You can get your holiday shopping done today! I can help.
Nobody on your list wants more stuff. We’ve been surrounded by our stuff for the last nine months of quarantine and our primary comforts haven’t been fulfilled by any of it. In those darkest of moments, our most reliable companion is music.
Enter Bandcamp Fridays! Bandcamp started this initiative back in March to support artists impacted by the pandemic. Once a month, Bandcamp waives all revenue shares putting the maximum amount of money directly into the pocket of the musician.
How does this impact your holiday shopping? You can send a digital gift. If you do it TODAY December 4, you will be doubly generous because the musician you love will be supported by you financially to the fullest extent possible.
I don’t want to get carried away but this might actually be that Holy Grail everyone talks about but rarely finds: The Perfect Gift. Can you think of another gift that is personally curated, fully supports artists, waste free, has no carbon footprint, and has the potential to be a companion in your stead to someone you love?
Let’s play a game. I’ll tell you about the last three Bandcamp purchases that have blessed my life and then you tell me what you buy on this Bandcamp Friday.
1. Bloom by Dan Padley, released 12/4/20. This one I sent as a gift. I had the extraordinary honor of playing on this album and so I already know it intimately. I posted about it yesterday calling it “a gift of life in the longest winter of our lives” and I stand by that description. I can think of more than one person who needs and deserves that gift. Can you?
2. Blake Shaw Xmas EP by Blake Shaw, released 12/4/20. When Blake’s full length album it happened. was released last May, I bought more copies of it than I’ve ever bought of any album in my life thus far. I love it so much and had to share it with people I love. Given that endorsement, Blake Shaw + Christmas is an equation with an obvious solution.
3. I Confess by John William Watkins. John also provided my fourth most recent Bandcamp purchase because I bought The Oracle at the same time. Kent Williams at Little Village describes John’s music more beautifully than anything I could construct: “Watkins has mastered the art of expressing human emotions in a way that keeps them relevant to anyone with heart, while remaining true to his specific experience. This is not the moon, or June romanticism enshrined in 20th-century pop songs. It’s something else: lovely and valuable.” Lovely and valuable is what I want for the people in my life.
Happy Bandcamp Friday! O merry day of finishing your shopping and relaxing for the rest of December!
Thank you for loving your people and your artists in the most expansive way possible.
