I've Moved!

Dear friends and readers,

Hopefully those of you in feed/email readers won't really have noticed much of a difference (Other than a silly test post I deleted that got sent out anyway, along with a bunch of previous posts. Can we call it a end of the year recap? erm. heh. sorry 'bout that) but I have switched over to Wordpress as my blogging platform. I bought the domain name lyricalvenus.com a while ago and have been pointing it to this blog, but now lyricalvenus.com will take you to my own proper website, properly named and with a customized design and all!

I have nothing against Blogger and will continue to use it for my personal blogs, but overwhelmingly the advice for a more professional looking, powerful and flexible blog is to use Wordpress. I've wanted to use it since the beginning actually, but also wanted to make sure I was committed to Lyrical Venus before spending much money on it. I think having over a year's worth of posts, the radio show and doing over 26 on-air interviews plus several blog interviews and still being excited about it all, with way more I WANT to write about than I have time for has proven to myself that this is something I'm in for the long haul.

This blog will remain up for at least a while, but all my old posts and comments have already been moved over to the new place. I still need to make some decisions about what sort of widgets and such I want to move over to my new blog home, since I don't want it to be too cluttered up, but that may be a bit slow going of a process. In the meantime, come on over to lyricalvenus.com and let me know what you think, I'd love your feedback!

Thanks always for reading! Here's to an awesome 2009 for us all!
Heather

Lyrical Venus: Looking Back on 2007

So I'm a few days behind with the whole 2007 retrospective thing people are doing with their blogs, but considering that December was so crazy for me that I only decorated my Christmas tree 2 days AFTER Christmas, I think I'm doing pretty good with trying to catch up to life in general. *grin* So without further ado, here are some highlights of my first 9 months with this blog.



My Top 10 Listened to Artists, since May, according to Last.fm (not counting iPod and work listens). Pretty much all these folks either had new albums or were a new discovery for me in 2007. Links to the entries I wrote about them if applicable. And for the few I didn't write about yet, shame on me, but the real reason is I like them so much I want to make sure and do it right and I haven't had time quite yet.

1. Ingrid Michaelson
2. Rachel Ries
3. Dar Williams
4. Mandy Moore
5. Colbie Caillat
6. Lori McKenna
7. Jasmine Ash
8. Girlyman
9. Adrianne
10. Wendy Woo

I need to add Anais Mitchell in here, because her album came out in February before I started with Last.fm and she's one of my top played artists on iTunes.

(And yes, yes, if you go check out my Last.fm stats right now, that IS Enrique sitting at spot number 11. He makes me happy. And I listen to the Spanish versions to practice my Spanish, seriously...)


Top 9 Visited Posts of Dec 2007, according to Feedburner, which should be pretty indicative of the year:
1. Cuckoo for CoCo: Colbie Caillat's Debut Album
2. Looking for Mandy Moore Umbrella Chords? Quick Tip!
3. Umbrella Craze Continues... Marié Digby Has One Too!
4. Chords for Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson
5. I Can't Stop Listening To: Mandy Moore's "Wild Hope"
6. Mandy Moore Borrows Rihanna's Umbrella
7. Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am" On TV!
8. Feist's 1234 on the iPod Nano Commercial
9. Too Much Music? Keep Breathing! (or, Ingrid Michaelson Rocks!)


My top 8 personal favorite entries that didn't make the list above, in no particular order:
1. Absolutely Inspired By Ani DiFranco's Canon
2. Dar Williams: One of the Most Inspiring Singers I Know
3. 10 Questions with Leslie Berry
4. Wendy Waldman, Wonder Woman!
5. MoZella - You Won't Forget Her!
6. Broccoli and Beats: The Ditty Bops Farm Tour
7. Adrina Thorpe - A Whole Latte Musical Inspiration!
8. Traveling with Ember and Imogen

Last but not least, links to the blogs of people who left me comments, or who were kind enough to link to me on their blogs, in no particular order. Frank and Jana get the "most comments" prizes (Thanks ya'll!!). If I missed someone let me know and I'll link you up ASAP!

