Support Your Local Artist-Happy 25th Anniversary!

The title of this post is a parody of  the title of a series of westerns that featured James Garner (Support Your Local Sheriff) and (Support Your Local Gunfighter).

I remember these movies because my mother was a fan of James Garner and proudly announced that fact whenever these (or others) of his movies and TV shows would appear on the TV set.

As I recall the general theme of the movies is that Garner is put in impossible situations where confusion about who he is and what he is there for is the stage, behind which Garner's character is using wits to win the day, rather than force or brawn.

Maybe that is what Mom liked about Garner. Well, that and he was easy on her eyes.

Artists of all stripes use all of our wits to be successful in what sometimes seem like impossible situations today.  And just when we figure something out, it changes.

(Most likely his is really no different than any other time in history, although I've only known this particular time, so I can't really tell for sure, but things DO seem to change pretty quickly these days.)

Happy Anniversary to Owl Mountain Music!

2015 marks the 25th year that I've been working at James Garner's way of using all my wits in the field of music to thrive.

It was in my upstairs home office on Kensington Street in Kansas City that I began to formalize the work that I had already been doing most of my life in creating, performing, recording and publishing music.

Today, three addresses and two states and 25 years later, I am still working in this vineyard and you know, I wouldn't trade it for the world!

So, to honor this occasion, I've launched a new Venture:



You can check out the details of the campaign here:  http://www.patreon.com/steveeulberg

Support Your Local Artist

The purpose of this campaign is to help keep me focused on creating new music, archiving and documenting it so it can be shared.

To do this I've chosen Patreon, a crowd-sourcing platform that aims to support artists to fund their on-going work.

I first learned about this from my friend, Bing Futch, whose campaign began last Summer and which is helping him to record and finish his first all-blues recording!  (Click on his name to check out and support his campaign.)

But what IS Patreon?   Begun in San Francisco in 2013, here are two videos that explain how it works and how it came to be.

Here's a video that Patreon uses to describe the model using funding per project:



Because the support I need for my ongoing work is less-project driven, but which will result in more projects and products, I have chosen the monthly subscription model.  

(It would be more than way cool if you could support the project, and invite your friends to do so as well, but if you can't, that's just fine.  I'll still keeping creating and be sharing joyfully!)

In this video, Jack Conte, Patreon Founder, describes how the whole idea and model came into existence:



13:30 is where Jack describes his realization as a songwriter, performer and video artist of what the other half of his job is.

It seems to me that this model is very similar to how I recall James Garner's characters foiled his adversaries, saved the town and got the girl in those movies.

So, that's how I got the title of this post:  Support Your Local Artist!