A Grateful Departure

Hi everyone, it’s Arthur Hatton here.  It has been around three and a half years since I created Linescratchers, and as many of you may have noticed, our productive output has decreased over the last year or so.  This is directly attributable to the fact that I’ve had my first kid (he’s one year old now), and started graduate school.  Those two things have really taken away my energy to micro-manage things and make time in my schedule to talk with artists, listen to new music, and go to concerts.  Our fundraiser was an attempt at providing the incentive necessary to take Linescratchers to the next level, but it was not successful enough to really meet our minimum goals to do so (though we will have plenty of money for web hosting bills for the indefinite future).  I have given this decision a lot of thought and have decided that, in order to make room in my life for graduate school and research, being a father, and new blogging interests, I’m regretfully going to have to step down as the in-charge person at Linescratchers.

This was not an easy decision to make.  In a lot of ways I feel like I’m giving up a baby for adoption.  However, I also know that I’m a perfectionist, and I get very dissatisfied with myself if I do things half-way.  Either I do them right or I don’t do them at all.

However, I also did not want to just shut Linescratchers down.  So we have worked out a new system whereby contributors will still post articles, interviews, and reviews, without me telling them what to do.  On our Staff page I will compile a list of active contributors along with the styles of music they specialize in.  If there are any new artists who wish to be featured on Linescratchers, you can contact the contributors directly.  Expect lots of great new content over the next months (and hopefully years).  Don’t go away!  It’s just that I won’t be directly involved anymore.

One thing I just want to say here is that, in my mind, I consider Linescratchers an unqualified, total success.  When I created Linescratchers, I had reasons for doing it, and goals that I wanted to achieve.  Some of them were more abstract, like that I wanted to create a safe place for LDS artists to be able to really express themselves.  Some were more concrete – I wanted to interview Alan Sparhawk.  Along the way I’ve met some amazing artists, writers, fans, and people, and seen some amazing musicians live.  I was even able to create a couple dozen podcasts, some of which were great interviews of some amazing musicians.  I love Linescratchers and I really hope that it continues long years into the future.

If you are interested in what I’m doing nowadays, you might have noticed that I was recently interviewed about an album I just released, Odes.  I have also started a personal blog that I have been using to record my thoughts about my personal musical journey and other random things, and if you’re interested in following me there, I promise to try and entertain you as best as I can.  If you want to follow me in my music, you can find me at my Facebook fan page or on Reverbnation.  I am also involved with a psychology of religion blog called The Value of Saintliness, related to my graduate studies.

The thing I want to express most here is my gratitude.  I am so thankful to each of you – each contributor, each artist that really believed in us, each fan who follows us, each listener of the podcast, every family member that offered support, and every person that donated to the fundraiser.  You’ve all made this wonderful site possible and I wish I could just shake your hands individually.

You’ll still see me lurking around Linescratchers, and hopefully posting every now and then, and I will still be happy to answer questions or press inquiries about the site, I just won’t be pulling the puppet strings anymore.  To get in touch with me personally, please email me at arthur@linescratchers.com.