Hitting the road: MD 20/10 mini acoustic tour!

By Jon | Published: March 5, 2010

Doing another March acoustic tour. Maybe I should make this a yearly tradition?

Heading out this year with another group of super-talented musicians. This year it’s Laura K. Balke, Matthew Beer & Friends and yours truly.

Come out and see us! We’ll make you smile. We also have a tour sampler for sale ($5…cheap!) with three exclusive songs by each of us!MD 20/10 tour sampler!

Also, after the tour, I’m going to give away one, numbered (limited edition of 60), copy of my fine art project What Dream is Worth This? to one awesome person who signs up to my mailing list during the tour (whom I will pick at random using super secret, super science). You must sign up in person to be eligible! Offer void where prohibited by law. (Just kidding: Fuck the law!)

Hope to see your beautiful faces at one of these beautiful places:

What Dream Is Worth This?Thursday, March 4
Kill Devil Hill
170 Franklin St. (between Huron st. and India st.)
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Saturday, March 6
Tramontane cafe
1105 Lincoln avenue
Utica, NY 13502

Sunday, March 7
514 N. Aurora St
Ithaca, NY

Monday, March 8
The Labyrinth Press Co.
12 East 4th St
Jamestown, NY 14701

Tuesday, March 9
The Green Line
4426 Locust St. (45th and Locust)
Philadelphia, PA 19104

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I am donating 100% of sales this week to Doctors Without Borders for disaster relief in Haiti.

By Jon | Published: January 13, 2010

In light of the recent tragedy in Haiti, I’ve decided to donate 100% of all sales of my music for the rest of the week (through the weekend) to Doctors Without Borders to aid their efforts in Haiti.

Doctors Without Borders are a completely neutral organization of volunteer doctors and nurses, with only one goal: fulfilling their oath to help those in need of medical care. (Refreshing, isn’t it?)

I’ve already seen people flinging around ideas on Twitter and FB about who you should and shouldn’t give your money to, so here’s a link to Charity Navigator’s 4-star (the maximum) rating of Doctors Without Borders to ease your mind: http://bit.ly/QAZi1

All of the downloads I offer through my bandcamp site are set to “name your price, no minimum.” So pay whatever you like or whatever you can. I am also going to cover the PayPal processing fees, so whatever you pay is exactly the amount that I will pass on to Doctors Without Borders.

http://jonautry.bandcamp.com/

You’re beautiful. Thank you.

-Jon

Update: Sent the funds to Doctors Without Borders yesterday (Monday, Jan. 18th)! Thanks so much for the generous donations! I hope you all enjoy the music, but even if you don’t, your money is saving lives and easing pain!  Thanks again!

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My 2010 MySpace Friend Request Policy™

By Jon | Published: January 4, 2010

Every time I visit my MySpace account, I keep getting this creepy feeling like I’m in some sort of sci-fi, future-apocalyptic ghost town. A town where the occupants have all inexplicably vanished, but all of the machinery that was created to market goods and services to them is still intact.

I get inundated with (obviously automated) requests from bands, marketing people, comedians, etc. and I used to just approve them, because I figured: Why not? What could it hurt to have more “friends?” Well, it doesn’t hurt anything, per se, but it greatly reduces the quality of whatever human interaction may still be possible on this site.

I’ve always maintained a personal policy that I would/will never send any MySpace messages, comments or Friend Requests in any sort of automated way. If you receive one of these from me, it’s actually *from me*…personally. The only thing I have automated on here is that my status updates are fed from my Twitter. (http://twitter.com/jonautry)

But adhering to that kind of ethos simply isn’t enough anymore.

So beginning January, 1st 2010, I’ve blocked all requests from Bands and Comedians. (Film Makers haven’t proven to be troublesome thus far, so they remain unblocked as of this writing.) Furthermore, each day or so I will be deleting a few pages worth of Bands/Comedians on my friends list unless I either know, have worked with or am an actual fan of them. My friends list is going to be like George Costanza after a dip in the pool.

If you’re a band/artist/comedian and I know you, or you’re a fan or lonely or want nude pics or all of the above, but can’t friend me because my settings just shoot me a quick message and I’ll send a request. No big deal.

And, to reiterate, if you receive a friend request from me, it’s actually from me and not automated through software. If you don’t know me and get a request from me it’s probably due to someone we know or like in common.

As my friend Joost said recently: “2010 is about love and quality, not greed and quantity”

-Jon

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I've got your DOORBUSTER right here.

By Jon | Published: November 26, 2009

DOORBUSTER savings on music by Jon Autry

In order to celebrate my “Black Friday” gig, our country’s terrible economy and lack of single-payer, universal health care, I have decided to finally pry the final mixes of my new album “[Secret Hotels]” out of my hyper-critical, kung-fu grip, master it and release it to the general public with variable, ‘name-your-own-price’ pricing this week. (I’ve also decided to begin composing hideously long, run-on sentences.) I’ve also enabled the ‘name-your-own-price’ on my last record “Cutting Exercises” this week too.

