Really Doing It.

Well, we're really doing it. The site is up -- albeit, in an incomplete form -- and we have sold a couple copies of the song already. I am spending most of my time right now trying to figure out how to get more people to the site. So, this week, that's what I'll be doing in all my free time, cough, cough -- gag.

I have to make some more Yinzer Diaries and, actually, I have to edit the ones that I have because they were initially just demos, not anything I expected to release on the site.

It's funny how exciting you can get about ideas and expect that everything will change for you overnight in terms of getting your idea out there. But finishing the song, the site, etc, is really just the very beginning. We have a long, long road ahead of us in terms of accomplishing what we set out to do. And, actually, I would say that what we've set out to do is being redefined daily.

Some jokers who don't like country music have already gotten to our facebook page and let everyone know the song sucks. Nice! It has me thinking more and more about doing that other version Nate and I have talked about. I have a song in my mind already and am going to make a new demo of it for Nate sometime soon. Here it goes again...

GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

Consulting the Magic 8-Ball

So, things are getting pretty serious now. Nate and I have decided to form a Partnership called "The Sammitch Company." TheSammitchCompany.com domain has been secured through GoDaddy. I will be filling out the articles of Incorporation for us today and we'll have to go open a bank account for the company and hook up a PayPal account to it. The Sammitch Company will have only one project for the time being. I'd be lying if I said the following thought never occurred to me: "Why not other creative collaborations in the future?" It's not as if this Steelers song is a once-in-a-while thing -- the one creative idea we happened to have this year. Nate and I are both the kind of people that can't get through the day without dreaming something up -- it's just the way our minds work. So why not future projects under The Sammitch Company name? I could definitely see it happening and now we'll have a corporate structure under which these ideas could flourish.

Here's my favorite part of our business agreement so far -- Nate's idea, I have to admit. It is suggested that in any business agreement between partners who have agreed on a 50/50 balance of power that there is a period after which a third-party arbitrator is called in to cast the deciding vote. We're actually going to write it into the agreement that after a period of time (maybe we make it 15 days instead of 30) that we call in an arbitrator -- namely, the Magic 8-Ball. It will cast the final ballot. If the answer comes up as "Maybe" then we wait another 15 days. If the answer comes up as "Maybe" again, we drop the idea we're working on entirely, accepting it as a word from God that we're not to go forward. Beautiful!

I think talk of money and business agreements makes me REALLY uncomfortable and I'm not sure why. Nate brings such levity to the whole discussion, though. A Magic 8-Ball makes the final decision? Brilliant. It really highlights how ludicrous it is to get hung up over stuff that ultimately has no bearing on my life. I lived before the Steelers song and the Sammitch Company and I'll live after it. I'll live whether the song takes off or goes on the trash heap. I'll still be happy. I'll still laugh 100 x a day regardless. Why get so hung up and Jerky over this stuff??

The website should be up in the next few days. More news to come...

GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

New Developments on the Steelers "Fight Song"

Where do I start??

There's been a bunch of new developments since yesterday. I'll try to cover them all.

First, Nate sent the song file by e-mail to the director of Pittsburgh Promise, an organization that works with Pittsburgh Youth. We're interested in coming up with some way to collaborate with them on getting the song out there. 10% of the proceeds from the song would go to their organaization. The Director, Saalem, loved it I guess. He said to count them in. Nate is meeting with Saalem tomorrow afternoon over a beer on the North side. I'm going to do my best to make it there, too, although things have been rather busy lately at the Weasel household because of dealing with various illnesses and responsibilities.

Second, Nate sent out some logo options over the past couple days. Here's a couple examples:

Currently, there's a disagreement. I'm sold on the yellow one, but my designer friend and Nate both disagree with me. Crap. There are a lot of other options though that are all similar to these. One of them will end up working out for us.

Third development: I have posted some samples of a video blog idea I got I'm calling The Yinzer Diaries. These files are currently unedited demos of what I imagine doing for that blog, so they're not the finished product. The one called Top 10 is the only one I fully planned out. The others I was kind of winging off the cuff. You'll get the idea, though. If this ever caught on and someone goes back in this blog's archives, you'll be able to see when the idea all started, which might be interesting to some people.

Fourth development, the song has been sent to the contact Nate has at Heinz Field. Through his wife, Nate knows a guy that is one of four people that control what's played on the video board and over the loudspeakers there at Heinz Field. If he likes the song and plays it at the game, we're in. Fingers are crossed and prayers have been said.

