In March 2020 I was made unemployed.
Quite an achievement considering I was, and I remain self employed.
Such was the impact of the COVID pandemic.
My family were locked down for two years. Long enough to probably bankrupt us.
Alternate income streams were needed.
I created a Patreon page.
We didn’t go bankrupt.
My initial idea for the page, my only idea, really, was something I’d been mulling for quite a while – The Notebook Project – a visual history of my songwriting from the actual notebooks I used, and continue to use. That’s right, every entry on every page, leading to every song, photographed and presented, one song at a time.
The Notebook project led to The Cassette Project – its audio counterpart.
And then there were basement concerts and guitar lessons on video.
Electronic explorations in my attic.
Memorabilia.
Live concert recordings.
Photography, even.
It became a sort of multimedia self portrait / memory palace. The closest I’ve come, thus far, to a memoir.
The Patreon model was ideal for that moment which lasted two years.
Substack, despite its nomenclature still being based around the newsletter, is a better fit for me, today.
I’ve migrated almost the entirety of the Patreon data, now, now being late March 2025. I’ll be closing the Patreon page next week.
If you’d like to learn more, or you’d like to consider subscribing, click here.