Moving Forward

Many, many thanks to all who joined us the evening of Saturday, September 27th at the La Canada Thursday Club for a fun evening of dinner, music, margaritas, and raising money to support GriffinEd’s mission to bring fun educational music to schools!!! It was a delight to see such a big turnout and I had a truly grand time onstage. Again next year, yeah? And if you weren’t there but want in for next year, contact me and I’ll get you on the list.

Okay, so I took one day to rest and now it’s on to the next big thing. Several big things, actually:

  • Great Caesar salad, I’ve been nominated for the 2014 Pegasus Awards in two categories: best performer and best writer/composer! I am humbled and honored to see the names next to mine on the online ballot. If you want to check out some of the most awesome musical geekery on Earth, you can listen to samples of everyone’s work by clicking here and then vote for the ones you like best.
  • We are now 12 weeks into our Song o’the Week project. We are currently posting one new song each week to the new album right here; check back often to see what’s new! Or for greater convenience, you can LIKE my FaceBook music page and always be in the loop about new music and other goings-on here at GriffinEd.
  • New album? I almost forgot about that for a minute. Yeah, we got the artwork and the album page done for OVER THE EDGE and the songs are going up right now, one song per week. The whole album will be posted and available for free download (your donations are welcome as always) by the end of November. 20 songs! Full band! Middle-English Hip-Hop! If you want a CD you’ll be able buy one from this site pretty soon, or you can just wait until it’s all posted and then download it. For my filk friends, you should be able to pick the CD up soon at a local con from your filk dealer. If they don’t have it in stock, you may politely ask them WHY.
  • For anyone who wanted to see me perform live but couldn’t make it to the big dinner concert in September, we’ve got our first-ever live webcast concert coming on October 14th! Live from GriffinEd World Headquarters, direct to your computer or other device. Only $5. 7 pm Pacific standard time. I will be taking your requests. Details soon…
  • I’ll be flying to Houston next June as the Musical Guest Of Honor for the ApolloCon sci-fi convention! It’s a whole weekend of hog-wild nonstop fun and I’ll be doing at least one big show for grownups, plus another one just for the kids. This is going to be so awesome, you’ll want to be there if you live anywhere within a million miles of Houston.
  • Against their better judgment, the Annenberg Foundation has invited three board members from GriffinEd (best beloved as board chair, friend Sue as champion, and me as executive bard) for a second year in their hardcore Alchemy academy for leaders of nonprofits showing exceptional promise. We began this year’s training with a thrilling day of… financial spreadsheets and 501(c)3 case studies. Okay, it ain’t Apollocon but we’re learning a ton about the various arcana of nonprofit management. The good news here is that GriffinEd’s financial picture is relatively simple: no debt to manage, no property to maintain; just a web site, a closet full of CD’s, and one hyperactive executive bard. Most of the organizations sitting with us have multimillion-dollar budgets, but they also have multimillion-dollar headaches that we can largely avoid. Oh, and did I mention how amazing the food is at the Annenberg?
  • I’ve been engaged for a second year with the LA’s BEST foundation as songwriter artist-in-residence. I’ll be doing workshops with kids at Title-1 schools over the course of the year. I just began my first residency at a school in Pacoima and we’re already writing a song about big cats!
  • The Theodore Payne Foundation has engaged me as an artist-in-residence to help kids write music about our local environment in Los Angeles county. This is a project under development through their education and Outreach department, but I’m in love with the idea and I think it’s going to be loads of fun.
  • Several schools with no budget for the performing arts have already contacted me about doing workshops and live shows this year. Thanks to our donors (and the paid gigs mentioned above), I can do those things for no charge. If you know a school that might want me, please let me know!

Love to all.

-Tim