First published in  Lonely Goat Print Magazine Volume III - #3

May 2000 Goat Notes

ARE YOU READY FOR SMILEFEST? I mean really ready? By the time your done perusing this issue, I hope you will be the most ready folks around. SMILEFEST - It's everywhere.... It's with us all year long. A year made even longer by last year's absence of the treasured Fall festival of NC, Harvestjam. SMILEFEST - It's coming.... next week in fact. Come out Thursday night and camp for the weekend. There's a special pre-Smilefest event Thursday with Southern Groove Society, Emma Gibbs Band, and Granola Funk Express. SMILEFEST - Vassar Clements, Buddy Cage, Curtis Burch, Larry Keel, Steve 'Big Daddy' McMurry... they will all be there. SMILEFEST - the mountain is calling for us. The time of renewal is upon us. See you there folks.

If you think I've got it bad, you should talk to some of the people I've met lately. But on to other matters...

Lonely Goat has, per the status quo, been changing again. The biggest announcement is a partnership with Jambase.com. I've always kept my own database of shows in North Carolina and published it for the readers of Lonely Goat. In fact, LG started as a four page newsletter with only dates. I think I had less than twenty shows the first month. That was September of 1998. Now I regularly have 200 or more listings. I've never had enough print space to list everything and the print listings were always immune to the last minute gigs. Besides that, long time subscribers know that I can run waaaaay behind on the print publication schedule which sometimes leaves a gap in the information.

I eagerly began working on a website in February of 1999. I was excited about the opportunity to offer more information and more up to date listings than I was ever able to produce in print. lonelygoat.com has been a huge step towards fulfilling that goal, however I've always wanted the information to be more organized and easier to browse. I limited the website to posting each week's shows to keep it simple to manage, but I remained focused on finding a way to get all of the listings to everyone efficiently.

The Goatee. The first print Goatee was published in June of 1999. At the time, I was very focused on reaching as many people as possible through print. Lonely Goat had evolved into a magazine. It became a subscription publication to pay for the increase in print costs. I started The Goatee as a four page newsletter to be freely distributed to anyone on my mailing list and in stores across NC. The Goatee was also inserted into the monthly Lonely Goat print magazine as the dates section. By September of that year, The Goatee was in high demand. Eventually the print cost became too much. I concentrated on developing the content of the Lonely Goat print magazine and discontinued The Goatee free newsletter. The year 2000 has been very busy and this is the fourth issue in six months. Since the magazine has been far between releases, I've brought back The Goatee in print as a mailer only to subscribers in March and May. This allowed me to get the date information out there without the full production of the magazine.

The Goatee email. In March of this year, I started a weekly email of my listings. I called it The Goatee also. Just like it's print counterpart, it focused on providing dates. The Goatee email has been very effective. More people than ever are getting connected with the music.

Enter Jambase. I've always used jambase as a resource for information on bands from other areas. Their listings were the primary calendar for the early Lonely Goat until bands started to hear of me and send me their dates directly. Lonely Goat is the most comprehensive calendar available for kind music in NC. I started to notice that a lot of the bands I listed were also listing with jambase. Jambase noticed that a lot of bands I listed were not in their database. The jambase mission is similar to that of Lonely Goat. We all want to get these bands as much publicity as possible. Jambase has set up an incredible site which allows bands and venues to add their own dates. You can search on any number of criteria from Band to Venue to State to Date and more. Using the jambase as my primary means of web distribution is actually easier than my old way of doing things. The interface of their website is more user friendly.

The short story is that Lonely Goat is now the North Carolina affiliate for jambase. I'll gather the show information as I always have and I'll make sure it gets entered into the national jambase. I'll continue print date information for Lonely Goat subscribers with a small change. I promise to send The Goatee once a month with all of the date information I can fit as downloaded from jambase. Lonely Goat print magazine is being renamed. As of this issue, it's now the Lonely Goat Occasional. As the name says, it will be sporadic. One reason the magazine has not been very frequent lately is the content. My new goal is to post new submissions on the web as they are received. When I have enough content for an issue, I'll put together a full magazine. It seems to average every two months, but that's no guarantee.

All of these changes will hopefully free me up to take action on some lingering plans. I want to feature more content on NC bands. Every day I'm hearing from bands in NC that I did not know existed. There are some big names in the state that I cover regularly, but I'm really interested in finding out what these lesser know acts are doing and spreading the word. I'm out to publicize these bands. Everyone's participation keeps them going.

I also want to concentrate on reaching more people. The jambase program will introduce Lonely Goat to a national audience. Additionally, I'm pursuing traditional advertising mediums like other print publications and billboards to promote the website.

Finally, thanks for staying with me through all of that. I know this new organization is not the same as what you expected for your $10 subscription. If anyone disagrees with the new direction, please contact me and I'll refund your subscription in full, regardless of how many issues you have already received. If not, thanks for sticking with me. I think some great things are happening.

be seeing you...