Fifth development, I heard the final mix of the song yesterday and I think it sounds fantastic. It's a very full blend of all instruments, voices and EQ ranges. I feel like everything is able to be heard very clearly. Walter Ino did a great job playing, recording and mixing it. A one man show!! We'll be able to post it online now. A link will be on the main page of the site sometime soon.

Sixth development, we're now ranked #2 in Google for the term "Steeler Country." We're also ranked #1 for the search term "Steeler Country Song." These are not the most sought after keywords right now, but when people start hearing the song it will be the likely terms they'll use to find us. This is an exciting development, but we've got to get going on the real site design so that we don't lose prospective customers...

I think that's it. We still need to do some work to get ranked on Google for "Steelers Fight Songs" as a search term. We're no where to be seen right now for this or anything like it: Fight Songs, Steelers Songs, etc. I'll keep trying, though.

GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

Men Love To Cry When They're Sick...

...And I'm not different I suppose. I am the guy who will do any sort of manual labor with vigor, getting filthy and tearing up my hands, knees etc, dig ditches in the cold, put my bare hands in the muck to unclog a drain. But the second I'm sick, I want to lie in bed whining for my wife to take care of me. Rather pitiful, I admit.

But as I have been lying in bed, I've come up with the concept for the three short videos that can be part of the The Yinzer Diaries series I want to put on the This Is Steeler Country site. It involves the character that I am blogging under here -- at least what's in my profile. His name is the weasel and he's long time Picksburger and big Stillers fan. I was initially going to do one idea like this as a demo for my friend Nate Smith (of wall|wall. After I came up with the three separate ideas though, I realized they're probably good enough (assuming I perform them correctly) for sticking up on the main site. As long as they're pretty funny, that's all that matters. And I think they will be.

Nate picked up the final copy of the mix from Walter Ino last night and said it sounds great. Apparently, Walter got my e-mail and made all the necessary changes. I'm hoping he's not too aggravated with everything he's had to do for this. I don't remember Walter ever being mad at me or me at him in the 20+ years I've known him, so I'd hate to start now!

I heard a report this morning that Polomalu was back to a light practice today, giving the knee a little workout to see how it felt. MAN IS THAT GOOD NEWS for the Steelers!!! If anyone doubted the effect he has on the game, it is now undeniable. Those two losses we have would almost certainly have been wins if he wasn't out. He has to be one of the most important players on any team in terms of affecting the outcome of games.

That's it. Need more rest. Go Pittsburgh Steelers.

GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

It Ain't Just The Song, I Think...

When the idea first arose to write a new Steelers song that would take over airplay and steal popularity from the current one, it really seemed at the time like it was all about the song. The song is what you hear and what people respond to, it seemed. And if the song was good enough, why wouldn't people love it, want to buy it, want to hear it played at the stadium, etc? That all makes sense to me, still. There is, however, a new paradigm that's been opening up to me as I have gone down this road of HOW we get our song to replace the old one. And what I've come to realize is that it can't be just about the song.

Do a simple search on the Internet for Steelers Fight Songs and check out how many different songs are out there! As I have said in earlier posts, I was totally oblivious to any other songs except the old Polka song and the one that gets played all the time now-a-days when I wrote "This is Steeler Country." I had no idea there were hundreds of songs out there.

The risk in writing a new song and especially in branding it a "fight song," which I initially did and sometimes still will for the sake of getting my site ranked higher in Google, is that it immediately puts it into the camp of all the other people out there who wrote their own fight songs. So, you may tell someone you wrote a new Steelers song and they think to themselves, "Yeah, I wrote one of them fight songs, too. Never got any airplay." The immediate assumption is that you've done something hundreds of others have done and that yours is destined for the same trash heap of old Steeler Fight Songs that everyone else's ended up on.

But I really think we've done something unique here. It's not a typical Steelers song and it should be considered as typical of some of the bad songs that are out there. So, we have to differentiate it from all the others and the way we do that is by all of the supporting content I have been trying to "imagineer" over the last few weeks.

