Please follow me on social media

This was part of the email I sent out today to my regular email list - if you wish to be added to my email list, please send me a note at danmyspace@gmail.com

Here you go:

To be honest - it's hard to maintain a regular email list these days.  If you follow me on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram these last few months, you know I have been anything but silent.  Probably too loud!  I have posted zillions of things about my tour, my recent doings, photos, videos, tour diaries/journals, deep thoughts, you name it.  I just have had trouble having the time and energy to ALSO post everything I want to tell you via email.  So I kinda just let the email list atrophy a bit lately, out of pure necessity (and fatigue).

Where I really focus my publicity energies these days is on social media.  Do I love Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?  Not really.  Sometimes not at all.  But they provide me an easy way of keeping in touch with fans and friends, and when I am traveling around Europe, or just rushing from gig to gig around the Midwest (while trying to be a single Dad too, and all that entails), it can just be MUCH easier to simply post something on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram than to try to work it into a mass email to fans later

So, before we go much further, let me encourage you to at least follow ME on social media, even if you don't want to spend much more time there:

Here is my Facebook fan page:
https://www.facebook.com/danisraelmusic/

(You can also send me a "friend request" to be my Facebook friend on my personal page - I am not sure if this link will work via email, so if it does not, and you can't find my personal Facebook page via "mutual friends" we might have - think hard, we probably have a few, and if so, you can search through that friend's friends and find my personal page that way - anyway, this link "might" work for finding my personal page, and it might not, but if it does not, and you can't find me through friends of friends, just email me and I'll help connect you with my personal page:  https://www.facebook.com/dan.israel1)

Maybe you can't stomach the politics and arguing and tumultuousness of Facebook?  Consider Instagram - it's mostly just photos/videos and short comments and happiness (mostly) - here is my Instagram page, please follow me there:  https://www.instagram.com/danisrael1971/

Another format that isn't maybe QUITE as obnoxious (well, unless we are talking about a certain Tweeter we are all familiar with) is Twitter - I post a lot there too, you can follow me @danisraelmusic on Twitter 
Here you go:   https://twitter.com/DanIsraelMusic

Are my social media feeds "politics free"?  No.  They are not.  I am an opinionated person, and ever since I left my job at the Legislature last year (where I was required to be "nonpartisan" for 21 years), I have felt liberated ("You're Free"!) to speak my mind publicly a bit more.  Deal with it?  It's part of who I am.  If you don't like it, that is fine, but nobody is forcing you to do any of this.  I try to "focus on music" - yes, of course - but part of my music is my feelings about life and part of that involves my feelings about the state of the world today, history, arts and culture, civilization/societies, etc.  You don't have to agree with me on everything to like my music, though. I have plenty of favorite artists with whom I do not agree on every political subject.  So I hope you can overlook some of that, if you disagree with me - or hey, feel free to engage me on social media, argue with me, I can handle it, really!  I am also kind of open-minded.  Some might disagree, but really, I am not beholden to any one point of view, I would say - I am too conservative for many of my more liberal friends and too liberal for many of my more conservative friends.  Maybe I'm "just right" for you?  Maybe not?  Either way, hope you can follow me on one of the above formats.

Am I terminating this email list?  Absolutely not.  I know full well there are people who just prefer not to join social media sites, and I respect that.  In fact, I'm a bit envious, as in this day and age, as a musician trying to promote myself, I really do not have the option of opting out of all of that stuff.  So I try to embrace it, and make the best of it.

What I AM saying, however, is that I may have told some of you that I would keep a tour diary, for example (a blog, of sorts) while I was on tour in Europe.  I did not, because I did not have time to post stuff to social media (where many many people read about so many aspects of my tour, almost in real time) AND also post it all to a personal blog. I do HAVE a personal blog, I just don't get over to it very often, but I am going to eventually pull all of my social media posts from this European trip down (as in, delete them all) and perhaps "re-purpose" them for a blog and/or an article/essay and/or maybe even a book.  I just am tired right now.  A 5-week tour of Europe, by myself, with 25-30 shows, covering 7,100 kilometers (about 4,500 miles), for a 47 year old guy, means I have been home for 9 days and am STILL dealing with complete exhaustion.  

(as you can see, my blog is here at danisraelmusic.blogspot.com)

You can always check my website at www.danisraelmusic.com  - I try like heck to keep that updated too (also hard sometimes)

Thanks, as always, for your support!

Dan Israel