Inventory.

Successful touring artists generally have help managing their inventory.
Whether it's a relative, a friend or a hired hand, someone is generally tasked with managing all the inventory -- CDs, plus other stuff generally lumped together as "merch" -- keeping track of what's in stock, what's been sold at each show, and moving piles from storage into stock for future shows and/or online sales. (Mostly future shows, as fewer and fewer artists are selling CDs at shows these days.

Here at Rancho Beth, It's just little ol' me. And that's okay, really.

Because here, "success" is measured in smiles, handshakes and hugs; in someone telling me after a show how much they enjoyed my music. The fact is that I'm dealing in much smaller numbers these days. I learned my lesson after City of Love, my first album in 2003. In a burst of optimism, I had five humdred CDs made of that album. It took me roughly fifteen years to run out of them. (I'm not completely out; I have maybe three or four copies here at home. They're not for sale and the album is official Out Of Print, or OOP. I don't plan to make additional copies.)

After a very hard winter in which I've performed out of town exactly once and led services once a month in town, I have had to come to terms with the fact that rapidly advancing arthritis is getting in the way of my playing guitar even for pleasure. I plan on hanging in there through the spring, and after that I'll see where things stand regarding my health.

I'm making no hard predictions about my touring in the future, but it is getting a lot harder for me to keep on plugging the meter -- practicing, trying to write new songs and continuing to hone my craft, and booking future trips -- when I can't play guitar without sharp pain in my hands after five minutes.

So I'm not planning any trips this spring. Forecasting anything beyond the end of this academic year is impossible until I know what my treatment options and their longevity are, which I hope to find out early next month.

Tonight, I took an inventory of the CDs I still have on hand.

City of Love (2003):                   OOP
Ten Miles (2013):                           35
A Sliver In The Sky (2017):           36
The Watchman's Chair (2019):       60
On The 45th Parallel (2022):        125

A few observations:

-- A Sliver In The Sky was, in terms of distribution, my most successful album, with 250 copies originally made. At one point, I was worried I'd run out completely so I made about thirty copies myself, burning them one at a time at home. I have eight of those copies left, included in the count above.

-- Ten Miles was my next successful run. I had 250 copies made, then had another 100 copies made when I misplaced the forty or so I had on hand at home. I'm down to about 35 copies between both runs.

-- The Watchman's Chair was released just before the Covid lockdown, meaning that the tours I'd booked to promote the release got canceled, as did everything else for the next 1 1/2 years. I tried to play out in summer of 2021, got Covid, then got Long Covid, which canceled everything further out still. I finally got back to touring on a limited basis last February. I have not been able to travel as much since then, due to both a slow reboot after the pandemic and an increase in some of my health symptoms since then. But I am amazed to find that I'm down to 60 copies of this release out of the original 200. I thought I'd have many more than that on hand.

-- On The 45th Parallel, released a year ago, has not done well. Neither, to be honest, have I. I had 200 copies made after recording the album at home and having it mixed and mastered by friends for peanuts. I simply did not have the same level of energy to hype and promote the album as I had in the past. I had 200 copies made, a hundred of which came with a 'Zine that I printed myself at Kinko's. I'm down to about 30 copies of the CD/Zine combo, and 100 CDs.

In the course of promoting an album, a number of copies are given away for free, to radio programmers and potential employers for Shabbatons and/or pub gigs. Over time, one learns how many it makes sense to give away, and to whom. So with every release I've given away fewer free CDs.

Here is what I do know:

When I run out of physical CDs of each of my releases, I will not make any more.

Making CDs is expensive out of pocket, especially if you're living on a fixed income, which I am now. And fewer people are buying CDs today. Folks in my demographic (55 and over) still like CDs, but they don't come to shows at night so much. So unless my appearances at synagogues have been very well-promoted, the audiences just aren't there like they used to be.

Getting into the pub scene is very, very hard, even if you're good. There are LOTS of good artists all competing for venue space. This is compounded by the fact that I will not play in a bar on a Friday night, or until sundown on a Saturday night -- the most popular nights for both artists and audiences -- because I'm either at home or at shul, observing Shabbat. I've been ironclad about that choice from the start, and I have no regrets, but it does factor into my marketability in secular venues. I just won't be as big a draw on a Wednesday or Sunday night.

I am bone-tired, I'm weary. I've spent 25 years hurling myself into the void, and while there have been wonderful people and experiences along the way, I will never be that deep into the creamy center of things enough to keep hurling myself for a whole lot longer. I'm too old, and too much myself, for it to be any other way.

I admit that, unless I can find meaningful relief for my arthritis, I'm probably on the down-slope of the arc of my singer-songwriter career. It hurts my hands like hell to play guitar for more than ten minutes now. And I just can't sustain the hustle anymore, mostly for health reasons.
I think that's okay.
I can continue to keep trying to make music on a very local level for as long as possible, but I think my touring days are winding down. Considering how far I got in this scene, I am pleased with how it's gone and I am mighty damn proud of what I've learned and achieved.

I am pondering what to do with all my manuscripts and stuff. I have some ideas, but those will be addressed later, in a separate post.

For the rest of the winter and into early spring, I am taking things slow. I am pondering what my next steps might be. But I'm not looking to build any new empires, and that's okay too.

(Below: one of my first out-of-state tours in 2006 -- and my most recent trip in late 2023)