Author: Christopher Wilkerson

Christopher T. Wilkerson was born amongst the hills and pines and red clay of northwest Georgia ... several decades ago. As he is fond of reminding folk, he "was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn't*last* Tuesday!" His family taught him a deep appreciation of music from an early age (his mother being a gifted pianist and singer), but Christopher's love of music didn't blossom into an obsession until he discovered the guitar when he was in the 10th grade. Christopher has been writing songs ever since. Christopher has worked with several different bands over the years: Midnight Sun ~ the best original progressive/folk/blues/metal to come out of Statesboro, GA, in the early '90s; Jaded Hart ~ a cover band based in Augusta, GA, in the mid-90s; The Rain Dancers ~ an acoustic duo performing covers and original material in Augusta and Atlanta, also in the mid-90s; Mad Prophet ~ an all-original, progressive power trio based out of Carbondale, IL, in the late '90s; Laurel & the Lads ~ a deliciously demented blend of blues, classic rock, and Irish/Celtic traditional music based out of Spartanburg, SC; Bittersweet, a country(gasp!)/blues/rock/funk show band based out of Boiling Springs, SC; and Rasputin, a rock/blues/soul/r&b band that emerged from the breakup of Bittersweet. Christopher had to leave Rasputin in 2014 to go back to school for a major career change, and he's been working on his solo material ever since. Throughout all these musical endeavors, Chris has contributed acoustic and electric rhythm and lead guitar work, as well as sharing vocal and (in the bands which performed original material) songwriting duties. Christopher's first solo album, Critical Distance, is a blend of classic rock, folk, pseudo-jazz, heavy-blooze, and fusion, with an emphasis on melody, musicianship, and memorable lyricism. He's currently writing his next album. Meanwhile, he continues to collaborate with other local musicians and artists, such as hip hop producer and MC Derek "Dewraith" Williams.

I just got asked “Who is your music for?”

Uncategorized

Happy weekend, y’all!  

So, I’m still trying to figure out the whole marketing/self-promotion thing, and I recently got challenged with this question:  “Who is your music for?”

It’s a helluva question.  Feels like a pretty important one, too, especially from a promotional point of view.  If one’s music/art/etc. is ever to find and connect with an audience in a meaningful way, doesn’t one have to have, at the outside, some notion of what that target audience is? Hard to find something when you’ve no idea what you’re looking for.

But on the other hand, from an artist’s pov, it seems (to me, anyway) almost like … an afterthought. 

I mean, I’ve always basically tried to write songs that I, myself, would want to hear.  Even the overarching theme of my CRITICAL DISTANCE album came to me after the fact — once I had chosen which songs to include and what order to put them in, only then did I notice that most of the lyrics were about longing for, or losing, human connection.

But what does that mean, in terms of target audience?  Doesn’t everybody long for human connection? A theme like that hardly helps me narrow things down to a specific demographic for which I might create an effective marketing campaign.

Setting my lyrics aside and focusing on the musical/instrumental side of things doesn’t help too much, either. I’m all over the map! My stuff kinda treats genres like an actor treats characters, putting on one after another. So “my sound” ends up making as much sense as the hairstyles my kids used to give me when they were little:

What even is “my sound”? It’s not really hard rock, nor blues, nor pop, nor jazz, nor metal, nor prog … but (at least in the more ambitious moments) it steals some elements from all those genres, whilst mastering none of them. How do you label, categorize, or capture that in a soundbyte?

How do you sell that?

Best advice I’ve heard so far is not to.  At least, not in terms of an album.  Much as it grieves me, being the dinosaur that I am, I feel like I’m going to have to accept that the album as an art form is all but dead.  Which sucks, because I love the idea of a collection of songs either telling a story, or taking you on a journey, or exploring a theme with nuance & even contradiction.  Hard to do that in a single song.

But what else can we do these days?

Let me know y’all’s thoughts & experiences in the comments!

CRITICAL DISTANCE update!

Albums, Marketing & Promotion, Music, Uncategorized, Works In Progress

Hola, True Believers!

It’s been no small piece of work, but I’ve managed to get all 13 tracks from my album Critical Distance remixed! I’m slightly exhausted, but very, very excited ~ even unmastered, I think the sound quality is a night-and-day improvement over the original 2019 release.

Next step is to have the tracks professionally mastered for re-release. But if you want to check out how Critical Distance: Deluxe Reissue is shaping up, you can stream the unmastered tracks on my ReverbNation page (link below). Please do let me know what you think ~ especially if you’ve got any mixing suggestions before I send the tracks off for mastering.

Next item on the to-do list? Putting together a group of musicians to help me play an album (re-)release show this fall ~ STAY TUNED, Y’ALL!

