If you’re following along with my story, you will see that indie artists celebrate a lot of little “firsts” as they happen. The broad spectrum of exposure doesn’t happen all at once for us – not like with major label artists. We work very hard to achieve those important moments one at a time. Important not for the fame, but for customers! For real people who are ready to hop on your train and ride the whole way with you.

MTV Online received my submission of the music video for Nothing At All .  You never know when something is going to strike a chord with people, but this video was getting more views than I would have EVER anticipated. It even knocked Taylor Swift out of the #1 position one week!

And here is your proof. A screenshot from that very surprising day is below.

DNA is a favorite international gay magazine based in Australia. They had featured me a couple of times already. They were supportive and excited about me reaching the #1 position on MTV Online, printing a shout out. See that feature below.

If that wasn’t crazy enough, Gonna Be Alright had been submitted to Adult Contemporary radio stations and before long I was seeing it break the Top 5 in Adult Contemporary Charts! You can see a screenshot of that below.

Ya’ll! This is with NO label! Crazy! How do you slip through all the self-interest of major music corporations to do this? I dunno, but every now and then people decide what they like instead of record execs. This was no small feat!

This happened only one other time with me and it was my first single I Should Go. You can see that story here.

One more major first with my album Where I Belong. Best Buy decided to carry an album of mine for the very first time. I know this has something to do with previous record sales being really strong for an indie artist. Even though the system was not really set up to accommodate indie sales reporting – being a record store, I’m guessing they had the information? Or took a chance on me?

I was kind of embarrassed to do so, but I snapped this pic on my phone walking through Best Buy that day.

All this was incredibly encouraging. And there was one additional factor to consider – why things were getting out there for people to discover.

This was one of the two years in my life I had a music manager. You’ve seen him throughout the footage of this chapter – Rich Overton. I would still be with him if he hadn’t retired from management to pursue other things. I give him credit for all of the above. He got the word out. And people liked what they heard.

I love the pic below of Rich and I. Feb. 2020, just before the world shut down. I was in NYC seeing producers of the Broadway show Hadestown. We met and had a really nice time reminiscing over two very exciting years together.

While this album gave my fans a lot of long-time favorites like “Stained Glass Window”, “No Apologies”, “Nothing At All” and “Gonna Be Alright”, a very important note I will stealthily slip in to the bottom of this post – my favorite is “Prayer For The Surrender”. While I started my journey to freedom from crystal meth in 2007, I couldn’t put more than two or three months of sober time together. But 22 days after this album was released, it stuck. May 27th, 2009. “Prayer For The Surrender” was my putting the Third Step Prayer to music. A way of saying, it is not mine, but thine. One day at a time.

Enjoy the album!