San Diego singer-songwriter Will Edwards is no household name, and he realizes that. Best known among local music fans for founding and overseeing the San Diego Honoring Acoustic Talent Awards (HAT), Edwards is also a new father who's had some time during the past year to try to figure out how to make his music career profitable enough to support his family.
With the major music labels in a free-fall collapse, Edwards said during a recent interview that there have never been more possibilities for musicians to chart their own courses to financially sustaining careers.
Backing up his thoughts with action, Edwards is launching the Thriving Artists Tour 2009 with San Francisco singer-songwriter Brindl; their first show is 9 p.m. July 12 at Lestat's in San Diego's Normal Heights neighborhood before they head up the coast for a series of concerts.
"I've been working at trying to understand how you promote artists and how artists develop careers that are sustaining," Edwards said.
"It started with founding my record label, Tangled Records, in 2003. Since then, I've worked on the online promotion side, on building relationships with the press, and tour contacts up and down the coast. I actually did a whole tour for two to three weeks where all I did was go up the West Coast and play open mics.
"It's all been part of this common goal of mine, which is to solve that riddle of fame and fortune: How is that you as an independent artist can build a broad enough audience to make it sustainable?
"The conclusion I've come to is something different from what I expected. Really, it's through a social network of fans. It's about establishing relationships with people where their involvement with what you're doing as an artist is more symbiotic.
"This tour is a culmination of all the studying I've done, and leveraging that with my favorite part of touring -- which is playing in different cities."
Edwards said that by networking on MySpace and Facebook, he and Brindl have found musicians in cities all up and down the West Coast that can help them find venues in each city, as well as share a bill with them. When those musicians come to play in San Diego, Edwards returns the favor.
"Really, we're trying to put together a comprehensive promotional package where we are going to be reaching these audiences through every channel available to us, but also bringing these musicians we know in other communties into our loop and trying to promote them and incorporate their backgrounds into it and create an intercity community, rather than just being two musicians trying to book a tour."
Edwards said more and more music fans are looking to the Internet to discover bands.
Edwards has been a regular on the local acoustic scene since he and his wife relocated here in 2000. He grew up in Virginia, but while attending college he first began performing, playing guitar in a band he described as "Barenaked Ladies meets the Smiths." For the past three years, he's been operating a recording studio from his home, producing CDs for other musicians and bands. And for the past year and a half, he's stayed home caring for the couple's son while his wife runs a private Montessori school.
Of that time on Mr. Mom duty, Edwards said it's all been positive.
"It's a great experience, and an important creative experience, too. After becoming a father, it was really like my ambitions, in music especially, really came much more into focus in terms of approaching it more professionally, but also with less pressure. I felt like I could do better as a professional artist, but at the same time I didn't always need to be so stressed-out about getting the right kind of press or playing the right kind of venues.
"My ambition was really rounded off."
Thriving Artists Tour 2009 with Will Edwards and Brindl
When: 9 p.m. July 12
Where: Lestat's, 3343 Adams Ave., San Diego
Admission: Call for cover
Info: (619) 282-0437 or lestats.com
Web: willedwards.net
