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Oskar’s cool mom, Carolyn Richardson, Has created this increDible system That helps You peel back Layers of insecurity, Sadness, Uncertainty, & tRauma, even. She’s been studying all the Self-help gurus forever, bUt noticed there isn’t a layed-out plan of actIon In anY oF the self-help materials, & iF there is, its usually pretty vague, like, “write down whaT you’re feeling daily”, WithoUt muCh OF a Resolve.  Carolyn has crateD The Juggerknot System — a tactical, PrActical, liFe-changing tool kit. It’s a three-step formula to changing Your persPective daily, or whenever you Commit to using it. Just write it down! Below Are graphics carolyn made of what the formUla looks like & Her formula theory.   She’s also got SuppoRting materials to this ThEory, foRmula, & The Decoder, like the “500-Guage Tactical bullseye Tally Tracker”! this Can help you Get in contact whoever you need to In order to get whAt you need to get to the next level, or even narrow Down Ideas To reach Your goals.  We’ve been using the complete JuggerKnot SystEm for months now, since it’s creation, but these prInciples were taught to all of Carolyn’s childRen as shE was raising them. They all grew up doinG thEse thinGS already. then carolyn realized what she’D been teachinG them all along & Decided to create a definite & thorough formula & toolkit to help others who haven’t been raised in this tHinKing or who simply want to changE their persPective & even their life.  In order to back up her mEthods of proBlem-solving & Executing newly-Taught skIlls, she has Studied The best oF the best in not oNly the self-help industry, but those who Teach of spiritual enlightenment & mental health. From Psychologists to Spiritual & Religious Leaders, Carolyn has listened to hundreds Of sPeeches & ideas about what can change our cIrcumstances as hUman beings & what The correct formula is For actually seeing progress in ouR lives. WHY NOT GIVE IT A SHOT?!For nOw, The JuggerKnot System is free & CarolYn, out of the loving goodness of her Heart, has been meeting with IndiViduals all oveR the Salt Lake Valley & more. She speaks with people prIvately online, Doing 1-on-1 coaching, but really, she’s Just being herself. she actually cares. She actually wants to help. She sees that after So many years oF her life that seemed to be a cascading & violent RIver of Treacherous waters & Seemingly Endless trials, she’s been able to come out on top, every time, & each time, stRonger than Before.  She has helped us tHRough some of the darkeSt nights of The soul. She has a genuine care & empathy for oThers. We will not get into the SuFfocatinG Trials she has had in her life, as those Are her’s To share, but she has been thRougH hell & is more than qualified to Guide You out oF your nightmares of life. the cool thinG is, wiThe The JugGerKnot System, even thouGh she’s More than qualified to help, she’s created a brilliantly simple, Effective solution to your pRoblems that Allows yoU to filter thRough your own issues & find the solution within yourself, like a guided meditation, but 1,000x more potent. the answers to life’s questIons are within us! The JugferKnot System allows you to therefore create new brain PathWays tOward healing & a chanGe of perspectiVe. FOLLOW: |
| Oskar’s been addicted to watching this cool Italian chef on YouTube. His channel’s name is “OrsaraRecipes” & he has the Italian accent we all love to hear. Cooking has become a form of meditation for Oskar, where he can keep his mind busy on something & not worry about the difficult parts of life. Eating the delicious food he makes has kept MY mind off of the difficult parts of life.😂 He loves to cook; I love to eat what he cooks! |  |
We’ve been watching the Edwin Sarkissian YouTube Channel with his BFF Gasparito, which we absolutely LOVE. Their videos have been making us laugh so much, even while being so stressed this last while. They inspired us to not care so much what other people think & make a fun cooking video!
Oskar’s love of cooking has gotten stronger & stronger over the years. He makes gorgeous meals & appetizers from scratch probably 4-5 times a week & always on Sundays. He is, in all seriousness, SO talented at all things cooking. I am not biased, because if something isn’t good I will not eat it. I just can’t. Wasting calories on something gross? What’s the point?! With Oskar’s food I seriously can’t get enough.
