24/07/2023
So last night I was listening to myself sing and play, listening to songs I hadn’t heard in ages, thinking of my Grandma Jesse and all the conversations about music and inspiration, listening to her “touch” music and seeing and understanding my own way of loving attack. I used to blow through Clarksville about once a month back in the day and visit her at her little Christian Bookstore. This is the lady with 75 grandkids. It was wonderful to have her all to myself.
I wish you could have known her. I learned things about her she never told anyone; her private worries and struggles and consternations and victories. She willed her store to my mother so I could share a dream of hers which was to build a little music studio upstairs. Yes it was her dream. My mother, not knowing about my verbal contract with my grandmother, didn’t want it, scolded my grandmother for being indecent and said “give it to one of your children.”
My heart broke in two. Allow me to honor my very sweet and loving mother: When my mother learned of my grandmothers intent, it broke her heart in two. My grandmother died before there was remedy.
Last night surrounded by my Grandma Jesse Adelia’s voice and her inspiration, it wasn’t that I wanted to solicit my music but much more the memory of my history surrounded in her wonderful shadow.. so you might hear Your Love My Home through this lens and in that, perhaps hear how she hovers a legacy all over the words I’ve written.. all of the love songs and even the drunken difficult ones. We would talk about David of Israel and she would encourage me to say it all out loud – “.. yes to be careful but to confess.”
So last night a barrage of some of her favorites and a few of my own. Imagine coming through town to sleep at her shop, weary and road-worn, waking and having all-day long conversations with your grandmother about life on the road, the temptations and seeing her watch the light slowly go out your eyes as an industry you built a life on crumbled your very own musical dynasty. “David told God, Josh. Tell God, and let the world see the words. They need your words whether they pay for them or not.”
It broke her heart for me. I loved her empathy. I sought it out on those visits sometimes way out of my way to get to her little shop. She still talks to me from just beyond the veil. She prays for me, endlessly. She aches for me to succeed.
In 2023 we artists are fallen into the pit. We say “How king oh Lord to sing this song? Rescue me from the mire.”
My posts have suddenly become advertisements I must pay to put in front of you. And without Facebook and Instagram who’ve made content limitless and easy, my posts are seen less and less.
Many of you know I’m not one to solicit Shares but I’m beginning to think my songs are worth the effort 🙂 My grandmother was a wonderful musician and she adored my work. I’m realzing there are so many fans of YLMH that don’t even know I have 10 more albums out there in the world and this is the year I am going to fix that. Wanna help me? 🙂
For the helpers and lovers of jP music.. read on! 🙂
If something reaches you, it’s yours. Own it! Share it. Help me share my work. Give me a heart or a care or a laugh and a friendly comment so I know you’ve engaged. If you don’t like a song I’d like to know that too. I think that might be fun to talk about.
I’d really like to make up for some lost time this year. 🙂 I think I need to make up for lost time this year. Help me make up for some lost time this year. 🙂 Share this post as well 😊
Some of you have asked me flat out via Messenger, “Tell us what to do, Josh. We are your fans. We want the world to hear you.” However, I haven’t known how to optimize the conundrum.. UNTIL NOW!! 😁 HOORAY!
Streaming is what it is. Without the consistent purchase of music worldwide, buying a song for a dollar doesn’t beat the monetary paradigm. Not even close. Take “Your Love My Home” for example long before the days of streaming. We sold 30,000 physical copies the first week it was in circulation not to mention the iTunes explosion when me and Groban and Buble were fighting for the top Vocal spot on a daily basis and the Grobanites, so loyal to Josh Groban (good for them 🙂 ) were doing their best to make sure this new Josh didn’t compete with their boy. I love loyalty. Fun times! Exciting and lucrative.
Fast forward to “God So Loved” in midst of the worldwide streaming craze, when Congress got in bed with Spotify and changed the laws on royalties and artists lost everything in virtually one day.. the slow deliberate fade of physical sales. Beyoncé sold 30,000 physical copies that year. “God So Loved” sold 39,000 that year and a few more all-time. On a side note: Lucid? We should lobby for a Gold Album based on that standard alone. 🙂
Fast forward to “Lightning Strikes”. Zero physical sales. 23 digital sales and over 10,000 free downloads. Yup. I have to give music away. Hey Shane Parker. Go be a free veterinarian for a year. Hey Soren Louvring. Go give away medicine for a year. Hey Eric. Go give away your Consultation for a year. I am an artist. I must make music. I cannot not make music. I will die. I have no choice. And here it comes, the confession. I have slowly been dying.
I am a psalmist in the House of David. I am the literal descendant of Sheba and Solomon. My legal name Payens means “Son of the Earth”. I am made to sing and to praise eternal God through my work. And I am made to give it away. It’s how I am designed.
So what to do for provision when Spotify retains 99.996 % of my dollars and the U.S. government will not indict the theft? Well, we could all drive along Chickering in Nashville and look at houses that my money built last year for a bunch of corporate goons. 😂 But let’s don’t and say we did 🙂
Yes, it’s true, after the great champion of music artists Francis Preston died in 2012, the Spotify heist and hijacking of the music business ensued. We all died. All of us. Our yearly royalty plummeted. For every dollar we artists make there’s another 99 dollars out there that is rightfully ours.
For now, we submit to the necessary evil. We have to continue to make royalties to bring you quality studio albums, market and release them. Lightning Strikes took me 15 years to make because of the above. But what’s in it for people who can get free content any time they want it? Why pay anymore? Why help? Why like? Why comment? Why share? Why SEARCH for what you love instead of being sponged and spoon-fed content to pass the time? Why open your phone a say to your friends, “You have to hear this music that changes lives?” Why? Because artists are deliberate. Fans must be just as deliberate. I’m a Fan too. But I Shop for what I want and help furnish the joy I receive.
A psychologist bought 40 copies once of my Children’s record and gave it to clients who were morning the loss of the children who had been hurt or killed at Sandy Hook. I had no idea why she was purchasing so many copies until later. I knew I had to make that album. A year later those people were lining the seats at a show in CT. I wept. That deliberation is what artists are. So how to feed the artist when you are being fed?
BRASS TACKS FOR MY FRIENDS AND FANS AND MOST IMPORTANTLY A CALL TO ACTION FROM MY OWN MY FAMILY:
The best way my PEOPLE can help me is to Download Spotify on an old device, plug it in somewhere where you don’t have listen to it. Turn up the volume a little bit and loop my music somewhere continuously. This helps the algorithms begin to include my work more broadly. It takes 250 plays to make a buck. Or better yet, go to Apple Music and stream there. 250 plays earns me $2.50
This is the year I wanted to come see you on the road. Some of you know that I was deliberately poisoned in NYC and I died on Christopher St in the West Village and have nearly died three times since. But I am fighting back. God is so so good to me. A silent investor recently partnered with me and kept me alive. Those little wonderful belief systems sewed into my fabric make for such an awesome 👏 life! But I want more and I want to reach my arms around the world this year. I think I can really do that. Partner with me. Invest your time and your effort and your care. If you do, you will finally put wheels on a musical catalogue that is so massive, if you pushed play it would quite literally take somewhere in the neighborhood of 234 days to play all the way through. Help me grease the wheels so I can come see you. Message me with your ideas. I’m excited to be a singer again.
The Lord bless and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and gracious to you and give you peace; Peace not as the world gives but only the kind that He can give.
Love you, 😊
jP2023
