You probably know by now I used some book advance $$ to start a record label to release music by Benjamin Dean Wilson, a singer/songwriter in the vein of Jonathan Richman, Leonard Cohen, Bill Callahan, David Berman, etc.

Some thoughts on this... (1/x)

https://www.lukegeddes.com/works-of-love 

Prouder of starting the label than anything I’ve ever done. It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to want to do & to daydream about but easier to talk yourself out of doing.

It’s v. difficult to try to get people to care about a cultural “ product” they haven’t already heard of...

Anyone who’s published a book (even w/ a “big” press) or been on book tour should know this, but it’s demoralizing nevertheless. Somehow it feels more personal to struggle to get people to connect with Wilson’s music than it is with my own book.

I can stand people not liking/caring about my book; no matter how pleased I am with it at heart, the protracted writing/publishing process can’t help but foment a certain degree of ambivalence.

OTOH Wilson’s music is something I love whose creation I had nothing to do with. Hearing it for the first time brought me back to the teenage feeling of new music hitting me so hard it felt like falling in love. But it’s lonely to feel no one else cares about it as much as I do.

Have reevaluated my feelings about “working artists.” I’ve always been accepting of having a day job & writing on the side. But I’m kinder to/more enthusiastic about BDW—would love it if he could devote himself to his art full time cuz it would mean more of it for me...

Can’t help but feel “culture industry” is broken; promotion of work—even that which seems self-evidently deserving of an audience—depends almost entirely on capricious corporate- & tech-industry-approved “influencers.”

I worry a lot about artists today who lack much facility for (or interest in) social media and/or who live outside “cultural epicenters” of nyc, LA, etc. (I probably wouldn’t have felt the urgency to start Works of Love if BDW was based in Brooklyn rather than Tulsa.)

...Perhaps I should not have banked on my book being such a smash hit that I’d become a mighty influencer myself & of course my “fans” would flock to my record label haha!

If you made it to the end of this “thread” without barfing & want an LP copy of Benjamin Dean Wilson’s THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM, DM me your address & I’ll send you one for free, along with this old-school press kit I made:

https://www.lukegeddes.com/benjamin-dean-wilson-electric-presskit

Or maybe you’re not a vinyl person. You can still listen to Wilson’s music where ever music is streamed!!!! And then tell all your friends how great it is!!

Here’s a good place to start, with his first album SMALL TALK: