Travis Sullivan

When I appeared a couple of weeks ago on The Real Housewives of New York City episode “Follow Pecking Orders,” I was amazed that so many people saw me on that show! I heard from a lot of family and friends that were watching the show…quite frankly – I didn’t know the show had that many fans! Since most of my TV watching comes from watching shows streaming on Netflix, I’m a little out of touch which some of the more recent shows on TV…

Regardless, if I may say so myself, my first foray into reality television was a success and a little exciting (now if I can only figure out a way to get the same sort of recognition for my music career, I’d be all set!). Maybe someday I’ll be able to be on an Hollywood Squares as a C level reality show personality.  I even got a shout out on RHONY’s Alex McCord’s blog.

If you’d like to see the episode, it’s available in it’s entirety on the Bravo TV website…here’s the link: http://www.bravotv.com/full-episodes

Happy viewing!

Here’s a clip of the first song from “New Directions” for your listening pleasure! It’s dedicated to a very special girl.

Jamia’s Dance (excerpt)

With my new CD coming out next month, I’ve been thinking a lot about how people are sharing and buying music these days. I don’t necessarily have any aspiration in terms of actually making a living off of album sales (although that would, of course, be nice) but I’m always hearing how the new climate of the music industry is so great for independent artists. Because of digital distribution, we can sell our music directly to our audiences online, and we don’t necessarily have to produce physical copies of CD’s if we don’t want to. But I have several questions: Why does it seem like almost every artist that I know is still struggling to get their music out there into the world? Why is it still a challenge for a jazz artist to break even from sales of his/her CD? Is it because we’re still trying to figure out the implications of the “new paradigm” of digital music? Is it because we’re all still hanging on so tightly to the past that we’re just too afraid to move forward? Or is there the possibility that the digital platform may actually not be a viable method of music distribution for jazz?
Although these questions are just the tip of the iceberg, I thought rather than sitting around chewing my fingernails and wondering what the state of digital distribution is these days, it would be fun and informative to create a survey that would help shed some light on a few of these questions. Please take a moment to complete. I think that the collective answers will help not only myself in how to deliver my music to audiences, but also can assist my peers in the jazz community.

Tonight was one of those evenings that I’m so happy that I live in NYC. It’s my 3 year anniversary with my girlfriend, and to celebrate we went to one of our favorite East Village restaurants, Northern Spy Food Co. They feature all locally grown food, and we both had the “Hudson Valley Pork” dish and the watercress salad.   It was really unbelievable – one of the best meals I’ve had in quite some time, actually.  They also have homemade seltzers there.  Very tasty.

After that we headed over to movie theater in Union Square to see the new movie “Hanna.” The 8:20pm show was sold out, so we bought a ticket for the 10pm movie and chilled out at the Barnes and Noble.  I bought Ian McEwan’s “Atonement.” I liked the movie a lot and I’ve heard a lot of great things about this author.

“Hanna” was a very cool, hip, modern movie.  I’m not going to get into any sort of review here, but it was a lot of fun, and it was the first action movie that my girlfriend has ever been excited to see!Also, it had a great soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers.  It definitely gave the chase sequences a “Run Lola Run” kind of vibe.

So a great night all in all! And Happy Anniversary to me (and Jamia).

Welcome to the new (and improved) www.travissullivan.com and the new home of the Travis Sullivan Blog (all you subscribers to the old blog, please update your RSS Feed!).  Over the past two weeks I’ve been creating the new site on my own, and although there’s still much more to come, I’m extremely pleased with the results thus far.

Here are some of the new additions to the site:

• Improved integration of social media: My site now has button that link to my Facebook profile, my Twitter feed, my LinkedIn Page, and my Youtube Channel.  Cool stuff!
• Now my website and my blog are all accessible on the same site, which makes things less confusing for everyone involved!
• Visitors to the site can now share posts and page content via Facebook, Email, Digg, and Twitter
• New audio and video samples.
• A calendar page that utilizes a nice app called BandsinTown, that allows fans to RSVP attendance to events via Facebook.

I’m learning more about WordPress website design every day, and over the next several weeks I’ll be updating this new website constantly, so please visit a lot to see what’s going on, and don’t be afraid to leave a comment with your feedback and any ideas you may have!

I’ve been wanting to create a new website for quite some time, and here it is! I’ll be working hard the next couple of weeks getting everything up and running here, so please come back often to see how things are progressing.  This is (so far) a strictly DIY process, so any suggestions you may have along the way will be greatly appreciated!