By Jim Fusco:
You know, a lot of people ask me, “Jim, why the heck do you guys do the Laptop Sessions? What do you get out of it?”
Well, I wish I could say that a life of playing acoustic cover songs every three days on camera was solely for the purpose of making others happy. But, this music and video blog is much more than that for me, and I think Jeff and Chris would agree.
First, I used to write in a journal. I did this every single night for about 8 years in a row. I love the accomplishment, but after getting a full time job and things kind of settling down, it seemed useless to write, “Dear Journal: I went to work today, saw Becky after dinner at home, and watched some TV,” over and over again. But, I do miss the writing and the idea that I can look back at any point and see what I did that day.
So, the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs began as a spin-off of my Fusco-Moore Productions Blog. I wanted to make the blog as a way to get people a little more interested in the site and a way to connect with potential fans. Plus, I’d get to write some occasional “journal entries” as well. The video series came about when I decided to do a few songs on YouTube to try my hand at the cover video world.
I realized that 99.999% of all YouTube cover songs are absolutely horrendous and that I wanted to be the one to put a stop to bad YouTube cover videos forever.
Okay, so maybe that’s impossible, but that’s an even better reason to have the blog- I made a place that has all the best cover songs in one spot. We could record versions of Barenaked Ladies songs, Beach Boys songs, Bob Dylan songs, and more. Plus, I had a catchy name: The Laptop Sessions, due to the fact Chris Moore and I record our videos using the built-in video cameras on our Macbook computers. Actually, I kind of got the name from Ed Robertson’s (of Barenaked Ladies) “Bathroom Sessions”, where he plays acoustic versions of BNL songs in his bathroom using HIS Macbook video camera! But, The Laptop Sessions is mostly a cover song series, with the weekly Original Wednesday thrown in for some original flare.
So, that’s the history- now, why do we do it?
Well, it started off as being a neat way to meet people on YouTube and share my unique music tastes with people from around the world. I say “unique” because being in my twenties, it’s kind of odd to be a huge Beach Boys, Beatles, Byrds, and Moody Blues fan, you know?
But, then the entrepreneurial wheels started turning. We do so many more things than just play cover songs. We have a band that plays original music. We each play our own original songs. I own and operate my own recording studio. We have our own digital mp3 and physical CD music store. And finally, we run our own hilarious internet radio station. With all of these other interests and talents, it’s just way too much to promote them all. So, the question posed was: how do we make people interested in all of this original content?
My answer: the blog!
Look at it this way. If someone doesn’t know our music, they’re really not going to waste their time on songs they’ve never heard of from people they’ve never heard of. It’s the same thing with our radio station and my studio.
But, there’s a whole lot of people that know and love the songs we play. So, if we do a good job on these cover songs, we’re hoping those fans will enjoy our music, too, especially because our original music sounds so close to the covers anyway.
So, we started to promote the blog and hope that people, like you, that are here to watch new versions of classic songs will also stay and check out all the other projects we do, which are located in that convenient link bar on top.
That’s the story with the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs video series here on the Fusco-Moore Productions Blog. We hope that you’ll play right into our plan, too! 🙂
Click HERE to go to the homepage of the Laptop Sessions site and watch our most recent videos.