News - January 2009

Happy New Year Everyone!

This is going to be a kind of long so don't skip thru it because I will be covering alot of changes to our group. First our monthly meeting place has changed. We will no longer be at Belle Coolege Community Center. Why, because the city wants to now charge us $45 hr, even though we are a not for profit organization. Is it because the economy? Is it because we have a new Mayor? I don't know, but it is what it is.
So once again, my good friend and co-coordinator Gabrielle comes to the rescue. She talked to the owner of the Coffee Garden, Michael, and he has agreed to let us use his art gallery as our meeting place.
The address of the Coffee Garden is 2904 Franklin Blvd, Sacramento Ca 95818. The Gallery is right next door to it. You will see NSAI Signs on the door.

Our Jan meeting will be Sunday Jan 11th from 1pm until 4pm. We will be diving deep into hooks at this meeting, so bring in any song with your favorite hook and we will see why it works. We will also rip apart our top 100 song written by outside writers + I will add a couple of song written by the artist, since we have a few people that are singer/songwriters. This will help us see what the artist is getting away with. We will have our critique session, so bring in your songs with 10 lyric sheets or 1 transparency sheet for our 1955 overhead projector. And last we will start our song of the month for 2009.

Click here for our 2009 meeting calendar so you all will know in advance when our meetings will be.

OK you said you wanted to pitch to more publishers. You said you want to pitch to A&R reps. Well I have the best of both coming for you. On Saturday Feb. 28, we will have a workshop out at Skips with Dan Hodges. Dan is now the GM of Dan Hodges Music, and a A&R rep. for Broken Bow Records. Broken Bow has sign Jason Aldean, Randy Owen, Crossin Dixon, and Craig Morgan among others. It personally took me 7 yrs in Los Angeles with many different bands to get in front of a major A&R rep. You will be in front of one in about 7 weeks. I will be send out a lot more info on this workshop in the near future, but I want you all to save the date, Feb 28th.

Now there are going to be some new rules about our workshops and I know most people already know most of them, but I will state them here.

1. If you walk through the door, you have to pay to get in, just like the movies. You cannot bring your wife, girlfriend or kid, and say they just want to hang out. Everyone through PAYS.
2. There will be NO recording devices allowed in any workshop. I know most of you would just want to replay it for yourself but due to legal reasons, and how fast something can get on the internet, just bring a note book and pen.
3. All of our workshops from now on will be CASH ONLY. If you need a receipt, we will write you one, but we will only be accepting CASH. Just stop by the ATM before the workshop.

Ok last NSAI Spring training is this April along with Tin Pan South, in Nashville. Karen has been asking if any of you are going and want to share expense's please contact her. Karen's email address is karensmusic@aol.com

So I hope to see you all Sunday Jan 11th at our Monthly meeting.
Cheers
Kurt Ozdaglar
NSAI Sacramento Coordinator

kboturk@sbcglobal.net 916-548-5540

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