult to navigate alone and encouraged to be shared through music and art.

That part of it all is still a major driving factor towards the decisions I make here.

But I initially had a really hard time with the idea of making everything so about me.

I used myself and my experiences to drive these conversations, but it felt gluttonous fast because I wasn’t seeing the kind of engagement (other peoples stories, for example) I was hoping to create from it and surely no one wants to hear in such great detail about my little Canadian life.

I always thought shifting that focus to other artists was a necessary and important avenue that should be rightly explored.

So, for a while you saw me dive into different ways of doing this. Reviews, written interviews, video interviews more recently and general featured pieces.

Which is all great and I had a lot of fun doing those things but it didn’t take long for that part of it all to feel like a job and one that I started to learn pretty quickly wasn’t the type of job I cared to see myself doing.

I used to do interviews for magazines and I loved that – being pitched different actors or musicians and being requested to write to them was a really remarkable thing when I was doing it years ago, so I think I expected to feel that same joy in doing it for CF, but, it didn’t quite happen the same way. And if I’m being honest, I think a big part of that comes down to the difference in professionalism and experience that was being brought to the table then, versus some of what I’d find landing in my inbox now.

I had to turn down a fair amount of submissions and overwhelmingly I’d find myself grasping at straws with some of the ones I did feature.

Part of this was because I’d opened up the idea of paid submissions. This was for two reasons: 1) as a writer, I believe writers should be paid for their work. Absurd notion to many of you, I know. It is a major pet peeve of mine when musicians moan about paying writers for pieces while they also expect listeners to pay for their music. I’m not at all sure how you believe these two things are not the same. Writing is a creative art and a service-product, just as music is a creative art and a product.

and 2) it was helping pay the back end costs of this website – which are low, fortunately, so it doesn’t take much to break even on it, but gives me some personal breathing room is this world wheere every little thing has become so, so, so expensive.

The thing about being a good writer and a big music fan is you can find something you like in just about every piece of music that floats your way, so it’s not hard to accept most submissions even if it’s not exactly in your wheelhouse and it keeps things fresh and interesting. The bad thing about doing paid music promotion through writing features though is that some artists have a certain expectation that everything should be positive and great and let me tell you, dealing with the backlash when you tell them it was in your subjective opininon kind of mediocore and not exactly enticing is annoying. If you can’t handle criticism, you probably shouldn’t be requesting a review.

I pride myself in being objective where necessary and true, but I’m also mindful of everyone being at different stages of their artistic expression and I never want to be part of the reason someone thinks their art is “not good enough”. For who? If you love it, you should create it; However it is really important to accept that not everyone will love it like you do.

Nonetheless the mental gymnastics of this type of service was enough to make me really dislike writing about music.

I also don’t think my musical vocabularly is expansive enough to merit me doing it – there are loads of great music writers out there who are far more passionate and have a knowledgebase that my ADHD-ass will never come close to. One day, I’d like to hire them on staff.

And I tried that, too. I tried outreaching to others who would want to be paid to write pieces so that I could focus on other avenues but – wow where is everybody?

It’s no secret that the powers that be who possess excrutiating power over the internet and the content that reach us (and that we are able to reach) are at play here and I frankly am not ambitious enough to add it to my list of terrible things that I should be actively combatting. There are children being murdered in Palestian, after all.

So, more recently I decided that I was trying to expand things here too soon. I sort of needed to, to see how this would all play out in a real sense and to get an idea of what I liked doing and what I thought was worth persuing further, so it wasn’t all for nothing and for those of you that did submit music to me or pitch ideas, whether I accepted them or not I very much appreciate you taking the time to do so. I know how time consuming even just that part of the process is and I’m sorry if we could not find a home for you here.

Mild ranting aside, in going through these processes over the last couple years I’ve realized that the idea I began with – the self-involved personal live blog of my life and experience through music and where it takes me – is the one it should remain.

That’s not to say I won’t be featuring other artists here because that’s a big part of all of this, too. Without other artists, I myself wouldn’t be creating art.

But I am not someone who listens to hours and hours of music every week. Hell if I’ve got the time for one new record a week these days!

And listening through a record once, twice, even three times, usually isn’t enough for me to connect with it. The outpouting of submissions, even with the obvious hinderance of the internet gatekeepers that stand at my gates, is too much for me to keep up with, nevermind fall in love with it.

That kind of thing usually takes me years.

So, I no longer accept paid submissions or anything like that. The waters are too muddy there and I’m not interested in putting myself in a position where I’m compromising my feelings to make some band or songwriter feel better about that song they ripped off of Cheap Trick.

And while you can still send me submissions or connect with me online (which I very much encourage) I’m going to be pretty picky about what I take the time to sit with and write about going forward. Like, stupidly picky. Anyone can produce a great song or a great record these days – I worked in professional studios and it’s amazing what you can do with even the most inexpereinced writers and performers – I’m not interested in that. Weirdly, I never really have been. I’m interested in human connection and great storytellers, in finding something to relate and connect with and something that makes me say, “now, there’s a great lyric, what do you think made them think of that?”

Otherwise, CF the website is making a sheepish return to what it was. A virtual forest full of my own creative projects and entities that serve to tell stories through music and blogging with a hope to connect with others, have honest conversations, heal from our experiences and promote positive growth in whatever that means to me and to you.

On that note:

If you’ve never created anything before I hope you don’t shy away from it even if you’re not sure where to start or are afraid of the feelings it will bring forward.

I hope you never feel too old or too young to persue art.

You can have so many incredible experiences just by choosing to express yourself through art and you should never let anyone take that away from you.

And if you are struggling in any way with your mental health, there are resources available to help you. Some places to start are right here on crookedforest.ca by jumping over to our resources page but I encourage you to look within your own community to see what is available. Unfortunately in this, you really have to be your own advocate, trust yourself and ask yourself a lot of hard questions – it isn’t easy, but you can build the life you want for yourself if you’re willing to try.

Thanks for reading & hanging out with me here. More music coming… eventually. And hopefully some shows.