Ric Patton

What makes this blog special? I never knew it was called a blog. What actually is a blog? I don't know. I started this like a method of record keeping. It's a scratch pad of digital thoughts. Some people call it a blog but there's no pressure here for me to create this .  

 I don't want to feel any pressure. I see it as random snapshots taken over time. A snapshot here, snapshot there. It's all about the blues life, not necessarily the music. 

  Priorities change over time, musical interests.  Time changes things. 

   Entertainment is a cool industry to be in. Creating memories for people, capturing the moment for people, offering engagement to your fans. The Blues future is now. What would you like to see here ?

 Imagine turning a mundane event into something special. Creating content where there is none. Turning a life event into a cinematic story. That's interesting to me. It's called content creation.  

  I've been doing it for a while without realizing what I was doing. But the more I do it  the more I pay attention to it.  

One thing that made it stand out to me was playing in the Old Timers Blues festival last weekend. I didn't want to capture the festival on video. I just wanted to play the music and not be distracted from enjoying it by filming the festival. But I did capture lots of the audio. So I do have some memories. 

   Music is what festivals are all about. It gave me a chance to think about the skill set required to create cinematic documentation of any event.  

For instance washing a car, something as mundane as that, can you turn washing a car into interesting content ? Something that will hold or interest an audience for three to five minutes?  Washing your car could take 30 or 45 minutes.  To thoroughly wash one could take an hour. Can you imagine a viewer wanting the entire process ? 

 The filmmaking skill comes in deciding what to capture, what shots to put together in order to make that event interesting. How to turn a one hour job of washing a car into a three minute video. What shots would you shoot if the average shot was only three seconds?  

 Three minutes there will be 20 shots per minute or 60 shots over the course of three minutes. 60 shots telling that story of how that car was washed. Those shots could be thought out beforehand. 

  We know that if you average 3 seconds each shot you'll need 60 of them. It doesn't hurt to have a plan going in so that you wouldn't forget anything. At least have some shots to start and some idea for the music or some idea of the narration . It would make shooting the carwash more thorough and organized and more likely to be completed. 

The next level skill set would be to actually film it and operate the camera. That's a whole different skill. The next skill would be editing and putting the sequences together to tell the story and framing the story . 

Those things are unique skills. To create and shoot video content in today's society. To tell a story in that way is powerful  especially if you have an audience for the content. It's Life streaming vs Live streaming . 

 Doing a consistent email campaign to stay in touch with my fans has been one of my biggest weaknesses. For years I have thought about it. I've even tried it on and off. But I've never been consistent about communicating with my fans. That is so crazy. Especially knowing how important it could be.  

  Several years back I started writing a paper called The Book of Billy. The title came from meeting a blues artist in Mississippi Delta. The guy did a great performance. He offered to sell me a CD. I didn't buy it that day. I walked away. And I made notes about what I had just witnessed.  

  When I walked away, he didn't get my email. He didn't make any effort to add me to his fan list. And I thought about how many people he let walk away and I thought about how many people I let walk away and the difference it could make in my life if I were to communicate with them consistently.  

  So I asked myself the same questions everyone else asked. How often should I communicate with them? What do I need to say to them? How much is too much? What if they get tired of me? Would they consider me being pushy? I don't want to come off like selling something all the time. What am I to say to them? These types of questions go around in my mind .  

  So far just questions going around and no answers. My good friend VIP Kevin Fitch . TheDallas Blues man. And Ward Miller, both Texas VIPs, have been encouraging me saying that they would love to hear and see a consistent email campaign from me. They love my music. They've been following me for several years. But they feel that email communication could be one of my weaknesses. So I'm making an effort to turn that around.  And make email one of my strengths. This is the beginning of that journey.  

  How much is too much?  Ward and Kevin suggested that I emailed them every day. I can't see any reason why I wouldn't do that other than, Is that too much? I live stream  seven nights a week. This way it just goes hand in hand. They already receive notifications from me when I go live. Why not receive another notification from me?  

