Yes, a lot of what we do here is link to interviews, and yes, you’ve read some of it before. So here’s the money quote from Colossians Three Sixteen’s interview of Jeremy Casella:

I wrote about my life on [Recovery]. I drew from personal loss, failure and the longing for something better than the condition I find myself in. I’ve found that most everyone can relate to that sort of subject matter so the new music is finding an audience even if it doesn’t fit nicely into pre-conceived categories and assumptions of what an artist who is a believer in the Gospel should be.

The most difficult part of being an independent artist is getting press coverage for your material. Marketing in general is just a difficult thing for me. I think it’s more about financial resources than it is about the lyrical content of the songs.

Yeeeep.

Behold The Rabbit Room:

The original Rabbit Room was in the back of an Oxford pub where the Inklings—C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and other friends—met to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing.

Our hope is that this Rabbit Room will likewise be a place for people who get the feeling that there’s more truth and beauty in the world than this world can contain. Windows on that truth and beauty are opened, sometimes quite by accident, by tale-spinners, world-makers, and bards.

We invite you to step in and look outside with us.

Who’s involved? Well, a number of folks, including AP and EP and our own Curt McLey. Check ‘em out.

One of the questions that I’m often asked about booking Square Pegs is, well, “How do I do it?” [Well, that's after, "Why does [insert Square Peg here] never play in my area?”] Most of the Pegs have their booking information shown directly on their sites. But if you’re not in the mid-South or in an area that regularly sees the Square Pegs come to your area, you’re … probably a little intimidated. [Hello, West Coast folks.] With that in mind, we have some suggestions:

1. Find other venues in the area that have hosted your Peg in the last few years. One resource for this is the admittedly non-exhaustive history of Square Peg tour dates that we’ve kept since July 2006 or so on upcoming.yahoo.com. You’ll be able to see where Pegs have played in your area. If you’re from somewhere off the beaten path, look for a place a couple hundred miles from you, and see if you can book shows a day or two apart. That spreads the travel costs over the two dates, lowering the burden on the both of you. Sure, you might have the funds to bring Andy O to Washington State once, but the chances are that you can’t do that twice a year. [If you can, can we borrow some funds? This server stuff gets expensive.] As an example to this, there’s a guy from the next town over from where I grew up in Ohio that contacted me a few months back. I gave him some contacts in Cincinnati and Columbus [and at my old church in Beavercreek ... and if you know Beavercreek, email a brother ], and I think that’s helped some. We can’t all live 90 miles from Nashville, right, Chris?
2. If you can’t find folks in your area, see when your Peg is generally playing a bunch of dates. You might get a discount for filling a slot for an open date. Think about it: if you toured around the country, you’d want to do that for a few weeks at a time, then spend some time at home. Few people, myself included, like doing little bits of travel often. [And yet I have to go back to Houston at the end of the month, having just been there last weekend.] If you’re not in the area of the tour, you’ll probably want to get on one end or the other.
3. Ask your Peg for ideas. Let’s be honest: they make money from playing shows, so they have an incentive to get things done.

Below are booking contacts for the Pegs [current as of this writing]:

• Andy G: Andy is self-booked. He has an entire page on how to book Andrew Gullahorn, filled with trademark Gullahorn humor.
• Andy O: Andrew is also self-booked. Email Toesenga to set something up.
• Andy P: The Breen Agency books AP. Ask for David.
• Chris: Chris is self-booked. Email Chris to book him.
• Derek: Third Coast Artists books DW.
• Eric: Eric is also self-booked; email him at booking AT ericpeters DOT net.
• Jeremy: Jeremy is … say it with me … self-booked. Email the Jer to get started.
• Jill: The Breen Agency books Jill as well.
• Randall: Mighty Nice Booking books Randall.

Have questions? Ask ‘em in the comments.