Camino Journal Day 8
April 9
A basic music marketing campaign will cost you exactly the amount you have to spend, no more and no less. This is the tricky part to getting your music out there. First, you have to be certain that the quality is there before you spend your wad with some company that may or may not be able to get you that charting single.
Seems crazy to me there is no guarantee to the results, but the prices are the same. At first glance, it seems this is due to the nature of art and the subjectivity of what is considered good, but I have my doubts. Seems to me that the public will consume whatever it is fed. The quality of the lyrics, melody, and music don’t matter as long as the track is “radio ready”, which today just means the track is mastered properly and has the correct bit rate, whatever that is.
My newest single, and second release of this walk came out while I was sleeping in the hostel in Bilbao. I’d been monitoring the success of Honkytonk Guarantee through the Spotify for Artist app and it had been streamed about 50 times during the week it had been out. That wasn’t terrible, I thought. I wish I knew who those people were and what they thought of the song, but the analytics don’t tell you that. Some of the other local singles from DFW shoot up to 15k streams in the first 24 hours. It really makes you wonder how much money they spent for that initial push upon release.
Over the course of walking the Camino del Norte in 2019 I wrote a few songs and recorded them with a band. The whole process was costly, but very beneficial. I started getting in a groove around Jan. 2020 and was visiting Audio Styles, a studio run by Taylor Tatsch, outside of Austin at least once a month for a session. When it was all said and done, I’d added a couple cover songs to the album, thinking it would help garner interest through familiarity, and published the album of 13 songs in July 2021. I’d already started realizing the marketing aspect of my walk was totally geared toward reaching the people already involved with my music. I’d be releasing a single a week, more or less, over the next 7 weeks, and I hadn’t even thought about promoting my album El Camino, which wasn’t even a year old. So far, every time I gave out my business card and a sticker and told the person about the new singles, I’d remember about my album titled after this very walk, and would have to throw that in. My sales pitch needed work. It was out of order, too forced and with an air of doubt they would ever listen. But out on the Camino, people are more susceptible to new things and to listening to the other.
What I’m getting at here is the cost of the Camino can be about a 1/4 of the cheapest professional marketing campaign I could find. In spite of not having the marketing expertise of a big firm behind me, I would be able to guarantee a one-on-one interaction with each person I met. I could show them the music, give them some free promo, and tell them about my journey. All this is what marketing campaigns do anyway, but without bookoo bucks, you never know what they actually do with your money. For the money I had to spend, I was sure I would get rung through a couple of digital marketing templates and spit out into a series of publications and promotional shots. There is a chance that someone important could take notice, but the gamble is great if you’re not loaded.
A top-notch firm out of Nashville quoted me $3500/mo with a three-month minimum agreement. That was my entire savings. So, like I said, what you have equals the cost of what you want. With the album El Camino, I took my first dives into the marketing world of music. For around $750 I was able to distribute a couple singles to all the country stations in Texas, as well as the mainstream national country and americana radio stations. Not too bad. When talking with the representatives of two distinct companies, one out of Texas and the other out of Tennessee, the product they offered is not only useful, but seems 100% necessary to the overall process. What CDX and CDTEX do is take your songs and send them to all the radio stations using a curated database of emails.
CDTEX provides up to date information on their website as to how many times the song sent out and downloaded by the recipient, and CDX provides a database that tracks all spins. The thing is, again it’s all subjective. The first answer you’ll get when asking, “Why am I not getting any plays,” is something along the lines of, “You need to find your audience. Not everyone is going to like your music.”
And if you continue to press them and say, “Well, how do I find my audience?", they respond with, “That’ll be another 10K for a marketing campaign.” Are there any guarantees to the success of a campaign like this? No. Not one single bit of accountability along the chain. It’s all subjective. It’s what they call “art”.
