Jewel Devereaux

Therapy….Like a Shake Weight For Your Id

jewel — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:54:25 +0000

I have to say that I’d forgotten how much I enjoy writing. It’s really difficult when you don’t really have anything of interest to document.

I will say that managing all of these social networks is a pain in the ass. I’m only working with three so far, and getting them to link up is annoying. Ping.fm is supposed to be the hub, yet it won’t connect with Tumblr, at least not for me. The Wordpress dashboard is really intimidating upon first glance. I wish I had more time to play with these. I’m sure there are some instructional videos on You Tube. I would like to incorporate pictures, and video. Maybe I’ll take a day off this week and fidget with all of that. Then there’s the issue of artwork and photography that I keep pushing back to work more days at the studio. I could actually be working on it right now instead of typing about it, but if I don’t keep up with this, I won’t write again for another 6 months.

It seems like every time I get it in my mind to sit down and focus on one task, there’s always some “real-life” crap that I have to deal with. Yesterday it was my therapist. It’s only for an hour in the morning once a week, and I’m sure it does me good to sit still, and talk about what’s going on in my life to somebody. I just don’t like talking in the morning, and if I must talk, I like to control the conversation.

Every week it’s the same topic of discussion. The cookie business. I am really proud of the cookie thing, and it was a struggle to establish, and it’s even more of a struggle to maintain. Right now it’s on hiatus, because 1. Nobody is ordering anything right now (which is a mixed blessing), and 2. I really don’t want to break my stride at the studio to be holed up in the kitchen all day baking. I wish I had some extra hands to help me with production and marketing and sales. I think when I put this thing together, I saw myself in more of a management position. Anyway, I’ll sort all of that out as soon as I can make a big leap forwards in terms of finishing the record.

Anyway, my therapist thinks I’m insane for doing so many things at once. He thinks I should focus primarily on the cookie business because it’s more of a sure fire money maker than music. I never did anything with making money as my primary engine. I am an ideas person, and I have been made to suffer for it, because I have never had any interest in developing the business side of things. I am creative. My brain is on 24/7, and whenever I come up with something that I can accomplish, and it provides me with a challenge that isn’t ridiculously taxing on my energy and my pocket, I will 9 times out of 10 run directly at it. My plan was to instate somebody with business savvy along the way. I believe that the business was successful when it came out of my head and into reality. I was cool when I shipped off the first order that came through the website, and I got the first positive review. Everyday I’m streamlining it in my head, and I have plans to make it bigger and bigger and better. I’m also a perfectionist, and if something isn’t right, I won’t let it go until it is. I don’t really care how long it takes. I mean I would love it if everything was instantaneous, but what good would getting the idea out quickly be if the product was bullshit?

What’s the rush anyway? Where am I going?

So every week I spend an hour of my time listening to my therapist telling me that the cookie business should have gone global by now. He says I should have been driving a Lamborghini last year. He wonders aloud why the record is taking so long. I get tired of explaining this shit over and over again. You have to factor in so many things. At the end of the day it’s really about time management, and creative energy…….and money. It’s always about money isn’t it?

By the end of the session he was so irritated with me that he said he’s going to enroll in a 6 month baking course to learn how to bake cookies, and he’s going to open a cafe with an on premise bakery, and then franchise it in less time than it took me to perfect my recipes, my packaging, have my website built etc. I love how people always think they can do what you do, and bigger, and better, and faster, just from hearing you talk about it. Maybe he can do it. What the fuck do I care? Like I’m going to get into a prick waving contest with a therapist who believes he wants to be a baker? One of us would have be insane.

Ha Ha. Lamborghini.

Anyway, that’s what prevented me from getting started on my artwork yesterday. Blah blah blah.

Today I’m headed to the studio to track drums with Tyrone and Sam K. Then I’m going to add some guitar to a track that Cam wrote. We also need to re-cut some guitars for an older track we did last year. My plate is pretty full. That’s how I like it. Hopefully we can get a lot done today. There’s always a lot of work that goes into recording live drums. I’m hoping Al can come through to help us with this today.

So if I’m going to get started, I’d best wrap this up. I don’t know if anything I just wrote was interesting. I’d hate to think I was just writing for the sake of adding new content regularly. I hope more interesting things happen soon.
My mom just walked past me and asked me if I was writing my “blodge” again. She has no idea about anything world wide web. I’m sure she would rather I be in the kitchen listening to her fussing about everything that crosses her mind. I love my mom but she is the primary reason I don’t like talking in the morning. If she wasn’t so intimidated by technology, I would suggest she put all of her jibba jabba in a blodge….I mean blog…like I do. It’s very theraputic.

I won’t be tagging people on Fb anymore in regards to my blog. Besides them only allowing you to tag 20 people, some people don’t like being tagged. Fuck em’.

I guess I can post notice in my status or folks can subscribe to http://www.jeweldevereaux.com

I’m working on better content.

Knives out.

