The Unforced Life: February 2020

Saturday, February 29, 2020

March News

From Gene Burnett

My latest album project “The Way Of All Things” is available for listening or downloading free or with a donation. Just click here: www.GeneBurnett.com It’s also available on iTunes, Spotify, CD Baby, and other e-retailers of music.

I also created and posted videos for all of the songs. Click here for a youtube playlist of those videos: The Way Of All Things

I already have a new batch of songs and I’m getting ready to start recording again. Too many to fit on one album so probably a few will have to wait until next time. Tentative title: “From The Temple To The Street”. I will of course, keep you posted as things move forward.

FYi: My site has been updated and our new player and download system is much better than the old one. Just click on the “Download or Play Songs” button for any album on the Musical Recordings page and a player will open that will let you listen to that album. There’s a little arrow at the right of each tune. Just click that arrow to download that song.

This month I posted a bunch of videos: 5 new T’ai-Chi videos, 1 new Nature video, and 2 new music videos including my set from our 9^th annual Love Songs Themed Open Mike and this month’s birthday bash at the Wild Goose Café & Bar, Carole King. I’m also sharing a video shot by the Southern Oregon Songwriters Association of my set at their monthly open mike. Links to all this stuff below in the “Videos” section.

So here we go…I’m going to start with local shows in case you’re in the Rogue Valley and then proceed with the usual information about where to find my music, videos, and pictures, including information about new projects.

There is so much to listen to and watch on the net these days…I’m amazed anyone even gets this far in the newsletter let alone watches or listens to anything I’m doing. I’m sincerely grateful for every view, every listen, and every nice comment I receive. I’m happy if anything I post truly reaches even one person. I’m offering all this stuff in a “just in case you’re interested” spirit.

Upcoming Shows:

Wednesday, March 4^th, I’ll be hosting my regular Themed Open Mike at The Wild Goose Café & Bar. Usually this happens on the First Wednesday of every month. This month's theme will be our 7^th annual “Love Gone Wrong” so musicians and spoken word artists will be doing songs and poems, covers or originals, that mention or are about this theme in any way. We’re never too strict or narrow about the themes for this event. The main idea is to focus our attention a little to hopefully inspire and motivate us creatively. These are always fun community events. No Cover at the friendliest bar in Ashland. Sign-up is 7:30pm. Show starts at 8:00pm.
*A heads up for next month: Wednesday, April 1^st, 2020: 8^thAnnual “Songs About Fools & Foolishness”

Saturday, March 21^st , from 10am-Noon, my good friends Jesse Biesanz, David Brown and I are hosting a Hacky Sack session outside the former Caldera Tap House on Water Street in Ashland. We’ll be under the overpass. This usually happens on the third Saturday of every month. We missed the fun and camaraderie of a good friendly Hack Circle and…more importantly, we missed the practice! It’s fun, aerobic, cooperative, demands balance, coordination, quick thinking and accuracy…So whether you’re new to the game, or an experienced player who wants to brush up your skills, or an expert who just wants to meet some new players, come on by. Hacky Sack basically involves keeping a small footbag in the air, usually leather and fairly soft, using only your feet. When there are more than two players, it’s usually played in a circle. If the circle gets too big, it is split into smaller circles.

The only rules of this Hack Circle:

1. You’ve got to use your feet to keep the sack in the air and off the ground. No hands! (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

2. If you miss or otherwise screw up, you can’t say, “I’m Sorry.” (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

3. No serving to yourself. (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

4. No hotdogging. Meaning this is not about how many tricks you can do before the sack hits the ground, and it’s not about working obsessively on tricks. Tricks are fine but in general, we want to keep the hack going as a friendly group and keep everyone involved.

See you under the bridge rain or shine. The overpass provides shelter from the rain and once the circle gets going, you’ll be plenty warm regardless of the weather.

For more info about these and all of my shows, and to confirm that there have been no cancellations, click here: Calendar

Since I'm putting this newsletter out once a month, it's possible there may be a cancellation of a given show by the time it happens. Please double check with my web calendar if possible to be sure the gig is still happening. I'd hate to have you come out for nothing. Also another gig or two might be added or times or locations might change, so do check the calendar for the latest info.