After talking to some folks I sort of trust, I learned that for around 15 thousand dollars, I could have a single on the Texas Regional Radio Report. And it’s not that payola is alive and well. I haven’t been presented with an opportunity to pay a DJ thus far, and if I had been, I would have taken it, I mean I’d prolly throw down around $500/week for heavy play on a major station if I could walk in, have a chat with the guy, give him the cash and then go out and listen to my song every day on the radio.
Radio play translates to more fans, and that means more butts in seats at shows. This means more money for everyone. EVERYONE. The entire industry makes more money when a new artist breaks big. From equipment manufactures all the way to the business executives and hell, all those poor songwriters are spending that money right away as well contributing to all sorts of businesses and local economies. So, with all these life changing benefits to landing a song on even just the Texas charts, there is an entry fee. Humbly, I do not have enough money to know any more about any of this in concrete detail. What I have learned with my modest investments, is that spending a little is the same as spending none, and there are plenty of people out there willing to make a buck off you while you learn.
What we learn we keep, so there’s the plus side. It’s expensive to learn in the music industry, and I’ve already seen plenty of people shoot their wad and never come back from it. All those hopes and dreams tied up in the savings. All the years of thinking what one could do with 10K, 20K, maybe $30K, and then finally resolving of putting it all on the line and betting on yourself. When you’ve got money to spend, you’ll never hear a “no” from anyone, except maybe your spouse or family, and then it seems like the same ‘ol patterns of them not believing in you. You say to yourself, “I’m mastering this album with a guy who worked with Townes Van Zandt,” or “This producer worked with my heroes,” or “(insert name) from the industry says I’ve got what it takes to make it in the big time.” And you pull the trigger.
I’m skeptical by nature, and to be honest, have never had any real money to spend on marketing. Also in the past, my world view and what was important to me was a lot smaller. Some locals making it in the national and international levels has changed that perspective for a lot of the people making music in North Texas. So anyway, I spent a few thousand dollars on marketing the El Camino album and in the end, I got 5 radio spins, two from Amarillo and 3 from Fort Worth. On Spotify, one of my singles went up to over 7 thousand plays, but after consistently paying the same company for promotion of three more singles and the entire album, I didn’t see any results like the first one. The experience had an air of bait and switch to it.
In total I spent around $4,000 on the production of El Camino and then another $2,000 on the distribution and marketing. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve made this money back at my live shows, just like the bigger artist do. The difference is I play places where people don’t come to see me or pay a cover charge.
Leaving Bilbao
These things are on my mind as I wake up at 3am to a barrage of messages letting me know the guy covering one of my weekly gigs didn’t show up. I felt immediate panic, got up from the hostel bunk and went to the bathroom to take the call. I want to be in control of everything. I’d set it up all so well. Gave the gigs to guys I knew wouldn’t cancel, and then a no call no show. I couldn’t even reach the guy either. It was around 8pm in Texas, and the gig was halfway over. My substitute had missed the show. “Dammit,” I thought and called the owners.
They were gracious and told me to enjoy my time on the trail. Hanging up with them, I was filled with the adrenaline, my heart racing, my blood pumping, and I kept on looking for a place to dispel it. I was angry. The roaring engines of rage fired up. They started pumping. The rage monster was out for vengeance. How dare anyone do this to me. I texted the guy a few times. No answer. I try to call. No answer. I don’t want to totally burn a bridge, but want to get to the bottom of it, after all, there is still time to show up and give a show. The gig pays good, so I didn’t get it.
Not being able to solve the whole thing right then and there, made my rage worsen. And my mind started giving me all kinds of terrible scenarios of what could happen because of this, like I could lose my gig all together. It didn’t matter that I’d just spoken to the owners, and they told me not to worry about it, I was taking offense. I stood there looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and suddenly got control of myself. It wasn’t a big deal. I put some devotional stuff on with my phone and earbuds as there was no going back to sleep now.
