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The New JLC Album

I am proud to announce that Comedy Central has agreed to produce my next album!  It is a really tremendous honor and finally a sign that I have arrived in the comedy world!  I’m just kidding – those people are unaware of my existence.  Or if they are they hate me.  And if that is the case I say bring it.  You and  Mumford and Sons!  OK, now that I have that off my B-cup, man-titted chest I can share with you the actual announcement.  I am recording my new album in NYC on April 25th at The Stand (tentative agreement, assuming they don’t book anyone more famous that night, like a Hudson News clerk from Grand Central Station).  I have asked them to raise the ceiling 3.5 inches so that I can stand upright, but this may have to be the first album I record sitting down.  This will be my Extreme album.  Not because I go places no other comedian has gone, but because I will be sitting like Gary Cherone and that other dude in Extreme in the More Than Words Video.  But no instruments:

Once the details are all worked out I will let you know when you can buy tickets.  For a quick history of my albums:

Racial Chameleon – 2006.  An ambitious effort from a happy and relatively humble person.  Lots of impressions and light-hearted stories.  Well received by friends and a few fans and still gets radio play on Sirius XM.

This album got 5 mics from The Source

Diamond Maker – 2008 – If Racial Chameleon is my Ace Ventura, then Diamond Maker is The Cable Guy – a darker, much better effort that did not garner the same affection from people.  Still proud of the fact that I turned a failed engagement into a really strong final 30 minutes of the album.

Last known photograph of my muscle tone.

Too Big To Fail – 2012 – In keeping with the Jim Carrey analogy, this album was my Dumb and Dumber/Truman Show/Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – best thing I have done.  This album was offered for free and was downloaded over 1000 times (bought a couple hundred – thanks Mom) and gained me almost 10 new fans.  So do the math; if my new album is to get me to my goal of 1 million fans, then I will only have to sell 100,000,000 copies.

The album that made me a household name. In 13 households.

So I hope you will mark your calendar as seats will be limited.  I would like friends and fans there and here are my guidelines and enticements to come to the show:

  •  Married couples – get a babysitter for the night
  • Married friends/fans with a spouse and you cannot get a babysitter – force your spouse to stay with the kid(s) for an evening
  • Unmarried friends – consider this a test of friendship
  • Fans – if you are in the tri-state area get tickets. They won’t be expensive ($10-20)
  • Fans – if you are out of the tri-state area – half off ticket price if you spend $100 or more on travel, free if you spend $400 or more to come to the show, but then you scare me and please do not say hi after the show.
  • People who know me from Facebook, Twitter, Internet or my backyard MMA fights – you won’t regret coming to the show.  But why do we know each other on social media?

Well, that is the big announcement.  I know this will be my best album by far and hope you can make it and start to make plans. Also it is the day after my birthday so there’s another guilt trip.   And in keeping with the Jim Carrey analogy I guess this will be my Mr. Popper’s Penguins.  Sh*t.

Blog

Too Big To Fail on iTunes – Help Wanted

This is a very simple post.  My new album has been available for free for a month on my website – you can download it here (still for free for another couple of weeks):

https://jlcauvin.com/?page_id=3578

But of more importance today is that my album is now available on iTunes right here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/too-big-to-fail/id523993775

If you have the free copy of the album, if you don’t have it or if you feel like being generous and buying it through iTunes please do me a favor as a reader of this site and presumably a friend or fan of what I do – go to the iTunes link and give the CD 5 stars (and if feeling generous with your time please write a nice sentence or two about the album or my comedy).  Please do this as soon as you are able to and ask friends and family to do the same in this time period through Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.  It costs nothing (unless you want to be nice and buy the album) except a few seconds and will really help me out.

That’s it.  Thanks very much. And I hope you enjoy the album.

 

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Too Big To Fail. Maybe.

I am in the middle of a media blitz promoting my brand new stand up album “Too Big To Fail” which was released today at 12:01 am – how dramatic!  And by media blitz I mean a Facebook invite, an e-newsletter, and some tweets.  The biggest decision for me was to make it free to download for the month of April.  I did this for several reasons.  One, Louis CK charged $5 for his last special and I’ll be damned if he is going to get the “nice to his fans” credit over me.  The main reason is that I have sort of given up.  I am literally doing everything I can to build a brand, to get my name out, to share as much comedic content as I can and nothing seems to have broken through.

For example – my YouTube videos.  Most are really good, well-written and have a strong production value.  None has gone “viral.” My Tax Masters spoof is the closest at around 19,000 views, but other videos have just not blown up. I have no idea how to make that happen (www.YouTube.com/JLCauvin if you want some laughs).

