Summer Update

My 40th birthday concert was amazing!  I had exactly 40 people there, including my siblings from Saskatchewan, fellow Toastmasters, friends, and various people I've met through our business.  A couple people I'd never met before!

I love sharing my music and my story.  It was a great night.  Tears in the audience were not uncommon.  It seems my journey connects with others'.  It felt good to do something worthwhile on my birthday.  I want to do concerts more often!

We did video the night.  My brother did some casual stuff on my Blackberry Playbook and my husband did some very nice HD stuff, but we're not sure how to make the files a more manageable size.  Video is something we're still learning about.

It was great fun to release my song, "This is Jesus".  There were some North Enders in the crowd, and they were North-End-proud.  (For non-Winnipeggers, the North End is an area of the city with inner-city characteristics--the "poorer" part of town).  It is my belief that Jesus would have fit right in here.  He cares about our community and he can identify with the struggles people face.

The song is currently available on CD baby for 99 cents:  http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sonyabraun  What I like about CD baby is that it gives its artists a great percentage of the proceeds.  Noise Trade also carries my song and downloads are available for free with an option to pay a tip (but the amount is misleading as they take a bigger cut).  I like that it gives people a choice and links people to my website and facebook pages.  Sometime over the next few weeks, iTunes should finally have my song up.  I like that it is very convenient and familiar for people (it pays the worst percentage, but perhaps it makes up for that in volume possibilities).  The song lives on soundcloud.com, a place where I will likely continue to add demos of my songs as I can.

For fun, I posted a youtube video of the final take in the studio when we were laying down the drum and bass tracks.  I also put my song on internet radio and people around the world heard it! 

I would love to record a song in time for Christmas.  I have it written already.  If you know someone who might like this song or be interested in what I'm doing, I hope you'll help spread the word!  Thanks.