A nice little success story

A few years ago a friend of mine who didn’t quite see the point of blogging asked why I do it. I had a few answers for him: a love of composition, a desire to educate and entertain, and a certain narcissistic itch that I can scratch by imagining I’m addressing a bigger audience than I likely have. But I really caught his attention when I added that by “putting myself out there” I may be creating opportunities for exciting things to happen that certainly wouldn’t happen otherwise. Here’s a story to illustrate that last point.

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Among the tragically few people who know of the terrific but defunct band Splashdown are readers of this blog and a young Scottish woman named Alice Ishbel Watson. Unlike most Splashdown fans, she had considerable vocal and guitar-playing talent of her own. She posted videos of herself covering a few Splashdown songs (1, 2, 3) on her YouTube channel.

Splashdown’s guitarist, Adam von Buhler, discovered these videos and reached out to Alice with the suggestion that they record a song together. Alice documented her reaction in another YouTube post: “Aye, right. Sure you’re ‘Adam from Splashdown.’” He proved his identity to her with a video of his own, and now, a couple of years later, the two have released their first EP! Their band is Map & Key and the six-song CD is called Ancient History. It sounds great — the songs are catchy and they capture a lot of what I loved about Splashdown.

Isn’t that a great story? I hope they have a ton of success. Congratulations and good luck to Map & Key, hooray for YouTube, and hooray for putting yourself out there — the best way to make exciting things happen.