This time, we made Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp, & these were SOOOOOOOO good! I mean, anything bacon-related is pretty delicious, but the Pepper Jack Cheese & sided Sweet Peppers in there made it glorious.
Our family’s home is under construction, so the overhead lights are out right now. We just used one phone’s flashlight as the lighting & the other as the camera. We also brightened up the footage!
We hope you noticed the addition of our music in the background of this video! Let us know if you enjoy cooking videos like this!
Oskar’s love of cooking has gotten stronger & stronger over the years. He makes gorgeous meals & appetizers from scratch probably 4-5 times a week & always on Sundays. He is, in all seriousness, SO talented at all things cooking. I am not biased, because if something isn’t good I will not eat it. I just can’t. Wasting calories on something gross? What’s the point?! With Oskar’s food I seriously can’t get enough.
This time, we made Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp, & these were SOOOOOOOO good! I mean, anything bacon-related is pretty delicious, but the Pepper Jack Cheese & sided Sweet Peppers in there made it glorious.
Our family’s home is under construction, so the overhead lights are out right now. We just used one phone’s flashlight as the lighting & the other as the camera. We also brightened up the footage!
We hope you noticed the addition of our music in the background of this video! Let us know if you enjoy cooking videos like this!
Remember to comment on this post so we know you’re listening! |  |
We got a brand new Fender Blues Junior IV Amplifier!
We purchased it from Guitar Czar — a Salt Lake-local shop located in Murray. We also purchased a 2nd identical amp, but it will be available for us to pick up in a few weeks.
The second we got home, we took the amp out & Julia ended up playing guitar on it for over an hour, just loving the way it sounds.
By turning up the volume & turning down the “Master”, you get a nice crunch sound. The louder the Volume & lower the Master, the more distortion you get!
We haven’t wanted to be full Acoustic, because it’s always felt too clean to us. We feel as though the Acoustic Guitars & harmonies in our music make brand new listeners automatically think our music is Country (we get that a lot). We love Country Music. Especially artists like Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, & the like, but we’ve never seen ourselves as Country artists, even when we have a song like “Nowhere” in our repertoire.
Our goal when we first started writing together was to showcase that we can write in every genre. Now, we’re focused less on what other people think of our songwriting ability & more on what we like to write & want to hear.
In fact, on our debut album Wilshire Royale, we desperately wanted our music to get placed in film, so we asked our engineer at the time to make it as commercial as possible for film & TV. Our reaction to that now? “Yikes.”
We feel as though we’ve come to a point in our career where getting Film & TV placements would be absolutely AMAZING, but on our terms, & with music we feel comes from us & not from our filtered, overly-scrubbed-clean idea of what people want to hear in the background of a commercial.
We’ve also been STRUGGLING financially, which doesn’t go hand-in-hand with overly commercialized Pop Music anyway!
Through having absolutely no money & mounting debt for almost a year, we’ve had to be resourceful. We’ve had to think outside the box with our recordings, & get the equipment we were positive would get us closer to “our sound” — what we’re hearing in our heads while writing the song. It is so hard to translate what you’re hearing, how you hear the Mix, & what instruments you hear in the background when you have absolutely no money to create & delegate those writing decisions.
It’s tried us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, & even physically, but we’re still here, in the depths of humility & borderline shame, making music, & holding each other to our promise to each other to continue with our career & not quit when the going gets not only tough, but brutal.
We purchased it from Guitar Czar — a Salt Lake-local shop located in Murray. We also purchased a 2nd identical amp, but it will be available for us to pick up in a few weeks.
The second we got home, we took the amp out & Julia ended up playing guitar on it for over an hour, just loving the way it sounds.
By turning up the volume & turning down the “Master”, you get a nice crunch sound. The louder the Volume & lower the Master, the more distortion you get!
We haven’t wanted to be full Acoustic, because it’s always felt too clean to us. We feel as though the Acoustic Guitars & harmonies in our music make brand new listeners automatically think our music is Country (we get that a lot). We love Country Music. Especially artists like Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, & the like, but we’ve never seen ourselves as Country artists, even when we have a song like “Nowhere” in our repertoire.
Our goal when we first started writing together was to showcase that we can write in every genre. Now, we’re focused less on what other people think of our songwriting ability & more on what we like to write & want to hear.
