Artist Touring To Promote Literacy App

I'm putting the booking of my 2018 tour into the hands of a brand new intern. Lord help me.

Better yet, y'all help this intern. His email is intern@bandturo.com. Use the subject something like "Requesting Martin Gawlak." This will be maybe my eighth or ninth tour since beginning to travel my act in 2011 when I performed up and down and across the state of Florida. This would turn into a fascination with finding the best pockets of independent music communities in the country that is now--somehow--the basis of my professional career.

Ready For The Kicker?

Instead of an album, this tour will be promoting my new Alexa skill. It's called Chapter One, and is designed to help get children and adults more into reading and literature.

For the last two years, I've been volunteering with a program through United Way called "Reading Pals" where adults team up with a child every semester to help mentor them and improve their reading skills. What I've found, and what's always been in my gut even before I could recognize it, is that reading and learning isn't about how good you are at reading and learning. It's about how you're taught.

Everyone is so different, that trying to come up with one curriculum for, even just, 20 unique humans is insanely counter-intuitive. Honestly, I don't even really think there should be a "correct" spelling of words.

About The Flash Briefing Skill - "Chapter One"

In the Chapter One flash briefing, we read the first chapter of a new book every day so you or your daughter or your son or your husband can listen and see if they're interested in picking that book up and getting all the way into it. Since this app is audio, you can easily listen while you're getting dressed in the morning, undressed for bed, or helping your parent set the table for dinner. Even if we mess up while reading it to you, we just fix it and keep going. Nobody's perfect.

This skill is a qualifier in the Amazon Alexa Developer February Promotion Program, and is on pace to earn this month's publisher reward.

My tour this year will be to promote this app that encourages reading--or at least in some way ingesting--great, smart works that stand the test of time. Some things don't even last four years! But these works of art have already been around for decades. And I know that this world needs more ways to engage and encourage children rather than pressuring them. Same with teenagers. Same with adults.

I most definitely want to come back to these places: San Marcos, Vero Beach, Panama City, St. Augustine, Tuscaloosa, Jackson, anywhere in Montana, anywhere in Wisconsin, West Virginia.

I'm super interested in playing more in Ohio or the Chicago tri-state. If we can swing it, I'd like to do a run through the southwest but would need some solid dates early to get us looking that way.

More Info About The Artist Engagements

I also do pretty good lectures on music business and ecosystems, so if you don't have a venue but have a living room I'm more than down to bring some people together and teach some of the stuff we've been learning on the front lines. If you want we could even do both, either on separate nights or the same night. I will literally come to any city for a couple bucks if it means I can help teach artists things that will help them.

If you play music, teach a class, promote shows, or work at a venue anywhere in the continental United States, I would be very grateful for the opportunity to come share my content if it means helping promote this app that I hope will help a few people feel better about literature.

Please help Tom the intern intern@bandturo.com by sending him an email and letting him know you're interested in doing something with me this summer. Also, tag and share away if you know someone that might be interested in helping.