CRITICAL DISTANCE Deluxe Reissue update ~ first batch of brand new remixes!

Albums, Marketing & Promotion, Music, Works In Progress

Greetings, True Believers! The remixing process for the upcoming re-release (in deluxe, remastered format) of CRITICAL DISTANCE is well underway! I have updated my ReverbNation page with the latest (unmastered) remixed versions of the first nine tracks. Hoping to get the others finished over the next few weeks.

Even unmastered, I think the improvement is pretty dramatic ~ take a listen and TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! 😃

And stay tuned for updates & info about the re-release … and possible live shows!!! … for CRITICAL DISTANCE!

Keep the faith, y’all!

CTW

What’s in a “fan”? ~ updated: genres & micro-niches

Marketing & Promotion, Music, Musings & Conversations

So, I’ve been WRACKING MY BRAIN trying to figure out how to market my music not only in an increasingly post-Covid environment, but overall in a glutted-internet, post-music-industry miasma of a techno-punk dystopian nightmarescape of an online environment… <ahem>

Anywhoo… as I sat through yet another time-share style “free training,” awaiting the inevitable sales-pitch for the Program™ that will launch my lucrative new artistic career (these things are a bargain at c. $900 +/-, y’all … “double your IQ or no money back!”), I was invited to think about my own personal fandoms. What are the pop culture Things (be they bands or film franchises or particular artists, whatever) that I not only love, but love so deeply that my fandom of that Thing is part of my identity, part of what makes me who I am?

My personal list is pretty long ~ too long to get into here. Bands/musicians from King’s X to Tommy Shaw, from Rush to Paul Simon, from Queen to the Indigo Girls, come to mind instantly … and that doesn’t even begin to address a lifetime of film and television scripts (Star Wars, LOTR, Princess Bride, Hudson Hawk, etc.) I’ve committed to rote memory merely from repeat viewings. 😃 But that’s just a sample of my fandoms, and it’s beside the point.

The point was the follow up question: after thinking about the things that *hook* us into our own fandoms … we were asked to consider what, in our own art (in my case, music) would *hook* our “fans”?

I realized that I’d never really thought about it that way.

I’d never really considered the possibility that I might (someday) have fans.

To put it mildly, the question completely flipped my thinking around …

… thanks for the demo, George!

I mean, many of us have heard or been taught at some point not to create art for anyone else but ourselves. And honestly that’s been my goal as I’ve tried to learn how to record my music: to make recordings that I, personally, would love to listen to & spend time with.

But to turn around and ask myself “What is it, specifically, that I have to offer, that I have to say … that someone out there needs to hear?” ~ that’s a new one for me. So new that I don’t yet have a clear answer.

And apparently, that’s a major stumbling block in terms of marketing my music. It’s no good in this day and age (and in the aforementioned glutted marketplace) to be too broad or too diverse. I mean, it’s always been a liability for artists who are “too original,” who don’t fit neatly into pre-packaged labels & genres according to the divider cards in record stores*.

*For folks who are a bit younger than my GenX self, a “record store” was an actual geophysical location ~ either freestanding or in what we called a “shopping mall” where one could purchase physical hard-copy media (vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs) containing commercially released music.

We’ve gone beyond genres like “rock” or “country” or “folk,” all the way to “melodic progressive nu-death mathcore metal”**. The trick, the alleged experts supposedly say, is to identify the micro-niche of your music, your sound, your thing … and then market your stuff to that specific (pre-existing) audience. That’s the magic of the internet, after all: no matter how specific & rarified your tastes, somewhere on the Web you can find a whole community of folks like you.

**I might have just made that one up. But you couldn’t tell without looking, could ya? 😜

[Now, here’s the part where I admit that I wish I had a following of fans whom I could ask ~ what makes you a fan of my music? What do you get for yourself out of my art? And how exactly would you classify my music, in terms of sub-genre or micro-niche? Because to my ear, I’m rather all-over-the-map. But perhaps there’s a connection between my lack of clarity in answering that question, on one hand, and my lack of a throng of die-hard fans, on the other?]

At any rate, it seemed like a potentially fruitful conversation to start here. So I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts as fellow Creatives: Have y’all got a following of fans who really engage with your artistic work? How do you see your own work as a potential “fandom” that folks might get into? Or do you?

Whatever your thoughts might be ~ post ’em up in the comments! Looking forward to lots of perspectives on this one.

CTW

FIRST LOOK: rough mix of a BRAND NEW TUNE from my forthcoming album, PRIMORDIAL SOUP KITCHEN!

Albums, New Music, Works In Progress

Here’s a folksy little number I’ve been working on for the new ablum. It’s called “Long Way From Okay.” Hope y’all dig it!

Please leave me some comments & let me know what you think!