Keep up.

http://www.loveandluxurycookies.com

http://www.pinniclemusic.com

Up From The Depths 30 Stories High….

jewel — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:58:20 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I sat down to write. Every now and again, I get the urge to sit and put together some kind of account of what’s happening in my life and with my work.

I don’t think I’ve written anything since November.

For a good while nothing was really happening. I had been trying to put a band together to get out and preview some of the music, and to promote the record, which at the time had a scheduled completion date, and a tentitive release date.

Like so many times before I had met and conversed with several musicians from the area, and not a whole lot materialised. I had been using Bandmix, and Craig’s List primarily, and the results were a mixed bag of egomaniacs and disillusioned folks who honestly believe that the reason you become a musician is to be rich and/or famous, or to make a steady living playing in a band. Those are terrible reasons. You simply have to love creating music.

I’m not really good at talking to people. I’m not good at making people visualize what I see in my mind. So that was a big part of the fallout. I mean I am really guarded about the concepts. I have had people I collaborated with in the past just run off with the ideas. Blah blah blah.

Anyway some good did come from Bandmix and Craig’s List. Actually some really good fortune. I met Margie Mullen Martino a fabulous vocalist through Bandmix and she has been coming through for the last six months or so, performing backing vocals on some of the songs. Adding new texture and soulful freshness to what I had been listening to for the last year and a half.

Through Craig’s list I was able to find an engineering intern for the studio named Sam Kornhouser. He’s been working with us for about 6 months, and he has turned out be a really reliable, and personable young man who learns quickly, and can run run the sessions efficiently. That has helped me to get my project moving again. So now along with Al Dickenson, Pinnacle’s head engineer, I can get organized and record, edit, and mix fluidly, which is a GIANT relief.

This weeks goals are to cut final lead vocals and get some live drums on a few songs. I am meeting with Tyrone “Royal” Maddred this afternoon at the studio to jam a little and talk a little about the band situation. I would love to have him in my band. We played together at the first Primefest, and he again impressed me at the second Primefest playing with the band “Century Machines”. So I’m looking forward to today’s meet up.

I can’t close without speaking on the isolation of working on an album like this. It’s really hard to get people outside of the project to understand how much work, and stress goes into self producing a record. There’s a lot you become responsible for, and a lot that you have to figure out and learn on the fly. I have never done this before, so most of the time was spent developing my process. A lot of it was finding a second engineer that actually enjoys working with music. The rest of the time has been spent staying up all night listening, and rearranging things. Self doubt becomes a factor, and everyday at some point I want to scrap the whole thing and start something else. So it takes a great deal of discipline to get up everyday and go back into it, and try to do something….anything to move the project forward, and to remain excited about it. I won’t even go into the frustrations of technical limitations.

Facebook has been a good way to keep up with the people that matter the most to me. I can catch up to people wherever I am, and I can look in on them and see what they’re up to, and I can add my 2 cents without starting up a long conversation. That’s really cool, but eventually I will look up and realize that I haven’t actually seen anybody outside of the studio, and I haven’t really been doing anything to maintain any of my relationships with friends. I haven’t been to any movies or any of the things I enjoy. Just home, studio, home, studio. I’m not complaining, this is the life I desired for myself since early on. It’s just that can’t help but notice that the phone doesn’t ring, or the FB page is barren.

What are you going to do right?

So what I can do is try to get a better grip on this social networking machine. I do have Twitter, and Tumblr, and a Wordpress blog that I haven’t been staying on top of at all. Mainly because I thought having an Iphone would make it easier to manage all of these things, but it doesn’t. It makes it even more complicated. I set up the Ping.fm, and I should be able to blast all of this stuff from one post which would allow me an hour or two to blog in the mornings. I can Tweet all day just to try and get friends more involved and interrested in what I’m up to.

I believe when I start playing shows there will be a lot more interesting content to manipulate.

I think that roughly covers everything I was trying to say. If not there’s always tomorrow.

Knives out.

Keep up.

I can’t remember the last time I sat down to write. Every now and again, I get the urge to sit and put together some kind of account of what’s happening in my life and with my work.

I don’t think I’ve written anything since November.

What are you going to do right?

I believe when I start playing shows there will be a lot more interesting content to manipulate.

I think that roughly covers everything I was trying to say. If not there’s always tomorrow.

Knives out.

Keep up.

Escaping Jewel Devereaux

jewel — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:35:50 +0000

I have been contemplating picking up and starting a new blog. I haven’t written anything really for a little over a year now. I wrote pretty frequently when I was on Myspace, mainly because my readership was built in, and the interface was easy to manage. I could link to what music I was listening to, or what movie I was watching or what book I was reading. It was convenient .

I think the main issue I had with picking this up again was content. I mean the original blog was extremely personal, and it was really just a pointless, angry rant with no filter, that didn’t really offer anything to reader aside from glib entertainment, while serving as a catharsis for any and everything that annoyed me in my day to day activities.

In the year that I’ve been away from keeping a journal, I’ve been on a voyage of discovery. It’s amazing how much you can learn just from being quiet and letting things happen around you. Letting other people talk. Finding the lesson in things that don’t go as desired, and then applying it positively to the next endeavor.