I don't know the answer to that. I'm sure I could do something every day because right now I do nothing every day. It takes just as much effort doing nothing as it does to do something .  

  I sit here today and sort out my ideals and plans of how to get this started . I've never been on anyone else's email list. No other blues artist is sending me consistent email communication. So doing that already puts me in a world  removed from many, not many people you could have this discussion with because they don't do it.  

  So today I sit down to be honest with myself and you and write out my ideas about starting an email campaign. What would you like to see? What would you like to get from me?  I appreciate your response.

 I remember hearing the statement that if life is worth living, then it's worth writing down. I know the two are two totally different things. Opening up and writing about  oneself is totally different than living every day. 

   Being transparent enough to let my feelings and thoughts out can be a frightening idea . I've just never been an open type of person. So when I write this type of post, it can be intimidating or frightening. Knowing that someone in the world will be reading this. I don't know who. Someone will know how I feel.  Someone will know what i'm thinking today. That's a powerful thought.  

 I was brought up the opposite of that. I was taught to mind my own business. To stay to myself or stay out of trouble. My thoughts were not the ones that are important, it's the thoughts of others. Be sensitive to others thoughts and feelings more than my own. 

  I'm reaching a point in my life now where I want to be able to share and help others as much as I can. And of course to help myself. I found an amazing way to do both at the same time. By using the internet. The internet thrives on openness, it thrives on the ability to be transparent to share your feelings and thoughts. There are enough people on the internet to find someone who will boogie with you. 

 It's like exercising. You have to do a little bit at a time. You can't do too much, you don't want to overdo it. Do as much as you can today and then do a bit more tomorrow. So here goes my day of flexing and opening up. Now we can go out and have a great Blues day.

 The snow today this morning reminds me of my childhood. I was living with my grandmother in an old house in limestone county Al. Big Daddy Smith was as close to a grandfather as I knew. It was snowing and it was cold in our old house. Snow had got on the wood and it was wet. Big Mama wanted to go over to Big Daddy's house where we could be warm. We had to walk across the field to get there. I was a little boy, I guess 3 or 4 yrs old. The field seem huge to me. I was too big for her to carry me. 

   We went trekking through the snow. I can remember that slow sticking on my face and clothes and getting in my shoes. I was stepping high. Trying to step and walk through that snow going over Big Daddy's house. We had to walk through the little ditch and walk up the hill to get the Big Daddy's house.  

  Finally got to Big Daddy's house. He had a big fireplace. It seemed as tall as me. It had wood and a big fire going. I remember feeling that fire. Warming me up. It felt so good to me. Felt like the fire was warming me all the way down into my bones. It went through my clothes. I remember falling asleep. I remember feeling happy being around that fire. The snow today reminded me of that snow walk. It makes me smile.

Good morning Blues people. Downtown one day I looked down at the sidewalk and saw my name written in chalk. I laughed and took a picture of it. I thought it was cool. I went around on another block and saw it written again. Somebody had written my name on the sidewalk with chalk. It was cool promotion. Later that week my friend Mr. Dip told me that he did it.   

  Another time after playing the show a young lady walked up to me with my name written on her forehead. She asked to take a picture with me. Of course I laughed and did it. I thought it was so amazing. Another time a young lady wrote my name on her arm. And she held her arm out and showed me and it almost brought me to tears. I love my fans, and I love their promotion efforts. I think it's called Guerilla Marketing. And I really appreciate all those antics.  

    Some of my fans on TikTok have been buying T- shirts and making videos wearing them. The shirts promote the hashtag #BluesVIP are getting the word out even farther. 

   When I was in high school my best friend William was a promoter for a promotion company. His job was to put posters up around town and put flyers on cars. Sometimes I'd go out and help him. We'd go to the mall and go to big parking lots and stick fliers on the windshield of cars and put them on the windows in different stores around town promoting events coming into town. Sometimes we'd take tickets to the beauty shops. It was a fun job to help promote. I learned a lot doing it.

