provides
the opportunity for a new artist to receive all resources required to
develop their talent and career. It can include financial resources,
mentoring and advice, music development and recording, promotion and
exposure. It may include opportunities such as working with an
established songwriter, photo shoots, recording, voice lessons, etc.
Simon Spire
Simon's award was the first Artist Advance award I gave. It is a comprehensive career development award that includes ongoing mentoring for all aspects of talent and career growth. This is not an award that focuses on fabricating and engineering an artist, its about nurturing an artist's talent to bring out their own personal vision for their creative expression - helping them discover and stay true to their unique voice. For Simon this included countless hours of discussion and career planning, and pairing him with people and opportunities that would help him grow artistically. He got to explore his song writing and musical style with experts. I also suggested many things such as getting some schooling for engineering and recording so he could handle the studio basics, body movement classes for greater ease with singing and performing (he chose martial arts), photo shoots, and meeting with a stylist (while he enjoyed this, he discovered he didn't need it as he has a good sense of his own style), bringing together funds for recording and promotion (Simon, like many artists in the current scene, now has a patron).
We shot interviews on tapes to give him
a chance to develop some comfort with the process and to explore his
ideas, we did a no budget video with friends to give him a feel for
that process, we got his website and MySpace pages underway, recorded a
demo, and ultimately his CD titled ALL or NOTHING. Recently I have
been able to put him together with a terrific team for continuing with
his development and promotion. They are Ron Shapiro, Linda Ferrando,
and Patti Conte - the
wonderful industry wizards from my Jewel/Atlantic days. They are
independent consultants now and I'm so happy they have agreed to work
with Simon..we're all starting to have a lot of fun.
I
worked with Simon in some beautiful places from islands in the Pacific
Northwest, to amazing Sedona, Arizona. I really enjoy his songs, love
his guitar work, (he writes all his own guitar arrangements and is a
terrific guitarist), but most of all Simon himself is the reason he got
this award: he is easy, fun, and rewarding to work with; and I really
like my life to have elements of ease, fun and reward! Take the time to
look at Simon's press biography right here, and then check out the full
story on us getting together in the B.I.O. (By Invitation Only) area.(Click on songs below to play music. )
Artist Song Notes
Inside Out - "Hmmm...I wonder what will happen if I take my hands off the steering wheel? In keeping with the song's theme of close calls and order from chaos, I spent a month trying to write the lyrics for this song, whenever I had a chance, and got nothing but the words "inside out"....then, the second-to-last day of our time in the studio, it all made sense and, voila, there it was! Luckily, I got to go back into the studio a little while later so I re-sang the song - not an easy song to sing without quite knowing the words."
More or Less - "Speeding down a road at a hundred miles an hour...until you discover it's a dead-end street. Reaching the summit of the mountain, and in that grand new view...noticing that you climbed the wrong mountain. So what if it all came to nothing? Failure opens a hidden door, and at last, the starting line has finally been found."
Sweet Release - "Disillusionment - my cruelest and best friend."
Gone at Dawn - "Places, situations, ideas, perspectives from earlier in life: when I happen to re-visit them, or catch a glimpse of them in a dream, they sometimes feel entirely distant, removed and foreign to me. It’s as if so much has changed, that they happened to another person - as if who I used to be has very little to do with the ‘me’ I know today…and I’m sure the same will go for the ‘me’ I know a year from now. I find it a strange feeling – a weird kind of disconnect - to encounter a place or a situation that I know I’ve seen before, and to experience it now as wholly different and almost unrecognizable."
You, You, You - "Dream on. Escapism in a small hotel room in New York City, not really wanting to confront the fact that I feel like I'm trying to push water up a mountain...(and what if it turns out to be the wrong mountain?) One of my earlier songs."
All or Nothing- "Total commitment to what it is that’s most important to a person. Wanting to know what’s real and what’s not, and in that, a ruthless determination to move past anything resembling identity."
