Subject: Brother Butch Date: 6/20/2008 8:48:29 PM Body: Imagine that you came home one day and found that someone had broken into your house. You go inside and discover that they took your high def TV. On the counter is a note. The note says: I love the house man. You have impeccable taste. On one hand you want to shoot this guy and on the other hand you want to say: did you notice the detail work on the crown molding? Next time you’re coming, let me know and I’ll put out some beer. Sure piracy causes hardship but with so much music out there, you kind of feel special. Out of all the artists they could steal from, they chose you to rob. After all, you’re an artist, we’re used to hardship.Everyone knows that the music business is broken but if you don’t get to the root, the problem never goes away. You may blame this harmonic apocalypse on the Four Horsemen (Clear Channel, Sony, Warner, Ticket-Master) but there is something that you should know. No they are not saints. They have never claimed to be saints. In this day in age, expecting corporations to have a moral compass is wishful thinking. ASCAP (American Society of Composers Authors and Publisher), on the other hand, is a non-profit organization created for the sole purpose of protecting its members. Not since Jim and Tammy Faye Baker have I seen such hypocrisy. They sued a bar in Texas $700,000 for playing live music. Yet, Sony and Warner openly admitted fraud. If that doesn’t spell reasonable cause, I don’t know what does. They never filed a civil suit to recover damages on behave of their members. Huh, what’s wrong with this picture? The latest round of sanctimonious platitudes is a thing called the Songwriters’ Bill of Rights. It’s a petition that says that artists should be paid for their music. They want to take it to congress but the last time I checked, we already have copyright laws in this country. That doesn’t seem to be the problem. What are they going to do, push for the death penalty? What ASCAP really wants, so bad that they can taste it, is to get their fingers in this internet music.Brothers and sisters please gather around and lend Brother Butch your ears. I have returned from the mountain top, where I had a vision. I saw a girl posting her wedding song on her MySpace page and there were licensing fees, service charges, renewal agreements, contracts, lawyers and music police. I saw men taking money from the offering plate and putting it in their pockets. This money is for the children of the starving artist fund, I said. Lest you beg a lashing, you best keep quite, they replied. Then I heard a mighty voice, as the sound of many waters. Brother Butch, it said, I have heard the peoples’ cry. They long for meaning and melody. You have been chosen to lead my people out of bondage and into the land of majestic melody. Go speak to the rulers of the harmonic apocalypse. Tell them that they have violated the sanctity of the public trust and have lost the hearts of the people. They must repent from their greedy ways, lest they parish. Subject: Click Click Date: 6/13/2008 10:10:48 PM Body: Do you hear that? Wait listen. Do you hear it? Click-Click…….Click-Click-Click. That’s the sound of people clicking on my music. Like little seeds that have taken root, people are slowly discovering it. The only indication of airplay I usually get is when the website pegs but the tell tale sign is the regular number of people that lookup lyrics on my website. You don’t bother looking up lyrics, unless you like the song. There it is again: Click-Click-Click. I love that sound. That’s what keeps me going. You write music in solitude but you share it with the world. There is absolutely nothing like having people enjoy your music. It’s like having four thousand friends around the world. If you have never caught yourself saying, “Wow did I do that?” I encourage you to find your gift. It might not be music. It could be anything. Everyone has been given a gift but never cast your pearls before swine. If you have some big idea or big dream, be careful with whom you confide it in. These things have to reach critical mass before they can withstand the assault of ridicule. A sense of mastery is power and to quote Herb Cohen: “Unlike beauty, power is in the eye of the holder. If you think that you got it, you’ve got it. If you don’t think that you’ve got it, you ain’t got it.” You might not be power hungry and out to rule the world but sometimes, if you get game, you’ve got to give game back. My new song “No Rewind Button” is in mixing phase right now. The gentleman doing the mixing is the son of Rich Becker, who recorded many of the Motown classics. We all enter this world the same way and we shall all leave it the same way. Music is a mask that allows us to share our humanity. Through it we can express our vulnerability, our pain and our nakedness. Subject: New Song Coming Out Date: 6/1/2008 10:33:44 AM Body: If you're staring at your economic stimulus check and thinking; how will I ever spend all of this money, may I suggest a couple of Butch Castetter CDs? Imagine helping put America back on the road to prosperity and helping a starving artist all at the same time. On the news front: 419 North has been getting some airplay on XM radio. I also have a new single "No Rewind Button" coming out soon. It's classic Castetter; a song with a narrative that tells a story coupled with100 proof music. It starts out easy, with a haunting melody, gets up and rocks and goes out on the mountaintops with guns blazing and amps blaring. It comes down off of that last note with the sweat dripping and both barrels smoking. One could argue that there is too much music today and that the last thing the world wants is more music, hence all the contempt for unknown artists. A life insurance salesman gets better treatment. My hope is that