Anchorage singer/songwriter Marian Call had a busy day last Thursday: a snowy road trip to Talkeenta to autograph and deliver a stack of 200 CDs to Whole Wheat Radio before zipping back for her presentation on the "Art and Science of Songwriting" at the IgniteAnchorage event in the evening.
Call is an accomplished social media presence and the CD expedition sprang from a promotion for a recent WWR show in Talkeetna. She decided to offer a special edition of live recordings to supporters in the hours surrounding the online concert thinking she'd sell 20. Demand was ten times higher than Call expected, though, and instead she was confronted with a mini album release.
Days later a free lunchtime concert at a UAA reached the opposite extreme.
"It was kind of funny to go from the Whole Wheat Radio gig with hundreds of Internet listeners and raising thousands of dollars and then go to UAA the next Monday and have absolutely nobody listening, in an empty room, playing for $50," she said.
Call is working on a new album, "Something Fierce," which she plans to release in the spring, and has several concerts scheduled in Anchorage and Homer.
"You have to really want to be an Alaskan to stay here and be a musician because the touring is very hard and much more expensive," she said. "It would make so much sense for my career to move down to the Lower 48. I don't want to, though. I just like it here."
Contact Stephen Nowers at stephen_alaskadispatch.com