   I've been playing music for a long time. And I know quite a few musicians. But since the dawn of the new recording technology, I've seen lots of Blues artists make recordings of themselves. They have boxes of CDs at home. Boxes of DVDs sitting in their bedroom. Hundreds of CDs or thousands of CDs, but they don't have any fans to sell them to. It never dawned on them just how many 1000 is.  One thousand might not sound like many. But when you have 1000 CDs to get rid of you recognize just how many it really is . It's like playing in an empty club. You put on a great show, but there's no one there to hear it. Kind of heartbreaking. It's a nightmare. A situation I've tried to avoid. I decided to go about it backwards.  

  In the old days touring was a necessity. Trying to get the word out and expose an act to help build a market for people wanting the music . Since then live streaming and social media has totally changed the game. I believe it's possible to do pretty well without a lot of major touring. 

 To sum it up in one sentence. What we need is a giant Street Team. Imagine having a street team of promoters dedicated to promoting blues and soul music 1000s of people who are willing to put up a sign, willing to write your name on the sidewall or put up a poster. It would totally change the dynamic of music distribution. That's what I see as the blues #BluesVIP club. Thousands of people who love blues music enough and willing to put in some promotion muscle. In exchange for that they gain access to exclusive content and  privileges. And so, the #BluesVIP Club was born. I've been working on this since 2015.  We got work to do.

Two years ago, Delof  suggested that I open a Discord account and move the Blues VIPs group over to discord from Periscope. Of course it sounded like French to me, a language that I couldn't understand. It's been a couple of years back. It didn't make sense to me. I can't say that it does now, but back then when I looked at it it looked like a bunch of gibberish. 

   I didn't see any need for it. So of course I let the idea pass. Delloff was ahead of his time. Now that I'm working with the social tokens one of the token administrators paired me up with a girl to help set up a discord account. And they suggested that I use it as a communication medium for the team. I'm open minded to it and I'll go ahead and download the Discord app.  

   That young lady helped me set it up last week over the phone. I looked at it. She told me I was an administrator and was free to make changes that needed to be made so that it could turn it into something to work with. Looks like a bunch of bullshit to me. I haven't seen enough of it yet to draw a conclusion. So here we go. Getting in deeper. 

  I announced it tonight on TikTok that I was opening up a Discord server and invited my listeners who wanted to, stop by. We had 22 People come in on the first night. That is unbelievable. Some of them say they already had Discord and were already using it. It's just new to me. 

   Now, all my life I've been known to get deep or try different things. But it is interesting to get involved with this type of communication.  

 I'm gonna invite anyone who reads this post, you're more than welcome to join my Discord. And maybe you can teach me what to do with it. Thank you

  Being an independent artist can be a bitch sometimes. Not having a record company, or anyone to back you or having assistance with different projects can be a bitch. Having to do so many things yourself is challenging but it brings out the creativity in an artist. 

   The future is coming regardless of what we think there will be a future so we need to get back to the music. I've been busy lately, working on my new Amazon store, working on social tokens, working on different ways to monetize my music.  I know that music is just going to be a small part of my enterprise. 

   I noticed lots of artists beginning to do endorsements for different companies and coming out with their own lines of clothing, and any other way they can in order to supplement their music, money. I'm no different. I'm doing all the things that I can as an independent.  

   The pandemic has taught us all a lot. One thing it taught me was that a live performance is a valuable thing. It's a premium. And when handled well. It should be worth something. A live show, especially a blues show is a treasured moment. And I think people are going to be ready for live shows when they do come back.  

    We have to focus on the bottom line. And the bottom line is can you make a living with your music? As challenging as it might be? I'm sure some can and some do. Most blues artists are struggling and trying to make it, it's always been that way. But I believe it's possible to organize your fan base and make a sustainable living as an independent blues artist. Again it does take some work. It takes coordinating all the elements and pulling a lot of things together.  

  Nowadays the attention span is short. Online and offline. People have things on their mind. And they're moving forward and gaining bits of information from places they go. To hold a minute of someone's time or even 30 seconds of someone's time is asking for a lot nowadays.  

