Awards and winning often go hand-in-hand… and winning (or losing) often goes hand-in-hand with competition… and I’m just not that into competing. Hence you’ll seldom see my name in competitions or up for an award.
They say – whoever ‘they’ are – that as an artist you will run into two “C’s” throughout your career and that you should be busier with the “C” of creativity rather than the “C” of competition… and I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.
From time to time my music has shown up in various places and I’ve picked up some awards and that’s alright with me. If someone else thinks it’s worthy in some way and would like to honour it then I can live with that.
The Just Plain Folks organisation is a wonderful organisation. They work closely with CD Baby (the online record distributor founded by Derek Sivers) and both of these companies feel like family. They are very devoted to helping independent musicians, so an award ceremony by Just Plain Folks is more like a night out than a competition as far as I’m concerned.
I’m extremely grateful that they’ve gone to the bother of listening to all those songs (and watching the videos) and that they deem “The Peace Within” as a song, and “Troubadour” as a video, worthy of a nomination.
So thank you JPF for all the great work you do on our behalf. We’re all winners by having the spotlight put on what we do.