I went back to the bunk and gather all my things, making my bag as quiet as I could. There were 6 others in the room. When I’d gotten all my things I stepped out into the cold and wet morning streets of Bilbao. You could smell the sea. All the Spanish cities are so clean. They wash the streets every night. There was a street cleaning team coming up the avenue to my right as I set down on a bench in the plaza adjacent to the hostel’s entrance. I popped the Coca-Cola I’d bought from the vending machine and took 4mg of Adderall.
I wasn’t sure if I’d keep my pace today but was definitely going to get out of Bilbao and walk the industrial city streets in the pale dark hours of the morning. I slammed the coke with tokes on a spliff and then began walking. It would be about 9 miles to get out of the city and all the suburbs, and this is the stage many guides recommend skipping by taking the Bilbao metro to the last stop and starting your morning from there.
Walking at night is very nice. With the streetlights and sidewalks, it’s easy to navigate, and aside from a few drunken partiers still out on the prowl and the street cleaners, I had the city to myself. The Adderall was just noticeable enough to give me that little extra energy to push myself to around 2.5 miles an hour. It was sprinkling a little as I was getting out of the city center. I hoped it wouldn’t rain. Was the apostle with me today? I hoped the apostle was with me every day.
While walking I pulled up the new song. I see the fat zero there where the number of plays should be. I still don’t pay for Spotify. I listen to everything on YouTube. I wonder how some of the major stars and even some of the regional acts get instant hits on their songs. You can see the time stamp to some of this stuff and within an hour or even minutes there are thousands of hits and interactions. I have to remind myself in these moments of comparison, I have a great life. Here I was in the beautiful European streets of the Basque Country capitol, truly living the dream, or a dream, anyway.
My motors of rage were in full swing, but as I listened to my song, I began to think, “Hey, this isn’t bad! This is alright!” This may seem easy, but it’s not. When you make art for pleasure, and then try to sell it or commodify it for consumption it muddies the waters. But here I was really enjoying a piece I’d made for consumption. My best attempt at being competitive. I liked it. I really liked it. I teared up a little. I felt it in that moment. The words of Neville Goddard buzzed in my subconscious. I thought of Jesus and Mark 11:24 “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
I felt the tears of a hit-single. What would it be like if I had it already? How would I act if I had already attained what I wished for? What was it I wished for? Did I want money, importance, fame, influence? What exactly was I looking for? The approval of some distant feeling of a father figure? The acceptance into society and a recuperation of all I’d lost? I’d gone over these questions a million times, and it always leads back to the same thing. I sought security. Yes, some of my wishes stem from base desires, and to filter through those isn’t easy, but what I sought more than anything was financial security. I thought about what could happen when my songs reach a wider audience, and I narrowed it down to four possibilities and I ranked them from worst to best:
1)Famous and Not Rich
2)Not Rich and not Rich
3)Rich and Famous
4)Rich and Not Famous
The famous and not rich scenario would be a nightmare. As I’ve gained more independence in life, I’ve also noticed a decrease in enjoyment of other people. Could be a sociopathic trait where people are merely utilitarian objects to use or avoid, depending on the environment and situation. For some, though, being known and idolized would be enough. I however have gravitated more toward the J.D. Salinger approach to the world. I’d love to hit it big and then retire to some compound and live in privacy and peace.
“I can be what I’m not”, the lyrics to my song rang out of my phone as I finally got out of the suburban areas of Bilbao. It was 8am and there’d be a coffee shop where I could warm up and change into some dry clothes. I’d sweated through again and already drank 3 liters of water. It was a nice walk, and I was happy to be moving along.
I started feeling like I should write something, and while walking, mulled over a few phrases I’d been toying with, looking for a melody to surface. The rhythm of walking is great for songwriting. It provides a nice foundation to build on, and I go along after a coffee and chocolate croissant, thinking up a new song. There wasn’t a lot there and after a couple more hours I arrived at a nice little town, Pobena, and sat on a bench drinking another coke and eating some trail mix. I rolled a spliff with the weed Black Jesus had given me. I got stares from passers-by as marijuana is so much more pungent than hashish. I had forgotten.