In fact, on our debut album Wilshire Royale, we desperately wanted our music to get placed in film, so we asked our engineer at the time to make it as commercial as possible for film & TV. Our reaction to that now? “Yikes.”
We feel as though we’ve come to a point in our career where getting Film & TV placements would be absolutely AMAZING, but on our terms, & with music we feel comes from us & not from our filtered, overly-scrubbed-clean idea of what people want to hear in the background of a commercial.
We’ve also been STRUGGLING financially, which doesn’t go hand-in-hand with overly commercialized Pop Music anyway!
Through having absolutely no money & mounting debt for almost a year, we’ve had to be resourceful. We’ve had to think outside the box with our recordings, & get the equipment we were positive would get us closer to “our sound” — what we’re hearing in our heads while writing the song. It is so hard to translate what you’re hearing, how you hear the Mix, & what instruments you hear in the background when you have absolutely no money to create & delegate those writing decisions.
It’s tried us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, & even physically, but we’re still here, in the depths of humility & borderline shame, making music, & holding each other to our promise to each other to continue with our career & not quit when the going gets not only tough, but brutal.
We’ll be posting soon about the equipment we purchased throughout 2020 & what purchases we’re diving into now, in 2021. |  |
While on tour in 2019 in Washington D.C., we were interviewed by Andie Judson, with HeartThreads at the time. It was such a fun experience. A few of the details in the video are slightly off, but otherwise, here is our story!
We both grew up in Salt Lake Valley, lived in The Avenues, attended the same church building, Julia’s family had season tickets to the children’s playhouse that Oskar’s family helped run, & even went to the same Junior High (just barely missed each other, because Julia is 2 grades older than Oskar). Even though we crossed paths so often in our lives, we never knew each other or met until we were fresh into adulthood.
Oskar had just turned 19 & Julia was about to turn 21 in 2014 when they met at Oskar’s band’s show in Draper, Utah. Like a movie moment, the crowd parted, Julia saw Oskar’s cool, slicked back hair & immediately knew it was him.
We had such a blast talking to each other that night, asking about each other’s music & songwriting, our dreams, our likes & dislikes, that we kept in touch & eventually started writing together. Our first song: “Between Us” on our Wilshire Royale album. Kind of funny — we wrote a breakup song before we ever started dating.😂
The video above shares even more fun memories. Enjoy!
We both grew up in Salt Lake Valley, lived in The Avenues, attended the same church building, Julia’s family had season tickets to the children’s playhouse that Oskar’s family helped run, & even went to the same Junior High (just barely missed each other, because Julia is 2 grades older than Oskar). Even though we crossed paths so often in our lives, we never knew each other or met until we were fresh into adulthood.
Oskar had just turned 19 & Julia was about to turn 21 in 2014 when they met at Oskar’s band’s show in Draper, Utah. Like a movie moment, the crowd parted, Julia saw Oskar’s cool, slicked back hair & immediately knew it was him.
We had such a blast talking to each other that night, asking about each other’s music & songwriting, our dreams, our likes & dislikes, that we kept in touch & eventually started writing together. Our first song: “Between Us” on our Wilshire Royale album. Kind of funny — we wrote a breakup song before we ever started dating.😂
The video above shares even more fun memories. Enjoy!
All of these photos are from when we were just friends but three: the picture in the bathroom is the day we told each other that we had feelings for each other; the picture where we’re arm in arm in our apartment is after we decided we wanted to be together & we started to plan to get married!
The third is the photo at the very bottom of this post in black & white. A photographer at one of our shows on tour in Washington D.C. snapped a photo of us dancing backstage!
In the last 10 years alone, the Music Industry has gone almost completely digital with the exception of some CDs still circulating & being sold, & Vinyl being on the rise for nostalgic listeners. This has created Music Streaming giants like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, & now, YouTube Music. With all of this new technology, there’s a lot of room for laws to catch up in regard to artists being taken advantage of.
