So I've been down in the States for a few weeks now. What's new?

Since coming down to Allentown, PA, it's been a neverending stream of seeing old friends, linking up business opportunities, and work at King Studios. I've taken up the position of Media Manager for the studio, and started catching up with a stream of old friends that seems endless. 

I met with my old friend Mark Rex a few days before the holidays. Since I last saw him he's raised two sons and gone through a ton of trials and tribulations, and now we might start working together on the SHS Merch store. His wild ideas and counter-culture attitude aligns perfectly with my in-your-face creative style, and we've already started brainstorming ideas for the future. Mostly it was great to just hug my old friend and see that he's alive and well, strengthened by the many challenges he's overcome in the years since I've seen him last.

Another friend helping with the SHS Merch site is Christopher Love from Oblivion Threads. We're exploring a partnership together, either adding a line of his merchandise on my site or somehow combining our businesses. We'll have to see how we can mesh our ideas and goals yet, but know we're going to be doing some cool stuff together soon.

I also met with another old friend Seth Nagy, who's now an experienced SEO professional. With his advice and assistance, I've started the process of bringing my business up to snuff on google, verifying my trustworthiness, and getting some extra traction online. It was great to hang out over a few beers, catch up on each other's professional lives, then marvel at how far video games have come by playing some Xbox One. He and I have some partnership ideas, but we'll release some details on that soon.

One of the ideas I'm most excited about is working with one of my best friends Bjorn Straker. A marine and incredibly dedicated and kindhearted friend, Bjorn and I have known each other since the first day of kindergarten. Growing up in school together has intertwined our lives irrevocably, and we've long since gotten used to the idea. With his knowledge of cars, firearms, and all kinds of other cool stuff, we're going to be working on a YouTube channel together. Expect footage of things going fast, spitting fire, exploding, breaking, stabbing, cutting, and shooting. Not quite sure how we'll make that happen as of yet, but rest assured it's going to be awesome.

Another friend interested in working on a YouTube channel is Brandon Stoltz, with whom I used to play in a high school metal band. One of my first experiences as a drummer, we spent hours hunched over Guitar Pro 5 tabbing out an entire EP in a few weekends. Since then we've been friends over Facebook, constantly sharing snippets of our musical careers with each other over the years. He's starting a solo music channel, and I'm at least going to be offering some advice on how best to capture his ideas... ideally I'll be helping film and produce it with him! He's got some crazy guitar skills, so definitely stay tuned for that. 

Finally, working with Justin and Ryan has been rewarding beyond belief. Not only do they have a near-constant revolving door of extremely talented bands and musicians coming through the door, but they've encouraged me to team up with them and have done everything they can to make it possible for me to spend my days working with them. I'll be clearing out a room in their newly purchased production house, where they're undergoing renovations and adding improvements on the daily. With two fully-functioning studios complete with drum, vocal, and live rooms, we can collectively produce top-quality media of all kinds. 

When bands come into the studio, I'm usually already there with all of my camera gear, which makes it an easy choice for them to hire me to document their studio time. By creating media to preemp their album, EP, or song releases, they can maximize the effectiveness of their posts on social media, greatly increasing the success of their media. Since these bands are already where I'm working, I've been offering a 20% off discount to every group/artist that comes through on their media, making it worth everyone's while without breaking the bank. 

Since I've taken over media for King Studios, there's going to a lot of new pages, websites, and merch coming out for them. I'll be posting a lot more from their page, creating media for their social media accounts, and trying to drive more traffic to their door. In return they've given me a space to work out of, a support network for my work, and access to a steady stream of work. Partnerships can be mutually beneficial when everyone knows their value, and the value of those around them!

That being said, stay tuned for tons of interesting new projects, collaborations, and posts from all the parties mentioned above. There's more beyond that, but I can't share details yet!

Thanks for reading,

Stay