Know Your Audience
Meet the mascot of the summer busking adventure
My twin sister Kim arrived to visit for a few days before we (husband, maybe teenage daughter…?) take off for our almost two-week busking adventure. We’re lucky enough to be going to an intimate concert performance by Mary Gauthier at a small local venue in celebration of the 20 year anniversary of her landmark album “Mercy Now.” She walked in on me messing around with the tip jar/sticker/promo guitar case set up.
“Awwwwww. It’s fun to see you playing!”
It made me laugh, because that’s exactly what I was doing. Even though it involved preparing promotional materials that have to do with the business end of music, it certainly felt like playing to arrange things in a visually-pleasing-yet-functional way.
I’m excited to embark on a vacation/business trip that rides the edge of my current musical and personal ability as I wrote about in my Supernova Support Substack article. It’s part of a practice that helps keep me in the sweet spot of pushing myself just enough to learn without getting so overwhelmed I want to call it quits and hide.
Even when I was performing a lot, I didn’t have merch besides CDs. So in the spirit of expanding, I designed these stickers to add a little hype that meshes with the soul of what I strive to express through my music and writing. Want some? Email me at info@karenjoybrown.com and I’ll snail mail them to you.
That’s how Chippy manifested. Yes, I just used that word in connection with a squirrel. In my Supernova post, I mentioned that I was challenging myself to play daily to new audiences which may include squirrels. That made me think of posting map locations with Chippy as the “X” to indicate where we’d be playing each day. Fun!
FIRST STOP- June 22nd *Florence, Oregon
We’ll find the right spot to set up and post our location on Instagram. Keep an eye out…..
Hitch a ride with us!
Look for posts from the road here and follow on my Instagram documenting the sure-to-be-weird experiences of middle-aged buskers.
I'm totally inspired by this busking journey, and I'm looking forward to your insights along the way!