I people-watched and saw a young mother and her son out in the river during low tide. She kept hold of him and let him go only sporadically while he splashed in little pools up to his ankles. He’d bend down in a little baby squat and pat the water while averting his face and eyes, then stand up and applaud himself and all around for the effort. He repeated it several times before finally I hear from my right in a repeated yell, “He’s getting his ass wet! He’s getting his ass wet! He’s getting his ass wet!”
There was a man, mid-thirties, sporty dressed holding a plastic tricycle yelling at his wife to keep his child’s ass out of the water. Up to that point, it seemed things were going ok. The kid was having a good time and the parent was letting him, but the struggle began when bringing him out of the water. The child was so stubborn. When Spanish families make a scene it’s not so dramatic, there are gruff gestures and heighted speech, but it all fades, and they go on. No apologies or considerations of the people around watching. It’s none of our business anyway.
When they passed me by, I said, “You got yourself a little mariner there.” I was given no reply. Mind your own business his gaze seemed to say. I went back to my spliff.
By now I was hungry and had some thoughts of calling it quits and just sitting around smoking spliffs for the rest of the day. Maybe I’d do some writing. Maybe I’d do nothing. I wanted to get taken up in the river of Camino, to be driven and steered by that mysterious force. Was I doing it right? Maybe I was trying to accomplish too much. I was attempting a vacation, a spiritual pilgrimage, a health retreat and a marketing campaign all at once. I continued to look for ways to share a smile, and a song.
Portugalete, Spain.
Sitting at a table in the main plaza, I drank a shandy while eating some olives with my notebook open. The owner was a confident and beautiful woman who dressed to show her figure. She smiled and flirted with all the guests. Her patio was full, and the other surrounding patios were all but empty. An owner to an empty cafe stood at the border where his patio began and stared out into the empty seats on his property and then longingly over to his neighbor’s successful and vibrant money-making business. What is the Strangest Secret between two who do the same thing but have totally different results?
“Wow,” I thought, “A successful businesswoman. What would it be like to date someone like that? Someone with money and drive and passions and success?”
I’d never done that before, and despite this woman’s already set up life, I couldn’t resist a small fantasy akin to the love affair in Before Sunrise. I’d throw the whole trip away for a shot a love again. To embrace, to hold, to love to share to talk the deep talk. How do people agree to work together toward life? I can’t remember. Was there someone in this world for me? I couldn’t tell. Could I really give it all up and stay in this little town with this strong independent woman? Yes. I think I could. If the sex was good. If I could have time to write. But then I know it would only last a little while. Where would I gig? Would I get a car? Are there gigs here like in North Texas? I didn’t think so. Maybe I would start to give my card to bar owners and to the businesses I go to instead of just the pilgrims. Time will tell. But I saw a glimpse at what a great life I had back home too. Why did I need to get away? What was this fantasy of starting anew in a place far away where no one knows me?
After a few more Shandys and a few more spliffs, I left the patio and walked over to where the albergue was. It would open in a bit. A little buzzed and now tired from my couple hour break, I decided I’d just stay here in Pobena for the night and take a half day. I was feeling good and sat out on the lawn in front of the pilgrim’s hostel until the hosteleros arrived. They were two sisters and were really into having fun. One of them was smoking spliffs as well, but no one said anything. I went on smoking mine, and no one said anything. I really enjoy the smoking culture of Spain. It’s kinda, “mind your own business.” What’s the difference in a cigarette with hash or weed and a normal cigarette? Makes it easier that many regular tobacco smokers still roll their own.
I played The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel for them. Most Spanish people in their 40s-70s know this song. They hummed along during the verses and sang with passion on the lay la lay parts. I sang a few more tidbits of Spanish songs I knew and one of the sisters started telling us about some beautiful Basque songs. She talked shit about Trump and American politics and said, “You don’t know what it is to suffer a dictator. That’s how you elect an idiot like Trump. Joder!”
