URL: www.brianfranke.com/thinkingaloud
Meet Brian Franke. He’s got more energy than most of us, which is a good thing when you’re in the DC music scene from what I can tell. Brian wanted to start a blog focusing on the experiences and stories in the music community in the Washington, DC metro area, in part because of the challenges he faced when starting his music career in full force last year. Brian, a folk-rock singer/songwriter, will use the blog to share his tales and thoughts on what goes on behind the scenes with the area’s music. As the blog evolves, he hopes to have other parties from the DC music community contribute posts to the blog to offer a range of perspectives other than his own. In addition to the focus on Washington, DC’s music, Thinking Aloud will comment on trends in the music industry, provide tips and advice to musicians, and at times comment on interesting observations in everyday life.
We decided to build the blog using the popular WordPress platform because it’s flexible and integrates well with a lot of tools helpful to musicians: embedding videos and music files, sharing updates on shows, integrating with Facebook and other social networking sites, etc. As a result, we picked out some essential add-on widgets: The Facebook badge, Flicker Photo album, a Twitter feed, the 1pixelout MP3 player, the Socialize social-networking button sharing tool, Google Analytics and surely we’ll be adding more as the blog evolves to incorporate multiple authors. The framework and layout was drawn from the WooThemes template “FreshNews” although the logo design and other customizations are original. I hope you like the look, and I look forward to your feedback!
Stay-tuned for links to Brian’s debut album, with a CD and jacket art designed by me and images provided by Courtney Kane of Nonchalant Photography. The album release party will be on November 6, 8PM, @ Irish Channel in Chinatown (500 H Street, NW, Washington, DC) — hope to see you there!
