Happy August, and welcome to the hottest month of the year in the state of Texas. When I make it to summer I’m always surprised how cool June can be, and then I remember the real heat is right around the corner.

Heron Crest Music is Live!

I am excited to announce my new DBA name and publishing company: Heron Crest Music! Over the past few months I have been researching other publishers, talking to old colleagues about business structures, perusing resources through Musician & Co. (a great resource, by the way—the Danyews are wonderful), and of course going through the motions with ASCAP and state paperwork to make it all official. Logo work has been finished as well, and here it is!

Many thanks to Shannon Morris for working on the design!

I am also excited to work with SongBurd Music on self-publishing my compositions! Right now I am getting Sunseeker ready with making the score look nice with new fonts and arranging elements.

There’s still a lot to set up, like Heron Crest’s website, maybe a LinkedIn page, an email address, etc. so I need to take it one step at a time. But still, it’s a pretty exciting to see something official and different hit the scene.

Kevin, why are you not going through a traditional publisher?

Ah okay, Musician & Co. outlined this for me. In a nutshell, a traditional publisher is able to market your music better and they take care of printing, but the cut of profit I would receive would be a lot smaller. Plus, my few submissions never seemed to make it past their thresholds (it’s because I didn’t have live recordings to go with them, which is fair).

Self-publishing appealed to me because of higher profit margin, its complete immediacy and control, and more freedom with design and craft. The trade-off is I now need to become a good marketer and seek guidance on how to better write music suited for young players, but it all goes with the mindset I’m determined to jump into: “go do something you’ve never done to get something you’ve never gotten.”

Spring Returned

Premiere went well, despite it happening over the summer (I was going with a seasonal/weather-y theme, here)! The piece was originally going to be next on the publishing line after Sunseeker, but I want to tweak it a little bit before making it available. Big thing is if it’s going to be published, orchestra directors will have to find it suitable for their group and want to buy it.

Back into Routine

And now the time of year has returned where the girls go back to school, and a regular, even rhythm returns to our daily life. It has been great having them home, and I know they are excited to go back and start another school year.

As for me, I’ll keep doing my thing. So spring is done—perhaps a piece about summer is next? Maybe I’ll be inspired by the hottest month of the Texas summer after all. Cheers!