Braintracings
Living in Small Sizes
Jana Pochop
Almost Somewhat Positive
Piper of Love
Frank Gualtier
Bunch of Bettys
The Butterfly Blog
Moomin Light
Hugging the Midline
Compulsive Writer

Thanks everyone who has been reading! I hope you'll stick with me for more great music to come in 2008!

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The Ditty Bops New Farm Tour Blog

As I mentioned earlier, The Ditty Bops are currently doing a tour of farms to help raise awareness and funds for farming. They started a fun new blog to track their travels.

Last year they rode their bikes across the country on tour to raise awareness for alternative forms of transportation. Here's a little recap of their 2006 tour:



Check out http://thedittybopsfarmtour.blogspot.com/ for updates of their 2007 adventure, complete with photos and YouTube clips of everything from farm tours to trying to remove a loose tooth from Abby's niece's mouth on stage. Oh yes, and singing, 'cuz those girls can sing!

Here's a few places you can have a listen, if they aren't stopping near your city.

http://www.myspace.com/dittybops
http://www.thedittybops.com
Moon Over the Freeway on iTunes.

Natalia Zuckerman Is In the Studio!

Natalia Zuckerman, folk-blues-country-jazzy-soul, singer-songwriter, slide guitarist extraordinaire is in the studio recording a new album!

Looks like she's going to be posting updates on her MySpace blog. It's always fun to get a little behind-the-scenes peek at things.

I love Natalia's range of styles, and she's an AWESOME guitarist! She played a solo concert at Cafe Paradiso last year. It was really amazing to watch her get sound out of her instruments with such ease and grace. I have her album "Only One", with just her voice and a guitar or dobro (which is how I saw her live), so it'll be interesting to hear what she sounds like with more people, although I suppose you could do that already, since she has 2 other previous albums!

Listen to songs on her website
and MySpace

Or watch her performing one of my favorites, Haunted House, at Bluesfest in Ottawa 2006:



Wishing Natalia smooth and speedy days in the studio, I can't wait for the new album! Especially because at the concert she played some new songs that hadn't been recorded yet, and I've been wanting to hear them again.

Traveling with Ember and Imogen

Two musicians I love are traveling these days. They both have blogs they update regularly that I find fascinating to read. Their little glimpses into other cultures make me want to get out and see them myself, but I guess it's pretty much the next best thing!

Ember Swift is about two months through a three month stay in Beijing where she is immersing herself in the language, culture and the music scene. She has a degree in East Asian Studies and had always planned to go to China "when the music thing died down", but when she realized that there was no dying down to the music, maybe she'd better make space to just go anyway, and see if she could find that place where music and the Mandarin language mix. Sounds like she's having a blast following her dream, and her writing is really descriptive, poetic and insightful. I love how she even takes pictures of/explains the toilets in the floor on occasion - one of those different culture things you wonder about but no one seems to explain, till now!

Imogen Heap is really trotting around the globe and staying in all sorts of exotic places while she writes material for her next album. I just discovered her somewhat recently, but apparently she kept a regular blog the last time she made an album too. Says it keeps her accountable and actually working. (I totally get that!) She takes pictures and also little video clips which is cool. Her brain works in such amazing ways, it pushes me to explore wacky possibilities.

Anyway, a really cool thing is that their traveling paths crossed somewhat in Beijing recently! Imogen ended up playing at a festival called the Midi Festival, and Ember was there to see the performance! They didn't actually meet or anything, but it was neat to make the connection after reading both their blogs. I ended up leaving a comment on Ember's blog directing her to Imogen's, but she couldn't read it because a lot of MySpace is blocked where she was. She wrote me back to ask if I could copy and paste the text in an email so I did! :)

I feel all like I've brushed with fame or something, and all proud of myself for figuring the link out.

Anyhoo, check it out for yourself if you wish!

Ember's experience:
http://tinyurl.com/ypu6vv

Imogen Heap's experience:
http://tinyurl.com/38n6g4