So, bust my digital door. It’ll feel really good.

>Click Here To Join The Digital DOORBUSTING Stampede And Download The Shit Out Of My Music. <

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What Dream Is Worth This?

By Jon | Published: September 29, 2009

What Dream #60I’ve been missing in action for awhile and now you’ll see why…

It’s with great pleasure that I unveil to you:

What Dream Is Worth This? (An ambient sleep soundtrack.)

60 dreams, 60 pieces of ambient music, 60 minutes long…

Each is individually numbered and conveniently bundled with a small pillow (featuring handmade, embroidered pillowcases by the very talented Joan Hutcheson) , a sleeping mask and a handwritten entry from my dream diary.

The pieces are each $60 and will be on display at Mt. Comfort [a space for champions] Gallery in Indianapolis, IN this Friday, October 2nd. I’ll be on hand in pajamas doing ambient music performances all night. Attendees are encouraged to bring sleeping bags and wear their jammies too. If you’re unable to attend, but are interested in obtaining one of these fine pieces, please feel free to contact me in any way you see fit.

A few words on how this all came about:

Sleep is one of the things I love most in life. Unfortunately, for a very long time, I’ve had a very unhealthy relationship with it. Sleeping too much. Sleeping too little. Can’t get to sleep. Can’t wake up. A sleep schedule that slips around the clock leaving me waking at 7am some times and 7pm others. Bad mattresses, noisy neighbors and nightmares. The perfect sleep always seems to elude me.

I’ve tried many things to solve this problem: Stretching, herbal tea, pain-relievers, reading, counting, visualizing various things, clearing my mind, watching movies… However, listening to music has long been my method of choice. Over the years I’ve slowly altered my bedtime music selections, looking for the perfect music to get lost and drift away in. Never quite finding the perfect solution, I began to think about what helped me the most and started considering writing and recording a piece for my own use, which is what inspired the creation of these pieces.

Hopefully, one of these 60 pieces of music will help bring you a restful sleep.

Sweet Dreams,
Jon Autry

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Still Living

By Jon | Published: February 7, 2009

still livingA few years ago my friend Casey Roberts and I discussed the idea of collaborating by using each other’s art/music as prompts for the other. At some point he gave me a handful of small pieces to start with.

It took awhile, but I finally found myself in a place where I was ready to work on one.

The end result is this 14 minute-ish, ambient instrumental.

Hopefully, it sort of embodies the accompanying image in some way. For me it’s about a feeling of stillness, the quiet in between a blanket of snow and an overcast sky, survival in all it’s forms and man(kind) endlessly climbing up the side of a snowy mountain, with a dog, under the sun.

P.S. Listen quietly, but preferably via something that can reproduce low-end. Otherwise, you miss all the warm, melty bits.

<a href="http://jonautry.bandcamp.com/track/still-living">Still Living by Jon Autry</a>

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I'm going through changes.

By Jon | Published: February 7, 2009

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I make music and the way I share (or don’t share) it.

I’m in the midst of finishing my new record right now, so a lot of this is at the forefront of my mind.

Although I’ve made a great deal of music both before and since my first album, “Cutting Exercises”, that record is really the only music I’ve ever publicly released. That was almost three years ago, as of this writing. I have a completed album (made prior to “Cutting Exercises”), another album that I stopped working on about 85% of the way through to make the current one and tons of, sort of, derelict, homeless songs and instrumentals all over the place. This, not counting the ambient album I’ve been working on here and there since Nov. 2008, or the special, limited edition project I’m planning for release in the summer.

Planning a new release also has me revisiting all sorts of thoughts about music delivery formats. Their past, present and future. The way they affect the creative process of making recorded music and how they’ve shaped the music we’ve grown up listening to. (More on that in another post.)

These thoughts, along with my frustration at the infrequency of my releases vs. how much music I actually make and my thoughts about how much differently I, and many others, listen to/buy/acquire music now, have made me decide to try something a little different. Not different for the world or the internetz, but different for me.

I’ve decided to start releasing music regularly via podcast (for lack of a sexier way to describe it).

Some of these podcasts might only be a few minutes long, some might be a few hours.  Some of the music in these podcasts will only be available in the podcasts; some will eventually appear (perhaps in a different form) in physical releases; and, in podcasts where I feel it’s applicable, I’ll probably make individual songs/pieces (or CD-quality versions) available for separate purchase and download as MP3 and/or FLAC.

I think the freedom and immediacy of this format allows for the kind of musical cohesion that I love about albums, but in a way that would never make sense for physical releases. It also allows me to share something with you easily and more personally.

These podcasts won’t be posted on any regular basis. Just whenever a new one is ready. So please subscribe or bookmark the feed if you want to give a listen.

I’m going to start this off with a piece I made in an informal collaboration with artist Casey Roberts. Casey’s work is just amazingly beautiful and really means a great deal to me. So, it’s an honor to be associated with him and his art in any way.

You’ll find it here.

Yours,
Jon

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