Sublime

We did have a growing fanbase and a hardcore work ethic, though, and I figured that was decent enough collateral to guarantee a few personal loans. I made a short list of people, and then one by one, I asked them:

It has to start with the art. The songs had to touch people initially, and mean something, for anything to work at all. The art, not the artist, is what fundamentally draws the net into being. The net was then tightened and strengthened by a collection of interactions and exchanges I’ve had, personally, whether in live venues or online, with member

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company. Over ten years, it seemed like every time someone raved about how much he loved CD Baby, it was because of one of these little fun human touches.

My own email address was front and center on our website. I emailed back and forth with individual fans daily—about our lives, our gigs, ideas for shows—and often included a few words of den-mother comfort, because much of the fan…

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The entirety of The Dresden Dolls’ travel inventory (electric piano, five-piece drum kit, and a few old suitcases full of costumes and the band T-shirts we sold for $10 each) could be perfectly Tetris’d into the back of my beat-up Volvo station wagon (affectionately dubbed The Vulva). We started driving farther and farther distances from Boston to

We made our first recording for free, thanks to a sound-engineer friend who snuck us into a studio after hours.

Almost every night of the tour, I did a quick busking experiment and played “Creep” by Radiohead, still the only song I knew, in the parking lot or the lobby of the venue, with a hat at my feet. I liked surprising people, and they laughed, applauded, and threw in dollars and change. The collected take from the hat went to the foundation, and there

“The Brigade.