Fifteen Minutes of Fame: An Independent Artist Music Review Blog

Originally Published March 14th, 2025 About the Artist When I worked on the summer staff for Appalachia Service Project, I enjoyed my office more than anything. My office didn’t have a very fancy desk, a name plaque, or a computer. But it did have a view. I was out in the natural world every day. Sunrises and sunsets would paint every sky. The Appalachian Mountains were monuments that stood older than time.  My staff members and I didn’t have televisions. We didn’t have internet service (the internet was hardly a thing back then). We hiked. We scoped out local swimming holes hidden in the mountains. We had a deep connection with nature. Those memories have been everlasting as I can close my eyes and instantly be transported back there. I can smell the crisp morning air and feel its condensation. I feel the warmth in my heart and the smile on my face, in spite of the string of sleepless nights. Many songs I’ve written have been inspired by these moments at that time. This is a feeli...

Originally Published on March 12th, 2025 I Can’t Believe We Are Here I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would want to say in this article. Looking back a year ago, it was about a month before I went on to Threads and first uttered the words “Fifteen Minutes of Fame.” I was hyping a new single I had heard by  Tones and I  and I had posted a picture of an adorable  baby goat  I had seen while taking my dogs to the vet. I had very few followers and no idea how to connect to other independent artists.  My wife and I have been listening to the audio book of  Al Pacino's  autobiography, called  Sonny Boy . There was a particular part that stuck out to me. It was in the very early parts of his adulthood, before he had a career, when he was still aspiring to be a stage actor. He was living in a small apartment in New York with  Martin Sheen  and they both worked in this theater as janitors, actors, handymen, etc. they described doing “off, of...

Originally Published March 10th About the Artist It’s 6:45 in the morning, on a Monday. This weekend, I spent a little bit of time in the studio tracking a song, I bought lumber to build some boxes for our vegetable garden, I took our girl  Kali  to the vet (she has a sprained ACL), and I ran some other routine errands. The weekend was kinda great in that way that makes Monday a little more difficult to find my motivation.  Body aching from the bit of labor I did, I groggily press play. I super charged guitar riff starts playing in my left ear, then it layers in my right. The drums come in, unapologeticallyn, accompanied by the bass. Then the line: “Rain on my parade. Skies are turning grey. Luck an’t my friend. No, not today.” Not only am I awake, I’m looking for a wall to run through by now.  It’s no secret. It’s no surprise. Ever since  Joan Jett & The Blackhearts  screamed into a microphone the phrase “ I Love Rock 'N' Roll ” in 1981- even before th...

Originally Published on March 5th, 2025 About the Artist Music has a way of articulating feelings like no other force on Earth. It has the power to be as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, or the atoms that shape our universe. It’s an intangible force that can make us feel like we’ve run into a brick wall, or that we can fly. Life can sometimes be mundane, uncertain, or depressing. Even in its most depressive state, music is glorious.  Somewhere, in Minneapolis, Minnesota,  Conzemius  is giving the impression that she has a profound sense of this. She articulates it as she is “navigating life’s complexities with a soft strength.” ( conzemiusmusic.com )  What a way to describe feeling like being two places at once; at least enotionally. Conzemius says that “her songwriting reflects a true reverence for life’s contrasts, having experienced the depths of numbness and the heights of exhilaration.” ( conzemiusmusic.com )  Her music certainly conveys that.  Conzem...

Originally published on March 1st, 2025 About the Artist Serendipity. I’m going insult my readers’ intelligence by typing out the definition. “The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” An example of serendipity would be this review I am writing right now. “Why,” you ask, “is this moment serendipitous?” Well, the answer to that is  Myah  didn’t submit music for review this month. She DID, however submit a song for review back in August. A song that I thought was extremely impressive. Unfortunately, as I was just starting with Fifteen Minutes of Fame and was generally finding myself overwhelmed with trying to find a way to manage the submissions organizationally, I didn’t publish a review for her very good song. I’ve regretted it ever since.  So much, I mention wanting to have done the review for the song when I did a  blind reaction  for one of her  music videos . I mentioned it to my wife in conversation a couple of m...

Originally published on March 3rd, 2015 About the Artist Before getting into this article’s artist, I just want to say how excited I am to get back to new submission music with Fifteen Minutes of Fame. I loved last month and I know I will be doing something like that again in the future, but the interactions with the artists, getting to potentially hear something that hasn’t been introduced to the world and having the privilege to tell our readers about something upcoming is so special.  Second, I want to say how thrilled I am to be presenting our first submitted artist from the social media platform,  Bluesky . Our reach on that platform is not the biggest yet, so to be getting submissions there already is really exciting. Perhaps, doing reviews like this will help us grow there and potentially reach more artists. Every artist we’ve featured is completely unique. There are always artists that will have a sound that reminds me of somebody else, or artists who inspire another a...