Plainly and simply… I will miss the island.

Not every day on the island is a sun-drenched beach party. Some days it’s moist. Very moist.

Everyone’s favorite lifeblogger iJustine loves me… at least enough to drop one of my tunes into her latest video. And she loves me enough to ask for permission first (like I’m going to tell her no?). Hence, I love iJustine too.

And, of course, everyone loves ice cream (everyone at Pixar, anyway).

If you like the song, by the way, you can buy it (and the rest of the album) right here!

I just got this email (and permission to post it) from friend & fan Bryce Moore:

A little funny to brighten your day…

Last night when we got home, I couldn’t get the garage door open. We’ve just been hammered with snow and ice this winter, and the garage door had finally frozen shut.

I parked the car, got out and grabbed the hand crank to manually open the garage. In the process the crank slipped and I opened a small gash in my right hand.

After I finally got the damn thing opened, I get back in the car nursing my hand. From the back seat my youngest daughter pipes up with…

“You should have stuck to the robots…”

Music lyrics quoted back to me in attitude from a six year old! I didn’t know whether to laugh or kill her. This may not be your fault, but I need someone to blame.

Take care, mate…
–
Bryce Moore
abiteofsanity.com
sufferingfromsanity.com

This is why I do what I do.

I was self-employed for 365 consecutive days in 2007. As a result, I hugged my parents and grandparents more often than I had for the previous two years. I found out I’m going to be an uncle sometime in 2008.

I released a new album in 2007 that paid for itself from the pre-orders alone. Fans in Germany, the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, and the US have already bought copies. My fans released another album on my behalf seven months earlier. They also launched their own website at matthewebel.net and created their own music videos.

I discovered UStream, Second Life, and Twitter in 2007. Half my fan base has never seen me perform in person, and most of that half thinks I’m a bird. UStream.tv put my face and my music in front of viewers around the globe. Twitter has found me beds to sleep in, gathered crowds for badly publicized gigs, solved technological mishaps, and made working alone a lot less lonely.

I visited Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Tennessee, New York, and New Jersey all in the name of the music business. More travel than I saw in the previous five years.

Touring has paid my bills in 2007. So has Coca-Cola, the Mommycast, crayon, Porter Novelli, Justin Kownacki, Joseph Jaffe, The US Postal Service, The Podcast & New Media Expo, Jeff Pulver, and a whole lot of music fans.

Chase Home Finance paid my bills for two and a half months in 2007, even though I wasn’t working there anymore.

I got my first mutual fund, my first IRA, my first business bank accounts, my own health insurance, and printed my first business checks with those useless stubs for people’s records.

Or, to summarize, 2008 is going to have a damn difficult time outclassing 2007.

Every day Google sends me an update as to which blogs are talking about me. This morning I came across a review that made my day. Here’s a clip:

Ebel accomplishes something far more impressive: the songs, though catchy and great in isolation, are even more strong when listened to as a cohesive album… There are reprises, melody replications (where they makes sense), and the layout of the tracks was undoubtedly intentional.
YouMakeMedia.com

This was also posted on the album’s page in the iTunes Music Store. Very cool!

If you remember Beer & Coffee’s release, you’re probably as surprised as I am that Goodbye Planet Earth made it to the Music Store in less than a month.

Well, it’s there! And it’s only $9.99 for the whole album. Granted, if you want high-quality DRM-Free tracks, you’ll need to get it from CD Baby or MySpace, and that’s only $12.99. But if you’re dying to get your copy of the new album from iTunes, it’s there!

And please leave a review on iTunes if you’ve already heard the album! Just CLICK HERE to go straight to the iTunes Music Store.