   I say the landscape is changing in the music industry. In fact, it's already changed but it changed for the better. I believe artists are looking for a way out of the streaming paradox because they're not making the money and it's not working out. They're not selling the amount of records and things that they need.  

  The record sales account for only 25 to 30% of the income coming into that record company, even if they're their own record company. Being independent  is definitely a challenge. It stretches your creativity in many directions. 

   But the most important thing that we have to do is run back to the music. That's where we need to get back to the music. Let's Go !

 Integration was a big step for me. In fact, integration was a big step for everyone in the seventies. When I was a child, I remember my school being closed down. A little black school New Hope Elementary was closed down ,Trinity High School in Athens Al was closed and we were forced to integrate. It just so happened that year my mother was moving into Madison County, with her husband, and I was able to attend a Madison county School. Madison schools were thought to be better equipped schools than the schools in limestone County Al.  

   Some of my cousins on my dad's side were already attending that school. That was a status symbol to go to school in Madison County. So there we go bussing and integration. I'll never forget the first time I got off the school bus. How terrifying that was to go to school with these white kids. Well, they were cool. It wasn't my first time being around white kids, it was my first time being with them in the classroom. And everybody was uptight.  

   We kids were so uptight. Yeah, we broke out in fights. We were children. We were being mean to each other. We'd fight each other in the hallway whites against blacks. And we'd fight each other on the bus. We were just kids learning to live out the fantasies of our parents. We were continuing to foster their myths and lies. Fighting was the thing to do.  

  We did that for many days. We weren't able to finish a complete day of school. We had to turn around, get on the bus and go back home. Half a day. Some days we couldn't make it the whole day. They had to close the school down and send us home. But eventually things settled down. 

    We were able to make some kind of a year. Forced integration was real. At Madison school we met a black assistant principal whose name was Mr.Henry Bradley. And Elbert Deason was the principal but Mr. Henry Bradley was the assistant principal, one white man, one black man. So we were able to identify . Whoever made that decision made a good one to put one white man, one black man. We looked up to Mr. Bradley. He comforted us and gave us a sense of hope. He also gave us a sense of what could be possible with education. Mr. Brandley went on to become the principal of another school, the first black man principal in that county in Al. 

   We all looked up and admired Mr. Bradley. He eventually became the bass player in my early blues band. Can you imagine how good that felt for me ? For him to think enough of my music to play bass for me . I was so honored to have him with me. That feeling is still with me today. “Lean on it Ricky boy” He would always say, “ Lean on it” And that's what I'm still doing today. I'm leaning on it.

 I was out doing my walk and laughing the whole time. People asked me every day about these social tokens. The biggest question I get is: How much are they worth? It? It is so funny when I tell them that they're worth nothing. Yeah, I've got 10 million of them, but they're not worth a damn. They're not worth anything. I tell them they aint worth shit ! But I'm willing to share some with you. That is so funny to me.  

  To be able to share nothing with my fans. Yeah I was just thinking about sharing nothing. Then I smile and imagine turning them into something. Wow. 

  Back in the day, when people made albums and cassettes I was offered a job working with a record company as a street team promoter rack job, my job was to stock records, put up posters and pass out flyers and help promote events in the area. I didn't take the job. I couldn't do that at that time. But I understood the assignment. Just promote the records and events that come to town. My friend William took the job. He would be working at the Civic Center, or he would put up posters and pass out tickets at the beauty shops, he was actually involved in promotion with the promoters. He got FREE tickets to the shows. It was a street team activity.  

  When I think of the $BVIP group, that's what I imagine it being. It's a giant street team that helps promote events, online and offline events. I could imagine that if these promoters were compensated with this $BVIP token  the possibility of that token increasing in value could be great. 

   Think ahead a year from now, two years from now. Imagine hundreds of people, maybe thousands holding  these tokens. And imagine that they are worth something because the things that we all promote have become worth something.  The tokens are tied to the blockchain. That means they won't disappear. Imagine being a part of it. No matter how small. And I can also imagine not being a part of it. That's funny to me. Just so funny. It's a beautiful day . Enjoy it !