She was talking about Franco. “Pull a song up on your phone. Al Alba by Luis Eduardo Aute. Do it. Pull it up. This song is about the last execution in Spain. Even the pope called Franco and advised him not to do it. To not kill the 5 so called terrorists. They were Catalans and Bascos. It was terrible. Put the song on. On Youtube.”
I pressed play and we sat together, she and her sisters singing the words right along with the recording. The sky swirled above us, and the world seemed to stop as they sang the words and repeated them outload for me, “The children we would have had…. this song is full of double entendre and it’s a condemnation of Franco and the death penalty. I think it truly helps keep the death penalty out from Spain. Hijos de puta! Me cago en la Virgen!” and she spits on the ground. A single tear rolls down her sister’s face. She takes a long drag off her spliff. “Don’t defame the Virgin, my sister. Say, Cago en la leche,” and she blows out her drag as peaceful as ever and then spits on the ground as well.
I wondered what had happened to them. This song was inspired by the last executions, and its popularity is due to the use of the term alba, which can mean dawn in Spanish. Executions by firing squad happened at dawn. How many happened? Over 40 years, how much gunpowder filled the air?
“How do you live with that son of a bitch Trump? What’s wrong with you Americans?’
“People are angry, I can see they are angry here too. You guys have the political party VOX now,” I say somewhat defensively, ‘Many of the platforms they stand on are the same as platforms of the right-wing Americans who support Trump, “I respond.
“Yea, but all your parties are right wing. Even this Biden is on the right. I don’t think you’ve ever had a president who was on the left. At least not while I’ve been living. What you say is left is considered right by the rest of the world,” she laughs and her sister chimes in, “Yea and what the fuck is up with not using the metric system?” Her wisdom senses a need for some humor. She and her sister are on their second night of a 30-day stint at this albergue.
I laugh, “And we don’t even use Celsius. I don’t get it either, but I guess it doesn’t matter to most Americans ‘cause they don’t travel. I read that only 20% of the population have passports, and out of that 20%, more than half have dual citizenship or family in another country. The Americans who travel outside the country, for the most part, are open-minded people regardless of their political stance.”
”Well, still, they will be considered right wing here. You, I don’t know, though” she says and shakes her finger at me, “Me parece un listo, tu. You could be apolitic. Tell me, are you a republican?”
“Depends if you mean the Spanish one or the American one,” the sisters burst out laughing upon hearing me say this.
“Si, eres un listo, A son of a bitch like us.”
I longed for the days when you could say things like this in America to just anyone. You could tell she hadn’t met anyone from the states since pre-pandemic. Back in 2019, it was still okay to talk shit about Trump to my republican friends and Trump supporters, but after the pandemic, the climate had changed. Her blatant assertion made me remember that. She saw Trump as just another dictator, just another player who would hurt her family.
“Well, they rob the smart folks too. Hell, they rob everyone” she said getting up. “Now let’s get you guys checked in.”
After stamping the pilgrims’ passports and putting in a load of laundry, I ventured back over to the same patio and had some more Shandys and spliffs. I didn’t write or do much, just sat there thinking about Franco. I remember reading George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and learning about the divided factions on the left allowing Franco’s army to amass power and eventually win. There were also Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Ernest Hemingway’s book For Whom The Bell Tolls started for me my fascination with Spain. As a war correspondent, Hemingway also served in some capacity overseas to aid in what Orwell called the last great fight for true liberty. The Spanish republicans represented a true democracy of the people. Why didn’t American save the Spanish Loyalist? It was the communist that sullied the dream of a second republic.
What a crazy thing to have in your history. How fortunate was I to be born into a country that never had a dictator? That never saw their own government murdering its citizens. Crazy. 40 years of rule. Franco was friends with everybody. Another reminder it’s never a good sign when someone has no enemies. How could the United States be friends with Franco? How could they not have supported the Republicans? The Spanish Republic? I don’t get it. It’s like a slap in the face.
