I created this to help promote my music and gigs. Now when I’m at a gig I can tell everyone with an iPhone to head to the App Store and just download my app. They’ll instantly get a bunch of free music, videos, can join my mailing list, and be notified of upcoming gigs. Hopefully it’ll help draw more of a connection between myself and the audience. Musicians have to continue to think ahead and come up with new ways to promote support their music. I’m hoping this will help allow me to do just that.

Now, a quick preview of what the app will offer.

Audio

There’s a ton of free audio included, available to stream right to your device. A lot of the audio in this app (like recordings from live shows) isn’t available anywhere else. You can purchase audio either from iTunes or directly from me through PayPal. As I add new music, it’ll show up in the app automatically. Plus, if you’re using an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 along with iOS 4 you can stream music in the background by selecting a track to stream and pressing the home button on your iPhone. The current track will continue to play in the background.

Video

Videos featured in the app are pulled from my Vimeo page and will be updated regularly.

News

The app features a News section that’ll let you read the same content you get on this site. You can even opt to receive Push Notifications for whenever I post something new and you’ll be notified on your phone automatically.

Calendar

Just like this site, all of my public gigs will be listed. Clicking on a gig listing will show you more details about that gig as well as a map display marking your current location and the location of the gig. From there if you add a reminder notification about that gig and it’ll appear on your phone 24 hours before the start of that gig. You can easily see any gigs that you have notifications scheduled for. You can also cancel a notification for a specific gig just as easily. The map view allows you to get directions from your current location to the location of the gig.

Photos

Pretty self explanatory. Photo galleries in fullscreen glory.

Mailing List

A ‘Settings’ section in the application will let you manage your mailing list preferences. You can subscribe and unsubscribe right from the app.

Marcus Cardwell – sax
Danny Anderson – guitar
Kris Afflerbaugh – bass
Andy Beaudoin – drums
Todd Jenkins – percussion

and, our first set will feature Akina Adderley!

We play from 9:30p to 1:30a and it’s FREE to get in. The Elephant Room is located at 315 Congress Avenue.

To give you a taste of what we’ve been working on, here’s a recording from our rehearsal today. The quality is bootleg quality, but I hope you enjoy it and can hear through the rough recording.

Some Quick Details

I’ve rebuilt every aspect of the site on both the front and back ends. Now the entire site uses WordPress, a handrolled theme, and a couple of handy plugins that let this function more like a MVC environment than WordPress is out of the box. In the past couple of months I’ve been exploring using WordPress as a CMS and have had a few clients to try it out on recently. The flexibility is impressive and development is rapid. Most of my past development has been with ColdFusion, but I’m using PHP for most of my projects now.

Some Background

Each post will have its own unique background image that may or may not directly relate to the post content. Where it doesn’t relate, it’ll be just an image taken that day that gives you a small snapshot of how my day was spent. If you click on the title of the post you’re reading, you’ll see a picture that’s part of a panoramic I took in Paris this past week. Feel free to download the full image.

More is More

Because of the overhaul I’ll be able to more easily update the site with current news and upcoming events. I plan on adding music transcriptions, sneak peeks of works in progress, rehearsal audio and video, and more. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed if you’re hip to that.

Mailing List

To the right you’ll see a place to enter your email address and subscribe to my mailing list. From time to time I send out messages containing the latest news about my music, tour dates posted, etc. I won’t publish or give away your email address to anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time!

Down the Road

In the future I plan on adding a section for photos from rehearsals and shows, a storefront for selling things like CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, unitards…whatever. I’m also going to work on overhauling the Audio and Video pages, adding more content and making them a more engaging.

Kinetic features all original music that I wrote over about a 10 year period. It was recorded over two days in 2008 at Lava Studios in Austin. Special thanks goes out to all the musicians who played on the album (Matt, Angelo, Swift, Nick, John, Devon, Ulrican, Marcus, and Danny). Also, to Jose Alcantar who mixed everything and Jason Crane of The Jazz Session who wrote the liner notes.

What People Are Saying

“‘Kinetic’ represents everything that is right with contemporary jazz…Telford announces himself as a vehemently original voice.”
« Steve Greenlee, The Boston Globe

“Rather than attempt to re-create Davis’ ‘Aghartha,’…Telford brings his own twist to the tale on ‘Kinetic,’ by blending straight-up funk workouts with sparse, lyrical ballads and tunes that blend well-arranged horn charts with a loose, swanky ‘jam-band’ feel.”
« Jeff Miers, The Buffalo News

“Wow! I’m truly blown away by this CD. Wonderful tunes and slamming horn charts. And the playing! Erik’s such a beautiful trumpeter/soloist. I especially love ‘Death Trap’ and the last three minutes of ‘Horizon Problem’ KILLED me!”
« Nat Adderley, Jr.

“‘Kinetic’ invokes the spirit of Herbie Hancock’s electrically organic Mwandishi band of the early 70′s while creating his own pulse and sound for the world of tomorrow.”
« Derrick Lucas, Program Coordinator for WGMC Jazz 90.1

Next, my Quartet+1 will be performing at the end of the month at The Elephant Room. The group will feature Monique French on vocals, Kris Afflerbaugh on bass, Angelo Lembesis on piano, and David Sierra on drums. We’ll be performing mostly original music featuring my compositions from Kinetic and great music by Kris.

To promote the concert and the CD release, we’ll be performing on Good Day Austin on the morning of Monday, January 25th. We’ll play around 7am so set your alarm clock!

Finally, I’m working on some performances in the northeast that will be coming up this Summer. There are some very exciting things happening so stay tuned!