My blog and podcast are small successes (the blog more so) and I am hoping an opportunity to share my comedy blogs with the Huffington Post will yield more traffic, etc. but I still don’t know the logistics of doing this or if the opportunity is still open (a few days before my website went down for 6 weeks I was asked to share my comedy writings with the Huffington Post – great timing by me to have my site down).

For the first time in five years it appears that I will have fewer bookings than the previous year.  For anyone not in the comedy business allow me to explain what that means: my career is now going backwards – at least as far as the traditional comedy trajectory is concerned.

So that brings us to the ironically titled “Too Big To Fail.” When I was organizing and writing my material for the CD I wanted one of the themes of the CD to be a snapshot of a struggling comedian before he either quits or makes it big.  So the idea of Too Big To Fail, even though it is not explicitly stated on the album, is that I am at the point where something has to hit to make me big or I am going to have to figure out how to live a life without comedy as my future (or at least the driving force of my future).  So I thought, what the hell? If I have nothing to lose, why not just make the CD free for everyone?  I have already gotten some great feedback so maybe it will work.  Work for what do you ask? I have no idea. I don’t know what my goals as a comedian in 2012 should even be.  The path to success that I want to exist seems to not exist anymore. So maybe some guy or gal will hear this CD and forward it to someone who will forward it to someone, etc.

But now that I have the blog back, the podcast humming along and the CD out I feel like I have given it my best shot.  So now it is time to look for a day job.  If you are so inclined to listen to a free comedy CD (and forward it along to friends and colleagues) here is the link:

https://jlcauvin.com/?page_id=3807

I have done all I can to put my material out there so I guess now I need your help in getting more ears listening to it.  I am writing to all 8 of you that read this.

Blog

The Zero Barrier of Comedy

So I am approaching 9 years in the comedy “game.”  Since a new year is a great time for reflection I reflected on my relatively empty calendar, my even emptier bank account and my fully empty soul and realized that I am approaching the zero barrier of careers.  The term zero barrier, if I am remembering the term correctly, is from the film Armageddon (which failed to use Armageddon It by Def Leppard which is one of the great soundtrack omissions of all time) and it refers to the last possible moment they could blow up the asteroid to ensure it avoided Earth before it was too late.

Well, I am not sure if I am at the zero barrier of my comedy career, but I am close.  Now I will always be fairly employable – a Georgetown Law Degree will always qualify me for bagging groceries, cleaning toilets and substitute art teaching, but those will just be jobs.  The possibility of a career is slipping away though.  I have been at comedy for almost 9 years and doing it as my full time job for 3 years.  It feels like I have been released into the wild to be free and pure instinct, but now mental health and financial health seem to be calling me back to the controlled zoo of a day job as well as career ambition that doesn’t depend on the reactions of strangers.

But that has not stopped me from pumping out a ton of new content in 2012.  My weekly podcast has launched, just filmed two new comedy short films, I am in the process of putting together my weekly movie review show and of course my new CD Too Big To Fail will be out in February (along with the honor of having my voice doing the intro on Patrice O’Neal’s posthumous CD).  I also just got picked for a NACA showcase where I can potentially (but of course not guaranteed to) make a decent chunk of change doing college gigs.  The point of this is not to brag.  This is all the shit I am doing to keep even!  Just to keep people interested (because bookings have been slow, which are the comedy business’ way of helping you maintain a sharecropper’s status – go to a club, make a couple hundred bucks profit if you are lucky as a feature, get some Twitter followers, some Facebook friends, some YouTube fans, and then don’t get called back to the club for 2 or more years so that half of your fans are dead and the other half has moved on to supporting their local def poetry scene).

So thanks to the people who read this blog, watch my videos, listen to my podcast through early problems and generally put up with my shit.  I say this in part out of gratitude, but mostly because this is probably the year I go full on crazy, like become the 2006 Ron Artest of stand up or the Montecore of stand up and I will need at least a few of you at a sentencing to speak to the pressures of comedy and the joy I brought to you when you read this blog and realized – wait, maybe life is not so bleak because I certainly don’t feel as bitter and riled up as this meteor falling to the Earth.  Happy New Year!!!

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Too Big To Fail – A Success

Well last night was the end of my 7 cities in 28 days “tour.”  It was by no means an official tour, but if it had been it would have been named “The 99 Percentile of Height” Tour or “The Slowly Killing My Parents” Tour.  Not going to lie it was fairly tiring.  But for all the ups and downs it ended on a high note last night in Philadelphia.  I recorded my third CD last night at Helium and we had a great turnout.  Thanks to everyone who came out, big thanks to people who spread the word and got strangers to attend and an even bigger thanks to people who randomly saw me in May at Helium and decided to come back again.  I appreciated it and you guys made it a really fun night.

I anticipate the CD being released in mid December.  I will harass all of you with that info when it becomes available.