– Press Release

It’s a new world out there in the music industry — it no longer takes a record company and a distribution
deal to reach thousands of listeners — and a group of singer/songwriters
are taking advantage of Internet technology to hone their skills and reach
a national, even international audience.

Welcome the Baskethouse Song-a-Week Challenge, a podcast and online
songwriting workshop, where 11 independent songwriters are challenged to
record and post one song every week. Visitors to the website,
http://www.baskethouse.net , hear the songs, read the lyrics, and leave
their comments. In addition, listeners from across the globe subscribe for
free to the podcast and get a new episode every day with two or three songs
per episode. Drew Brody hosts the podcasts, and the artists talk about
their songs and the stories behind them.

The hosts of the Daily Purge, one of the most popular podcasts with
over 85,000 listeners, called the Baskethouse Song-a-Week Challenge “one of
the most innovative uses of the podcast medium.”

After only a month, the podcast was featured in the iTunes Music Store:
under the “New and Notable” section of Music podcasts, as well as in the
“New Release Highlights” section of the main podcast page.

Drew Brody says: “As songwriters, we’re constantly finding a million
excuses to not finish songs and a million more to never let people hear
them. Getting these initial drafts out in the world is not just an exercise
in discipline, but also an exercise in letting go so that we can move
forward in our craft.”

The idea behind the Baskethouse project, says Drew, is “to encourage
songwriting and foster an artistic community. Music shouldn’t be about
competition — the competition is internal.”

The term “Baskethouse” came from the documentary No Direction Home
about Bob Dylan. The free shows in NY’s Greenwich Village during the 60s
and 70s — where a group of songwriters would perform a few songs each and
“pass the basket” to make some cash — were called baskethouses. This
inspired Drew Brody’s Baskethouse at the Bitter End in the summer of 2006,
a weekly show where acoustic artists were showcased, but they had to play a
mixture of covers and originals to pay homage to songwriting influences.
The basket was passed around to cover expenses.

The Song-a-Week Challenge continues in the same free spirit.

Take a listen. You’ll sense the love of music and dedication to
songwriting that all of the artists express.

Brooklyn-based Drew Brody has upcoming shows in D.C. (November 10th,
Staccato) and Chicago (November 24th, Davenport’s).