Dan McAvinchey

In my opinion, having a booking agent is more important than any other traditional aspect. Independent artists need to take their music to the people and having more opportunities to perform live is paramount.

I`ve just released my seventh instrumental album, which is now available on all web platforms, as are my six previous releases.

This time I tried a crowdfunding approach and was able to finance a significant part of the production costs through pre-orders placed through the respective campaign.

I'm trying do more to get the music exposure and the radio airplay is doing that for me, since I get listeners from every country in the world.

I hear themes in my mind and somehow it goes on paper. Some songs on "Untold Stories" took years to get written and recorded.

But there is a risk with being an independent musician, and that is that you get so lost in your own freedom that you end up with a career that isn`t going anywhere.

I love creating things, so putting my project together myself, while it was a lot of work, was very rewarding and also a good learning experience.

Knowing I would fund the project myself, I felt that I would demonstrate more credibility to labels and other industry heavy-weights by investing in myself prior to asking them to invest.

The music I write and record under my own name is just the kind of music I`d like to listen to and therefore has no commercial consideration whatsoever, which means it`s a bonus if other people like it!

The main reason I started to play the guitar was Randy Rhoads. He had the biggest influence on me and my playing. When I first listened to him I couldn`t believe what I`d heard.

My favorite bands were AC/DC, Motorhead, The Stray Cats, The Sex Pistols and so on, so mainly hard rock, heavy metal, punk rock, and rockabilly/psychobilly stuff.

When I started playing guitar I was very fortunate to have all the great guitar players in the prime of their career to look to for inspiration.