While things like Anatomy of A Rooney don't directly relate to selling our song, they do very much in a "sneaking in the back door" sort of way. In like manner, yesterday I thought of doing a video series called "The Yinzer Diaries" -- short videos with ridiculous and/or obscure jokes and filled with non-sequiturs. Or an interview show hosted by Hal Hollywood, a character I made for a Murder Mystery Dinner I attended back in the winter. (The character went over quite well all evening and I've always wanted to do something else with him.) Short-sighted logic may be screaming "Why are you doing all this extra stuff? Concentrate on the song!" Well, the song will be totally done soon -- likely today is the final mix. Unfortunately (in some ways), this is only the very beginning.

The odds of a song, even a very good one, catching on and taking off and replacing what is currently so ubiquitous is not that good if the song is all there is. To really do what we've set out to do, massive action is required and a plan must be put into place that makes a phenomenon out of the www.ThisIsSteelerCountry.com site. If we don't, our song goes in the dust bin with the others.


GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

Downloading All Weekend Info Into One Ginormous Post

I spent the weekend -- in what little free time I had -- starting the Steeler Country website. I had already done a lot of work on the portion of the site that teaches readers how to make their own Rooney, a football headed character created me and two friends when they were visiting from Upstate NY. I finished the Rooney page (except for the editing which needs to be done to remove any untoward references to things like drugs and sex). I'm not exactly a "drugs and sex" kind of guy, but it kind of helps using these references when you're pretending to be a megalomanical creator of Football Headed Good Luck Charm for a Professional Football franchise... I guess. Anyway, I've been advised by the Marketing Director of this fine venture that kids might be drawn to this portion of the site, and therefore, mentioning drugs and sex would be bad. I might have to modify the tone overall. You might have to check out the Rooney page for yourself to see what I mean...

A new mix is supposed to occur sometime today-ish, if Walter Ino gets a chance at it. It hurts to have a product 95% ready and have to sit on it for over a week just because of that last 5%. But it would be a bad idea to start sending it out places when it might not make the best impression that could be made with it. I am working every day on this idea and yet I still feel like I never get enough done. It's amazing that such a small thing could take so much time to do correctly -- and this with four people involved! I could use a team of five at least and they'd all stay busy. But, they'd eat up all the profits, too... Okay, I'll do it myself.

I'm thinking that the DVD people bailed on the idea of a "This Is Steeler Country" documentary. They mentioned they were hoping to pick up some funding the weekend I met with them in Ambridge. MY guess is that their situation was more desperate than I knew and their demise was imminent and they didn't last the weekend before they decided to screw the whole thing. I've written them numerous e-mails but have gotten no response. Smells like a blow-off to me! (This is absolutely fine, but an e-mail would have been nice...)

As I walked into the Steelers game last night (btw -- whew! that was a close one) I took notice of all the tailgaters and got a *little* overwhelmed with the thought of walking into the middle of them all and bursting out in song. It's not the crowd size that would bother me. I've played in front of lots of people so many times that nervousness is not the issue anymore. The problem is that they're so involved with what they're doing. It's a hard sell to take them away from what they're focused on: beer, Italian Sausages, tossing a football around and asking for their attention on a Steeler's song they've never heard of. Maybe that's not the best way to get the song heard. What I can see doing is printing up thousands of little business cards that have the "www.ThisIsSteelerCountry.com" site with the words "Free Song Download" underneath. That would require nothing from them and would be a good way to cheaply start getting the word out.

Another thing while at the stuadium -- Man, can I hear the song being played over the main speakers there into Heinz Field. I can TOTALLY envision people chanting the "Hey, Hey, Hey, This is Steeler Country" part at the end. The guy Nate knows that works at Heinz Field is the key. If he gets it played there.... dang. We're in. I'm going to buy that guy some sort of big bribe... I mean, thank-you gift for considering the song. If we get it to him this week, maybe we could get it played there for the next home game in two weeks? We play Cleveland, but I will be out of town for a wedding. Boy would that suck if I missed the first time the song was played at the stadium!!

Dreaming anyway....


GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com

This is Almost Scary

Okay. I just did a quick search in Google.com on the words (no parentheses) "this is steeler country" and to my surprise, the website address I recently registered and have basically done nothing with is already ranked #6. I haven't optimized this at all yet. How did that happen?

If it's that high already, just think what will happen when people get a whiff of the song and start searching on that title. We are sure to get some good traffic there.

I never expected that. Nice surprise for a very late Saturday night.

On another good note, the Rooney site (www.thisissteelercountry.com/rooney.html) is nearing completion. I might be able to post it tomorrow. pretty funny stuff, if I do have to say so myself.

GET THE SONG HERE:
www.SteelerCountrySong.com