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© 2003 Charlene Lockwood




Past Journal Entries:
June 2004

CHARLENE'S JOURNAL

July/August, 2004


My Music Now Avialable as Digital Download Files

My music is finally available through digital download. Legal digital download sites (as opposed to the illegal ones which allowed unlicensed downloads and gave the artists nothing) are popping up all over. Perhaps someone you know (or you yourself) are curious about my music, but isn't ready to spend $15 to purchase a copy of my record, Flickering Images. These sites allow you to download single tracks from the CD album usually for about a dollar. Downloading the full CD typically costs about $10, 33% off the cover rate.

If you are unfamiliar with digital downloads, the services listed below will typically ask you to download free software to your desktop to facilitate music downloads. Check out different ones. There are slight discrepancies in the services. Some allow different numbers of copies to be made of your downloaded file, some charge a little more or a little less, some are particularly Windows-friendly or Mac-friendly, some have access to different artists' catalogs (though all are rapidly growing).

My music can be downloaded through the following online services. Choose the one that's best for you and let us know if you recommend one more highly than another.



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CHARLENE'S JOURNAL (July/August, 2004, cont.)


Appearances (or where I'm playing):

No immediate upcoming appearances are scheduled (talk to my agent), but thanks so much to everybody who came out to the Warehouse Theater/Café. It was a lot of fun to play for all of you, and a special treat to be joined by the wonderful violin playing of Lovancy Ingram.

An unfortunate side effect was that one of us — it's unclear who — made the other miserably ill. But, we're both recovered and I look forward to futher opportunities to play with Lovancy.

New Music (or what I’m writing now):

If you came to the Warehouse Theater show, you heard the public debuts of the songs "1900," "Cordova," and an instrumental version of "Goblin Market." I'll be returning to the studio soon to get these recorded. You can listen to another debut I performed that day, "Cherry Blossoms," which was composed for an as-yet unreleased film by Gwendolyn Morgan, a talented filmmaker in DC.

Publicity:

Last month I was the subject of The Washington CityPaper's regular feature: "Pop Quiz." It was some months back when they interviewed me, so it was fun to re-read. Please check it out in the archives.

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CHARLENE'S JOURNAL (July/August, 2004, cont.)


Radio Airplay:

The stations below have all played my record. I know this in some cases because friends have heard them play one of my songs and called me, and in other cases because the stations have sent me their playlists. But I haven't yet heard my music on the radio. So, if you're in any of the listening areas of these stations (or if you're just bored), please call and request a few more spins of your favorite Charlene Lockwood song and I might get to hear myself on air.


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CHARLENE'S JOURNAL (July/August, 2004, cont.)


  • WSIA, 88.9, Staten Island, NY
    Request Line:(718) 982-3060

  • Radio Kansas, a network featuring 90.1 Hutchinson-Wichita, 89.5 Salina-Mahattan, and 90.9 Great Bend-Hays and serving over one million Kansans.
    (620) 662-6646
    Record featured on Nightcrossings, nightly, 9:00 pm-1:00 am.
Recent Travels:

On a recent trip to New York’s Hudson Valley, I discovered two great independent bookstores:

Omega Bookstore
22 East Market Street (NY Rt. 308)
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
914-876-5701

which has a great collection of new books and

Merritt Bookstore
57 Front Street Box 918
Millbrook, NY 12545
845-677-5857

which has a great selection of Hudson Valley titles, including a very strange book called Phantoms of the Hudson Valley by Monica Randall. The book details the history of many of the decaying Hudson River mansions. Very cool pictures, but very pricey as well. You can buy it at Amazon.com if you won’t be traveling to the Hudson Valley soon, but always give your real-world bookseller the first chance.

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CHARLENE'S JOURNAL (July/August, 2004, cont.)


Another cool place to visit includes Candlestock, a Woodstock candlery worth visiting if only to see the huge seven-foot candle made from the drippings of other candles since 1968.

I also stopped at a very interesting place near Woodstock called Opus 40. The amazing work of one man, it consists of hand-hewn slabs of stone, quarried on the site, and stacked to form ramps and platforms and buttresses. It is set in the mountains near Woodstock and has tremendous views. Definitely worth a trip.

As the site describes:

"The work is an immense composition of finely fitted stone, rising in ramps and swirling terraces around pools and trees and fountains out of the rock bed of an abandoned bluestone quarry. It spreads out over more than six acres. It is the product of more thirty-seven years of a man's life. The man's name was Harvey Fite. He worked alone, using his hands and traditional quarryman's tools, to build his masterpiece: Opus 40."

Also worth a visit: Innisfree Garden, outside of Millbrook, New York — a wonderful 150-acre garden of reinterpreted Chinese landscape design.

What I'm Reading:

I'm re-reading Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. It's inspired by Homer’s Odyssey and set during the Civil War, it’s the story of Frazier’s ancestor struggling to

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CHARLENE'S JOURNAL (July/August, 2004, cont.)


return home after deserting. Made into a film which I have been avoiding. In conjunction with Cold Mountain, I’m reading The Odyssey (which is hard going) and also William Bartram’s The Travels, a book that the character Inman carries with him on his way back to Cold Mountain.

I'm also reading David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, essays about his family which are simultaneously funny and depressing.

And I'm picking up Henry James again — most notably his early short stories, which are mainly the only things of his I can understand.

Have a great end to your summers and keep in touch.



© 2003 Charlene Lockwood