Welcome new followers. You know who you are so make yourself comfortable. There's kind of a lot of you lately, which is a nice thing. This is what The King Teen Newsletter looks like. How you like it so far?

Song of the Newsletter: Lucinda Brown

There isn't always a Song of the Newsletter but I promise you this: Sometimes there is a Song of the Newsletter. 

This one's an old song. Like really old. I'm pretty sure I made it up in 1991, when I was playing in a three-piece busking band that never quite agreed on a name, which didn't matter because we never played any gigs. 

That's all I'll say about it because remember Pop-Up Video? I loved that show. They'd have little bubbles of trivia and factoids and behind the scenes info pop up in these bubbles as a music video played. There'd be an audible pop. I used to say there should be Pop-Up Video in real life, which I think is what augmented reality is about. Dang. Another entrepreneurial opportunity I missed out on. Someday I'll tell you about the time I invented Spotify. 

Spoiler: Spotify already existed. I just hadn't heard of it yet.

Oh, why that's all I'll say about the song: I turned the video into a kind of Pop-Up Video knockoff, without the audible POPs, because the video is framed weirdly, with me way over to the left and a big glass doorway taking up 2/3 of the screen. So I filled up that space with trivia, factoids and behind the scenes info. 

The reason I posted a crappy video of a song that's older than Cardi B is that the song is called Lucinda Brown, and the other day a person in Dallas reposted a 20-second reel I'd cut from this video. She was pretty excited because her name, with a slight variation, is Lucinda Brown. She asked if I had the whole song and I said sure, I'll post it. 

A new new song

I don't just talk about old new songs here at The King Teen Newsletter. 

Let me share a little bit of my process as a song-makerupper. That's how we artists talk. My process. It's part of my journey you guys. 

The reason I call myself a song-makerupper and not a songwriter is because I don't go all Hoagy like this:

Hoagy Carmichael maybe writing "Stardust." Click the photo.

I get an idea for a title or a line or two of lyrics and I type it into the notes app. Theoretically what happens next is I go back to it and work it up into a song. But the next time I go to the notes app is almost always to make my grocery list. 

The other day I sat down and went through these digital equivalents of notes scrawled on bar napkins and there were 10 of them. And thanks to my lousy memory, I was pleasantly surprised by a couple! I took one that was a full verse and finished the song, and I'm very proud of it because it's very, very dumb, but, if this makes sense, it's dumb in a good way. Just on the right side of this line. 

I'm going to take it out for a test run tomorrow night, Thursday, at the Common Market open mic, so if you're in Durham, stop by 1821 Green St., starting at 7 p.m. I usually play around 8 but youneverknow. Come on out and see if I can get through the new song without forgetting any of it, always a danger with new ones. 

Come on out

A couple upcoming gigs:

Durham Centerfest

Saturday, Sept. 21

Corner of Main and Chapel Hill streets outside Bull McCabe's.

All day event, I play at 2:30 p.m.

7th Annual Brunswick Stew & Soulful Tunes

Saturday, Nov. 9

Durham Central Park

4-9 p.m. I play at 5, and a short set at 7:15.

Benefit for Durham Central Park. Tickets at link. 

It's STILL Shark Week! 

Friendly reminder that you can still pick up a digital copy of my single Shark Week (Person Woman Man Camera TV) at Bandcamp for NameYourPrice dollars — $0 is a price you can name — or you can listen to it for free on your favorite streaming service, like Spotify for example, or watch the video here:

I need to make hay on this song while I can because in a few months nobody's going to remember who that guy is. Please share it! 

Thanks for reading and listening and coming on out.

Your friend,

The King Teen

Instagram | Spotify

Bandcamp | Facebook | YouTube

Important stuff in italics 

Did someone forward this to you and you want to get the newsletter yourself? Go here. Wanna read the archives?: Go here.

If you like anything I do, you can help me out by forwarding this email to at least one person who you think would also like it, or just telling one person to check me out on YouTube or Spotify. Thanks.

Keep me out of your junk folder

For Gmail, that means moving this email to your Primary Tab (desktop: drag and drop; mobile, hit the 3-dot thing) and adding king@kingteenmusic.com to your contacts. For Apple Mail it means tapping the email address at the top of this message and selecting "Add to VIPs." Here's more help.