I've spent a bit of time over the past week relearning an arrangement of "A Christmas Song" by William G. Leavitt. According to the date on the music, Mr. Leavitt created this particular arrangement for guitar in December 1966. Mr. Leavitt was also the creator of the first curriculum for Berklee College of Music's guitar department. I received this arrangement from Charles H. Chapman when I was studying at Berklee. Charlie is an incredible teacher and player and he had a profound effect on me as a student.

It's been many, many years since I've played music like this and it was incredibly refreshing and rewarding. Maybe I'll spend a bit more time in this field of study. Maybe not. Regardless, I truly enjoyed relearning this tune and I'm happy to be able to share it with you. If you like it, please pass it along to your friends and family.

If the player in this post isn't appearing, you can get to this download by clicking here.

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday and I'll see you in the new year!!

It's hot & we love you. Here's MATM's Super Special Summer Sampler. Download, Listen, Share, Repeat. Oh yeah, follow us on Twitter too!

The incredibly kind folks over at You Crazy Dreamers did a great post about my EP The Complex Wooden Heart EP. You should definitely take the time to poke around their blog! Really great stuff! Here's a link! Monday after Bonnaroo. Hence the short post. See ya soon!

Happy Friday! So when I'm not out making a racket in some club, I'm running a little record label called Me and the Machine Records. I was recently asked to be on The Billy Block Show where Billy and I discussed Twitter and other social media elements as they relate to the record industry. Check it out if you get a minute!

On an utterly unrelated note, per the gentle coercion of Andrew Dolfie of The New Whole Usuals, I might make a jazz record. I've started demoing/writing some stuff and I thought I'd share my first half-baked number with ya. I'm curious to know what y'all think so please feel free to shoot me some feedback. Here's the mp3 for your listening pleasure (right-click on the link below to download it):

:: Josh Preston - "lower case j" ::

Have an awesome weekend everybody and I'll see ya again sooner that you'd probably prefer!!

I'm spending much more time writing these days so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share what I've been working on. Over time, these words may find themselves in my songs but until then, they'll live here as a collection of written works. One day, I hope to compile these into a poetry book of sorts but we'll cross that bridge once it's on fire.

Now that formal introductions of this new endeavor are out of the way, I'm playing my last show for awhile this weekend at Ugly Mugs (6pm, free) in East Nashville. It's a great little room and I hope to see you there!

:: Words and No Music ::

In a sleepy haze in the wee hours of the morning on Monday (3/9/09), I began pondering the idea of giving my music away for free. So after careful consideration the next day, I changed the status in all of my bandcamp.com players (if you haven't heard about bandcamp.com, check them out. They're the closest thing to the future of music distribution I've seen to date) and took the plunge. At this very moment, many of you are probably thinking I'm crazy. Many of you are probably correct but not for this action alone.

It comes down to this: I've composed these songs so people could hear them and hopefully enjoy them. I've been in the music business going on ten years now as both a performer and as an entrepreneur so I've seen almost everything there is to see on both sides of the fence. Free music just seems to be the next logical step in the evolution of the business for singer/songwriters like me that are a self-contained diy operation. I'm intrigued by the ideas that are beginning to swirl around via folks like Chris Anderson and these ideas are only going to be more finely tuned in the coming months; especially in light of the current economic climate. While it's certainly not for everyone, "going free" just makes sense for me right now.

Some of you may feel as though I'm devaluing my catalog. I view my decision as being the contrary. If people can't easily discover and share these songs, then they would have no value to me anyway. I've never gotten rich from the music I create and I never will. That's not why I do this anyway. I do it because I truly love writing and performing and making people think when the chance arises.

To date, I've made my records in my house with very little overhead. I'd much prefer that, if you like what you hear, come to a show and buy a t-shirt and say hello. Hell, if you want a CD, I'll still sell you one because those cost me money to manufacture. I put stuff on CD as a convenience more than anything. If you're completely and utterly freaked out by this and feel the need to pay for my music online, I'll probably attach a PayPal "donate" button in the music section of my website down the road.

In wrapping up this little diatribe, I do want to stress that my decision to make my own music free online has no bearing on Me and the Machine Records or the artists other than myself on this label. The artists on Me and the Machine Records are creating music that they're passionate about and there are expenses involved in the creation and distribution of their art. If for my next record, I go into a studio I need to pay for, I'll re-evaluate my need to charge something for whatever it is I create in that environment. We'll cross that bridge if/when we get there.

If you've ever had the urge to buy one of my songs (or have this urge moving forward), download my music for free from my website and then please consider purchasing music from another Me and the Machine artist. If you have any questions that I haven't addressed here, certainly feel free to follow me on Twitter and I'll be more than happy to continue this conversation. Thanks to everyone that is reading this right now for your continued support and I hope to see you again soon!!

I finally recorded a new song I've been working on for a week or so this evening called "Stretlights". You can download it free via the bandcamp player in this post. There are a bunch of other free songs in this player as well so go nuts. I decided to post the song using this player so that way, you can pick the type of file you'd prefer. Enjoy!!