Recorded Music

All of my over 30 albums are available for downloading free or with a donation at my website: GeneBurnett.com

Videos In General

Overall Mission: I post a lot of videos on youtube, over 1000 so far! I'm not trying to build a fan base. In fact, I'm not trying to build anything. I'm not expecting you or anyone else to follow what I'm doing or watch all of these videos. Posting videos is just part of my overall plan to make my music (and my T’ai-Chi and Nature videos too) as freely available as possible and see what freely comes back. I think of each video as sort of like a message in a bottle...and more I toss out there the more likely one of them will land on a friendly shore and something good will come back to me.

A Note on Monetization: I won’t be able to monetize my videos on youtube anymore. Monetization seems to be an option youtube wants to reserve for bigger more ambitions channels. I’ve always had mixed feelings about having ads on my videos, so to some extent, this is actually a bit of a relief. On the other hand, it was nice to make a little money from my videos and nice to think of “views” as adding slightly to my income. But such is life. I’m happy to be rolling free and clear of ads. With the help of some savvy facebook friends, I was able to ad this paragraph to the descriptions on all of my videos at once:
I hope this video has been helpful to you or touched you in some way that leaves you a little better off for having watched it. This is not a big time channel and I have no plans for it to become one. I’m too small to have ads on my videos and I’ve always had mixed feelings about them anyway. If you would like to support and encourage what I do here, you can make a donation to me directly via paypal. No donation is too small, (or too big!) and all donations are very much appreciated. Paypal Me

So here are some video links in case you're interested:

How to Find My Videos: First of all, I've set up a Videos Page on my website with a menu similar to what you see below as well as a digital tip jar in case any of you want to contribute to my cottage industry. Every little bit helps and not just financially.

I've also set up some blogs that make navigating and viewing my various videos much easier. You can go to any of these blogs and see thumbnails for all of the videos posted there. Scroll across the thumbnails and you will see the titles of each video. Click on it and a page will open that will let you watch the video right there without going to youtube. My latest videos are always in the upper left hand corner.

To see all of my Music videos in one easy to navigate place, click here: The Unforced Videos

To see all of my T'ai-Chi videos in one easy to navigate place, click here: The Unforced Movement

To see all of my Nature videos in one easy to navigate place, click here: The Unforced Nature

For a quick and easy way to sort through, listen to, or download all of my albums free or with a donation, click here: The Unforced Music

To see my regular blog “The Unforced Life”, click here: The Unforced Life

To visit my youtube channel and possibly subscribe, click here: My Youtube Channel

To see all of my youtube playlists click here: My Youtube Playlists

And here are links to my individual album youtube playlists.

The Way Of All Things

New Videos

3 new Music videos:

Love Songs Night
Carole King Night
Southern Oregon Songwriters Association Open Mike

6 new T’ai-Chi videos:

Don't Ignore Your Muse

Show Up & Do The Work
More On The Temple & The Street

T'ai-Chi & Natural Movement

T'ai-Chi & Pushups

1 new Nature video:

Red-Tailed Hawks

Pictures

 I've stopped posting as many pictures on facebook, (for many reasons), and started posting them instead on Flickr, which I like much better.

Here's a link to my "home page" at Flicker: Photostream.

I have many photo galleries there but a few of my favorites are:

Small Miracles (mostly Nature related stuff)

The Dish Whisperer (I started posting a daily picture of my dish stacking work over a year ago. I recently crossed the 3000 straight days mark. I have no idea how long I’ll keep doing this. I’m so used to it, it hardly takes any effort at all to continue. I made a video for my song “I'll Do The Dishes Tonight” that featured a slideshow of the first year.

 Website

I continue to offer all of my albums for downloading, free or with a donation at my website: www.GeneBurnett.com I started doing this about 10 years ago and considered it a 5 year creative experiment. Well the 5 years passed and I decided to start calling it my "ongoing creative experiment" as I have no plans to stop. Since I returned to my folk roots and stopped climbing, or trying to climb, the industry ladder, I've been enjoying music in my life more than ever before. And enjoyment, rather than achievement or worldly success has always been dearest to my heart anyway. So now I focus totally on what I love most: writing, recording, performing and sharing what I create. If other people like it, so much the better, but getting other people to like me or what I do is no longer my goal or focus. I'm out to please myself first. I want to do my music exactly the way I want to do it and see who likes it that way, not figure out what people will like and try to do it that way. I put it out there freely and see what comes freely back. So far so good. I've never had more success and appreciation than I have since I started doing it this. Go figure.