good music will always make room for itself and my goal is to create a body of work that speaks for itself. The following is a dramatization of a conversation that I plan to have in the future.Music Executive. Be gone from me, thou peasant singer/songwriter person. Thou art not worthy to be in my presence. ButchYeh lord, though I be just a humble peasant singer/songwriter person, I beseech the sovereign's patience. Hast thou considered my many musical treasures? With these treasures, thou shall be known all throughout the land as the wisest among men and find much favor in the bosoms of many fair maidens. Music Executive.Please tell me more of these treasures that you speak of. You can follow the formula and target a specific audience. You can write songs and put on shows designed for that narrowly focussed audience or you can write what you like and discover a latent audience. Case and point: classic rock has spent zero dollars marketing to the twenty something generation. Yet, I've met a lot of kids that like that good old days' music. I'm amazed that you can re-release thirty year old Led Zeppelin music and outsell the new stuff. That's the thing about the iPod, it's all about the song. It's not about the artist. They just like music. Unfortunately, they seem to be insulted at the idea of paying for music. From a creative standpoint, I'm just starting to scratch the surface. I have a shoebox full of new song ideas. How good are they? My job is to write it and sing it. It's up to the audience to decide how good it is. I think they are good. Subject: “419 North”, makes CD Baby’s Top Forty Date: 5/12/2008 12:52:35 PM Body: Currently my CD, “419 North”, is on CD Baby’s Top Forty best selling American Traditional Rock albums. It is also getting airplay on XM radio (Kaffeinebuzz) and available for downloading on Apple iTunes, Rhapsody and dozens of other download sites. I’m not sure how this story ends but I know how it started. Iron sharpens iron. I well remember one night in Chicago when I took the Strat to an open stage at Buddy Guy’s Legends. In most bars the band is little more than audio wallpaper. However, at Buddy Guy’s, people come from all over the world for the music. Buddy sits out in the audience and listens. Expecting the usual cliquish attitude from the guitar players, I was pleasantly surprised with how down to earth these people were. Introduced as Butch from Indy, I had at least a dozen players come up to me and say: “Indy? We used to play the Noodle… Damn shame about that place.” Lesson one, “there’s no hiding place on stage.” DIVE RIGHT IN…. The format goes like this, they group you together and normally a singer sings a verse and everyone takes turns playing the instrumental break. Wow, there I was, a nobody, a less than nobody, on the same stage that Hendrix, Clapton and Muddy Waters had played on. I kept telling myself “what do you have to lose? Even if you screw-up nobody knows your name.” We played a few songs and then someone asked: does anyone have a song they want to do? “Yeah I got one, I said.” I walked up to the mic and started off with Last Night Down in Houston and before I got through the first six bars the house was rocking like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Afterwards, as I was walking towards the door, I heard Buddy ask: who is that guy? Someone said: “some guy from Indiana.” I was so wired afterwards that I couldn’t get to sleep that night and I’ve been ruined for honest work ever since. Lesson two, “nobody owes you their attention.” Flash forward a year. I’m back in Indy playing at a hole in the wall. Nobody knows about that night in Chicago and nobody cares. It’s one of those places were people are constantly going out to the parking lot to get high, deal drugs or God only knows what and then come back in. The headliner was some heavy metal garage band and it was a young heavy metal crowd. Anyone can play for an enthusiastic crowd but forcing an indifferent crowd to stop talking and listen is how you hone your craft. One of the best compliments that I ever received was when I accidentally overheard a twenty year old say “Oh yeah, Butch rocks!” A few weeks back I was playing at a place in Marietta Georgia when I noticed that you could hear a pin drop and every eye in the house was on this stranger from Indiana. “The Grammys.” I’ll try to watch the Grammys tonight but chances are that I’ll get bored and switch stations. It’s a shame that the business has been run in the ground. The sole purpose of the major record labels is to tirelessly dig for the gold nuggets. However at some point artists became a commodity item and how an artist looked schematically on paper was paramount. In other words, the potential for a return on investment became the deciding factor. Hence, Brittney, Amy Winehouse, Kanye West and don’t forget Kelly Pickler. You have to wonder what the rest of the world thinks of Americans when they hear Kelly Pickler ask if Europe is a country. “Standing out in a stack of thousands.” The major record labels have out lived their usefulness and finally the conduit between artist and listener is opening. Unfortunately, it’s like having a thousand cable stations to choose from but the good news is that the focus is back on music rather than the conduit. It has to be that way because when you’re sorting through ten thousand unknown songs, either a song has it or it doesn’t. As Warhol once said “just keep making art and leave it to the critics to decide if it’s good or not. All I will say is: not many unknown artists get their first project mentioned in Rolling Stone and their second project on CD Baby’s Top Forty. Hold on to those signed CD’s. While the music will live on in digital perpetuity, we probably won’t press a million copies
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