independent music

Hi guys,

I've been listening to some music tonight, and I've realized that independent musicians really do beat the pants off most of the ones who are signed to the labels (with the few exceptions of artists who do their own thing inspite of a record deal, like Derek Webb). I thought i'd draw your attention to some cool musicians who sell stuff on the net and give away free songs too.

Andrew Peterson. He looks precisely like one of my good friend's boyfriends. Bonus points if you can tell me who. This guy writes PHENOMENAL stories. He's so good. He does a Christmas musical every year. If you have high speed and want to watch andrew play great songs along with a bunch of his friends, go to the livefromstudiob website, and click on the watch this video link. This is phenomenal music. Oh yeah, if you buy one of Andy's CDs from his website, guess how much of the money he gets? Not just fifty cents or something, the whole proceeds go to him. That's cool.

Andrew Osenga. This guy isn't foreign to the world of having record deals - he was the front man for a cool band called The Normals, and now he plays with Caedmon's Call... he's pretty phenomenal. What's neatest is that he's got this thing called "The Drawing Board" and he gives away rough cuts of songs he's working on. He's great. Listen to him. And oh yeah, if you buy one of this Andy's CDs from his website, again, he gets the proceeds. That's cool too.

The cool thing about the above two guys is that they don't exist in a vacuum. They're musicians, and they like good music too. So, if you click on their links pages on their respective web sites, you'll find (I just made a consistency issue, I technically mispelt website earlier by putting it together—technicalyl wrong, but envogue, and then just now I split it, which is technically proper) a list of musicians that they listen to/play with / hang out with. And the whole thing continues, cause those people do the same thing. That's community. These folks are REAL artists. They rock. And their music is pretty darn good, too.

All right, that's it for me... for now.