Progress Report!

OK, here it is! Our first official “progress report” on what’s been going on, but moreso, how far we’ve come since first launching this new era of Life Stage (geared towards blogging, social networking, and better communicating with you). So with that, I’d like to first briefly preface this report in progress with a little background info on how this “new era” actually came about (again, briefly).

Basically, if you want to know how the progression started, we have to go back a little ways to our pre-Life Stage days. Back then, we didn’t really know what we were doing (ok, we probably still don’t, but at least we have a little better idea!), so admittadely, we did A LOT of beating our heads up against the wall. I mean, as far as succeeding in the music business, we thought what I think a lot of bands think, which is quintessentially this statement: “We’re gonna TAKE over the world and MAKE people listen to us and MAKE our own path and BREAK down the barriers! We’re awesome!!” haha how silly.

Fast forward a couple of years (although it didn’t take even that long to realize that ideology was, well, stupid), and we realized two things: a) the “music industry” didn’t give a crap about us, and no matter how “awesome” we thought we were, we were still “nobodies” to them, and b) when you use the “beat down the door” method of finding success, if you do find it, you find it alone – but when you care more about building lasting relationships with the people around you, and you give to them not expecting anything in return, you’ll be more fulfilled in the long run! (Not to mention you are actually building friendships with the very people who will be supporting you in your career anyway!) SO, the moral of this story is that by about the time we changed our name to Life Stage, and got in the studio to record Stage 1, another shift was happening as well, and we knew we had to do more to make real connections with the fans, musicians, and other people that make the music business happen.

So, as we got out of the studio around March of ’09, we decided to take it upon ourselves to find out just exactly HOW we would go about managing ourselves with this new philosophy in mind. And what we came up with was to do a multifaceted approach where we would use social networking tools (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc), which took a while to research and find out the best and worst ones for us, blogging (keeping you “posted” on what’s up daily with us, in an official manner), and promoting selflessly (ie CD giveaways) in order to get the word out about ourselves, but not ask anything in return. We always saw that people were more likely to stick around and support us when they didn’t feel like they had to! And, so it was. That’s where our research led us, and that brings us up to where we are now.

Now, with that amazingly crafted preface in mind, let’s get back to this progress report! (This’ll be the easy reading part!)

OK. So here are a few things that we mentioned we were going to start doing (or already were doing) back in December, when we first got started with this blog. Let’s see where we’re at with those items, and how plans have been adjusted etc., so you can see what we’ve been doing in a broad sense, and see what we’ve got planned! Let’s go!

Here’s a direct excerpt from our blog post “What’s to come…” (The red words are the adjustments we’ve made)

-Launch web blog (check)
-Begin posting daily on web blog (check)
-Begin posting weekly VIDEO blog (check, when we can get together to record)
-Start a series of LIVE, interactive concerts from our garage, posted LIVE via Ustream.tv We’re actually just broadcasting our live shows now at http://ustream.tv/lifestagemusic – catch one when you can’t make it to the actual show!
-Get some REAL photos of ourselves (check! thanks to Sarah Phillips, we now have some “real” photos to share with the world. See our Myspace or Facebook)
-Keep better in touch with our fans through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others (Check. Or at least we’re trying! Let us know how we’re doing by messaging us on one of those sites!)
-Launch another massive CD giveaway, promotional campaign (Check – it’s going on right now! Let us know if you want one, we’ll send you one FREE OF CHARGE! you can’t beat that)
-Finish another album’s worth of songs, 7 of which are in the process as we speak Being that this was a long term goal for 2010, I’d say we’re definitely getting there. The album is really shaping up already, and we have enough starter material for almost an entire album as of right now!
-Preview these songs as we finish them to our fans, that’ll be fun! (Check. With one completely new song already being played at our shows, we’ll be releasing more as they come. Keep an eye out!)
-Try and do a couple of shows each month, at least until summertime (so far.. Check! Through March we’ll have done one show/month so far, and more are in the works to come)
and ultimately (pending funding)…
-Get in the studio
-Record another album
-Go on a tour!
Of course, these last three are still on hold, but are still on the agenda. Hopefully one day soon!

In addition to all of that (which I apologize if this has been hard to read, I couldn’t think of a better way to get all of this out there), We are also now making it a goal to get as many official Stage 1 reviews as possible from leaders in the progressive community! This has already begun, and you can read the first review of many to come here: Stage 1 Review

And finally, that’s it for this Life Stage progress report. Sorry if this was long or hard to read, but thanks for hanging in there. I’ll try to post these more frequently in the future, with obviously less to say per post, that way we don’t fry your brain! (or maybe that’s a good thing?) At any rate, thanks so much for sticking in there with us, and the take home message here is that we absolutely value your support, and we want to hear from YOU, how do YOU think our progress is coming?

Let us know anytime: Myspace Facebook Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

Talk to you soon,

Ross, Life Stage