I'm not much of a MySpace guy, I just checked it out because I wanted to see what my kid was doing, and probably should have made this a "musician" page, too. I wasn't paying attention when I started this, I didn't know there was a difference. So, I don't think I can do the "musician on MySpace" thing because I'm not wanting to maintain two MySpace pages.
The decade-old Ticket to Fly album I did with Jorma, Merl, and the others is now in iTunes. If you're one of the 3,000 who bought the original CD, thanks. I think there are some around, its always a gas to see them turn up in used CD stores or on eBay for $.99. I left that all behind a few years ago and really concentrated on building a book and video publishing business for the music and recording industry. We sold the company to Thomson Learning in 2004, at which time I left the San Francisco area and went north to Shasta Lake for two years, then we came home to Nashville. For the past two years I've worked publishing more books and videos, this time for Hal Leonard Corp, but was offered a great opportunity to return to Gibson Guitar Corp and take helm of their websites, and as of Sept 2, '08, I'll be back at Gibson, from whence I came in '96 after a few years there, where I put them on CompuServe and then the Internet back when most folks had never logged onto either.
I've published over 300 books and videos on music and production production for stage and studio along with music business, directory, periodical and other reference titles under the MixBooks, EMBooks, ProAudio Press, ProMusic Press, ArtistPro, Thomson and Hal Leonard imprints. I'm now producing books and videos for Thomas Nelson and Alfred Publishing/Warner Bros and could not be happier.
I still kind of keep the Vince Welnick website going for him, even though he's gone and nothing's gonna bring him back. I started a news site called AppleProAudio.com , where you can read just about any news headline for Apple users who are musicians, engineers, producers, etc., with syndicated stories from hundreds of sites plus our own news and reviews. We own Lawson Music Media, Inc's website AppleProAudio.com, and manage a partnership called Metaverse Media Group, which produces marketing services in Second Life for major corporations.
I still write and record my own music, but perform live 15 or more shows a month on Second Life as the avatar Von Johin , doing early to mid 20th century acoustic country blues, which I broadcast live in two hour shows from my home studio. I was recently, ok, Von Johin was recently signed to a record deal with Reality Entertainment. I live with my lovely wife of 18 years, Sandy (aka Harlee Johin) and our three kids; Zach, Kelly and Isaac in a great little Tennessee town outside Nashville. Life is good.