Thanks, as usual, for your support and well wishes even if you don't make to any shows.

www.GeneBurnett.com

Monday, February 3, 2020

February News

From Gene Burnett

I also created and posted videos for all of the songs. Click here for a youtube playlist of those videos: The Way Of All Things Youtube Playlist

This month I posted a bunch of videos: 6 new T’ai-Chi videos, 1 new Nature video, 1 new Misc. video and 2 new music videos. We had two birthday bashes this month at the Wild Goose Café & Bar here in Ashland, Gordon Lightfoot Night, which was originally scheduled for December but postponed due to a snow storm, and Jim Croce Night. Links to both and all the other new videos below in the Videos section.

Upcoming Shows:

Wednesday, February 5^th, I’ll be hosting my regular Themed Open Mike at The Wild Goose Café & Bar. Usually this happens on the First Wednesday of every month. This month's theme will be our 9^th annual “Love Songs” so musicians and spoken word artists will be doing songs and poems, covers or originals, that mention or are about this theme in any way. We’re never too strict or narrow about the themes for this event. The main idea is to focus our attention a little to hopefully inspire and motivate us creatively. These are always fun community events. No Cover at the friendliest bar in Ashland. Sign-up is 7:30pm. Show starts at 8:00pm.
*A heads up for next month: Wednesday, March 4^th, 2020: “Love Gone Wrong”

Saturday, February 15^th , from 10am-Noon, my good friends Jesse Biesanz, David Brown and I are hosting a Hacky Sack session outside the former Caldera Tap House on Water Street in Ashland. We’ll be under the overpass. This usually happens on the third Saturday of every month. We missed the fun and camaraderie of a good friendly Hack Circle and…more importantly, we missed the practice! It’s fun, aerobic, cooperative, demands balance, coordination, quick thinking and accuracy…So whether you’re new to the game, or an experienced player who wants to brush up your skills, or an expert who just wants to meet some new players, come on by. Hacky Sack basically involves keeping a small footbag in the air, usually leather and fairly soft, using only your feet. When there are more than two players, it’s usually played in a circle. If the circle gets too big, it is split into smaller circles.

The only rules of this Hack Circle:

1. You’ve got to use your feet to keep the sack in the air and off the ground. No hands! (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

2. If you miss or otherwise screw up, you can’t say, “I’m Sorry.” (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

3. No serving to yourself. (10 voluntary pushups if you do)

4. No hotdogging. Meaning this is not about how many tricks you can do before the sack hits the ground, and it’s not about working obsessively on tricks. Tricks are fine but in general, we want to keep the hack going as a friendly group and keep everyone involved.

See you under the bridge rain or shine. The overpass provides shelter from the rain and once the circle gets going, you’ll be plenty warm regardless of the weather.

For more info about these and all of my shows, and to confirm that there have been no cancellations, click here: Calendar

Recorded Music

All of my over 30 albums are available for downloading free or with a donation at my website: GeneBurnett.com

Videos In General

A Note on Monetization: I won’t be able to monetize my videos on youtube anymore. Monetization seems to be an option youtube wants to reserve for bigger more ambitions channels. I’ve always had mixed feelings about having ads on my videos, so to some extent, this is actually a bit of a relief. On the other hand, it was nice to make a little money from my videos and nice to think of “views” as adding slightly to my income. But such is life. I’m happy to be rolling free and clear of ads. With the help of some savvy facebook friends, I was able to ad this paragraph to the descriptions on all of my videos at once:

I hope this video has been helpful to you or touched you in some way that leaves you a little better off for having watched it. This is not a big time channel and I have no plans for it to become one. I’m too small to have ads on my videos and I’ve always had mixed feelings about them anyway. If you would like to support and encourage what I do here, you can make a donation to me directly via paypal. No donation is too small, (or too big!) and all donations are very much appreciated. Paypal Me