I have been busy. At times it felt like I was on an extended vacation because I wasn’t really applying myself daily to the goals I had set for myself at the end of 2009. That’s how it seems, but in reality there’s been a lot of things going down. I’ll list a few.

At the end of 2009, I signed as a recording artist and producer for the Pinnacle Music group. I began working on my first album project. I also began production along with executive producer Major Moves on an album project for Pinnacle Music Group artist Simone Waller. I performed as a featured artist in the second annual Primefest concert. This was my first time performing material that I wrote and produced live
As a solo act . I also designed a t-shirt for the festival.

I wrote a treatment for a short film called “The Last Brunch“, that got expanded into a script by Random Streams Media which is the film production company created by Major Moves. We wrote the script together, cast it, and shot it in three weeks. Major served as director, and I was assistant director, and we both served as producers. I got a chance to work with some of my best friends on the project, Mary Williams Calloway, and Naeemah Ali acted excellently in it, and my friend Sultan Ali served as location scout, and production assistant. We also discovered an enormous acting talent named Tehron Vito Moment. Be on the lookout for that guy.

We also did a panel discussion show called “Loose Bars”. I think we did well conceptually, but we need a bigger production to make it fly the way we envisioned it. I just love that we actually went to work on our ideas, and we’re all the richer for it, even if it’s measured in experience and learning points. We didn’t second guess ourselves, and we’re not sitting around wondering “what if?”.

I was also recently given the position and title of Director of Communications at Pinnacle Music Group. In this office, my job is to keep communications open between the label and the artist to better understand what each faction needs in regards to moving things forwards. I am also in charge of making sure that everything goes according to schedule in regards to daily operations, and making sure all the artist and staff are aware of , and prepared for scheduled events.

I am also working to help develop a public presence for Pinnacle and it’s artist. We’ve all been in the studio working to perfect our product, but now it is time to go out and build the brand, starting in our communities. So right now we are starting to venture out to see what’s happening outside of the lab. We have some social events planned, and a few live things, some open mic nights and such. We’re also planning a big networking expo for early February.

So that’s just a small slice of what’s happening with me, and 2011 has even bigger ambitions. I think I have that content I was looking for now.

I spent the better part of the morning trying to understand how serious blogging works. I’ve been linking all of my social networks together, and so far that has been running smoothly with the exception of Wordpress which is giving me hell connecting to Ping.fm. Aside from that I believe I’m ready roll again. I’m ready to share the journey from my perspective.

I want to close by saying that it’s been a great creative year, and life is good. I would say that organization is the next hurdle. Trying harder to be more focused and better at managing my time. It’s easy to fall into a creative slump, or burnout if the energy isn’t present. Disorganization is an energy drain in the long run.

So until the next time. Keep me in your prayers if you believe in that kind of thing. Thank you in advance.

Knives out.

Keep up.

Metamorphosis Of Narcissus or Mexican Coca Cola

jewel — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:07:54 +0000

After a LONG break from writing, I am back with what will be a series of entries chronicling the road to completion of my forthcoming album set for release by the Pinnacle Music Group in December 2010.

As of now I have completed 11 detailed song sketches that make up the framework of the album. What’s left to do is going back in and re recording some vocals, and laying some lead guitars, and thickening up some of the songs with keys, live drums, and more layers of guitar. I am being assisted by Pinnacle engineers Al Dickinson (who is also my project manager) and Ali McGuire. This won’t officially start until next week, so in the meantime, I have been trying to assemble a band to get out and start promoting the album early. This is not an easy task, and trying to persuade musicians to come aboard has been a huge strain, and I pretty much took the week off from the studio this week due to headaches and mild depression.

I did however get outdoors and get some work done. I took a meeting with Felice Macera who is doing the album photography and assisting me with art direction. Right now we have the front cover art completed, and now we’re working on the back, and the insert work.

We have a concept, and we’re in the process of searching for a few sexy female models, which is another daunting task. More and more each day I am starting to understand the need for management.

Today, I took to the blazing hot Philadelphia streets on my bike. First for lunch at El Vez with Amanda Panda, and then to South Street Sounds to visit Jeff and Leona, pick up several sets of new guitar strings, a couple of harmonicas, and to put the word out that I am looking for musicians.

El Vez was my first stop, and may be the best Mexican restaurant in the city since the changing of management at Taco House. It’s affordable, and the food is authentic. They have Mexican Coca Cola which is made with sugar instead of corn syrup, and they also have the most beautiful waitress in the world. Her name is Ashley.

It was the same as it ever was at South Street Sounds. I didn’t hang too long, but it’s always good to see Jeff and Leona, and they cut me a nice deal on the strings. Thank God because my money is Casper.

So that’s about it for now. Hopefully next time I will be reporting from the studio. I’m pretty sure I will, seeing as though I’ll be there all day tomorrow.

So until next time

Knives out

Keep up.

http://pinnaclemusic.com/

http://xpozd.com/

http://www.sssounds.com

http://www.elvezrestaurant.com/