I wondered what I would do tomorrow. How far would I get? Where would I go? Had I come up with a purpose for this journey yet? I wondered back over to the albergue. My body was tired. I took two Ibuprofen and a couple magnesium tablets. It was still early, and I’d be eating a pilgrim’s menu at the bar just behind the hostel with some of the other pilgrims. We had to be in and sleeping by 10pm. I sat folding my clothes and organizing my bag when a couple entered with their packs. They were Spanish and on holiday. Palm Sunday was tomorrow, and this weekend brought the beginning of the biggest Spanish vacation season. You see many Spanish on the Camino during the Holy Week, and not because they are religious, but because it’s a long National Holiday and they don’t have to work. They went about taking showers and getting ready and after about 30 minutes, the wife emerged from the bathroom with straightened hair, make-up, a blouse and even black leather pants and high heels. She was walking around the albergue talking on her phone where everyone could hear. She and her man had made dinner plans with some friends from the town. Why didn’t they just get a hotel? A pension would only cost them about 20 euro more. You could feel the entire albergue slipping into uncontrollable laughter at such a surreal sight.
I head out with a few other pilgrims staying at the albergue and grab some food at the bar behind the albergue. It’s a pilgrim’s menu. Could go either way. We sit down at the table, and they are really sweet with us, taking their time to get our order. I hesitate from translating too much and let the waitress speak in English. The food wasn’t memorable, neither was the conversation, too much distance between everyone. One of the pilgrim women was very cute and kept talking about how she leaves her underwear out to dry on her backpack. A woman calling attention to her unmentionables is something I perk up to. I flirt back with her a little. We smile, try to catch that rhythm, but there’s nothing there. Too much outside pressure. Peer pressure is magnified on the Camino. You can feel the jealousies and the yearnings, the wants and desires, all magnified. Sometimes we are all just watching each other too close to allow anything to happen. The pain of rejection looms. What if I’ve misread the situation and it was normal for some pilgrims to talk about their bras and panties with everyone, but I digress. I’m just a man, after all. I wondered if she’d seen Before Sunrise.
Before heading to bed Hugo showed up, the cyclist I’d met hanging out with Black Jesus. He was much more lucid this time and surprisingly greeted me with enthusiasm. I asked if he had got any weed off Black Jesus. He did and we went outside and had a final spliff of the night. When we stepped out, one of the sisters was out there smoking her joints. We all talked a little about what a good life it is.
”Living the dream,” I hear echoing in my head. That’s what people always say back home. Yea right. This was definitely a dream, but it was unsustainable. That was the catch. You can’t be out here just spending money with nothing coming in. Even with busking, it’s unrealistic to think you can maintain that sort of life without becoming a total bum eventually. So, the working stiffs always have that leverage. They say,
“At least I have a job and steady income. It’s as close to the dream I’m going to get anyway. I’ve got a nice place, wife and kids, a good car.”
The thing is most people don’t actually own any of that stuff, and get so far into the system on payments that a vacation of more than a couple days every few years is just out of the question. Living the dream. I wasn’t rich yet, but at least I didn’t have to beg, at least I could just sit around smoking spliffs during this walk. I was also still not famous. So far so good as far as my hierarchy of possible outcomes. I was at position number two, and the way I figured it was that if 1 out of every 10 people I introduced my music to, actually listened to it, and 1 out of every 10 that actually listened to it liked it, and one out of every 10 that liked it shared it with their social ambit, then eventually, with a little effort, I could rise to levels three or four.
“It’s all exponential equations,” I thought, “As simple as x squared”.
I take a puff off the spliff and ask Hugo how far he will go tomorrow. The night is closing in. We are all silent. I explore the eyes of both my fellow smokers for some sort of conversation, they offer none. We extinguish our butts with the same sacred silence and retire to the bunks. I’d be up early of course. It only takes me a few seconds to fall asleep. Even after a short day, I’d walked about 14 miles. I was definitely finding my own rhythm now. I thought maybe I’d see Heiko and them again in a few days. Tomorrow, I’d make it to Castro Urdiales and take a rest day. Was I being lazy?