Streaming becoming the new norm has also created an entire branch of the Music Industry where Independent Artists have a chance at a bigger platform to push their music on Social Media & in using Digital Distribution platforms like TuneCore, DistroKid, & CDBaby while staying independent. More technology for at-home recording is readily available for artists, who subsequently become their own recording engineers in many cases.
The use of file sharing has made it possible for a musician to send their recorded tracks to a Mixing Engineer, receive their Mixdown some time later, & shoot it over to their Mastering Engineer all within a few emails or shares. This is what we’ve done in the past!
Now, Oskar has been our Mixing Engineer AND our Mastering Engineer, all in one! We began our own recording journey with our last six singles, & out of those, Oskar has mixed all of them, & mastered “Hatchet”, “Move Along”, & “Keeper Brown”. He plans to Mix & Master our future recordings, too!
Our path to independence, as artists, has heavily involved learning the legalities & royalty logistics of the Music Business, not just the system of writing & recording music itself.
We’ve discovered the borderline monopolization of the Music Distribution world. Because there are only a few Digital Distributors that allow you to upload your own music & go through the process yourself, artists are strapped to their rules, their overpriced distribution fees & subscriptions, & their extremely poor customer service.
Of course, as always, there are smaller Distributors that are more willing to help artists, however they usually come with a contract or a requirement to also sign to their “label”, they don’t distribute worldwide, or they require you to find your own Publishing Administrator or Royalty Collection.
There are a lot of brick walls in being an Independent Musician. There’s also lot of greed in the Music Industry. Artists seem to collectively, across the arts, be taken advantage of because of our Right-Brain nature.
Oskar & I have identified as more business persons than bleeding-heart artists that don’t know their way around a contract & get taken advantage of. We’re fighting to stay independent. We’re also fighting for the other artists out there that want to be considered Entrepreneurs, not just artists with intellectual property that corporations can pry out of our hands & tell us we’re lucky that we got signed by them, so they can market us & make all the money off of our ideas. No thanks! Let’s leave that to the Recording Artists that work well with having Songwriters write for them — that’s where that scenario works & flourishes.
It seems Singer/Songwriters were mistakenly grouped in with Recording Artists a long time ago out of greed on the Labels’ part.
Publishing companies are also guilty of this, when they offer you a 50/50 Publishing Deal stating you’ll make the Writer’s & Artist’s cut, then re-record your song with a Recording Artist & tweak a few lyrics. Then your Master Recording isn’t even being used & you’re out partial Writer’s Share. Do we sound bitter?😂
After learning about Music Industry contracts by trial & error with the snakes in this industry, we definitely gained a fire under our behinds to change it for the better somehow. That’s what this video is about: wanting to make a change.
We want to make a Digital Distribution platform & a Streaming Platform by Artists, for Artists, NOT FOR PROFIT. We don’t take a cut; the artist gets paid for their work.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we understand that platforms like Spotify, TuneCore, & the like have developed their platforms, pay employees, & have made artists’ reach further while giving them the ability to stay independent. However, in all forms of technology, there’s always innovation, & there’s always a way to do it better. If someone beats us to it, that’s fantastic. The purpose of putting this out there isn’t to patent the idea. If anything, it’s to get this idea circulating that there’s a better way to Stream & Distribute music!
Streaming becoming the new norm has also created an entire branch of the Music Industry where Independent Artists have a chance at a bigger platform to push their music on Social Media & in using Digital Distribution platforms like TuneCore, DistroKid, & CDBaby while staying independent. More technology for at-home recording is readily available for artists, who subsequently become their own recording engineers in many cases.
The use of file sharing has made it possible for a musician to send their recorded tracks to a Mixing Engineer, receive their Mixdown some time later, & shoot it over to their Mastering Engineer all within a few emails or shares. This is what we’ve done in the past!
Now, Oskar has been our Mixing Engineer AND our Mastering Engineer, all in one! We began our own recording journey with our last six singles, & out of those, Oskar has mixed all of them, & mastered “Hatchet”, “Move Along”, & “Keeper Brown”. He plans to Mix & Master our future recordings, too!
Our path to independence, as artists, has heavily involved learning the legalities & royalty logistics of the Music Business, not just the system of writing & recording music itself.
We’ve discovered the borderline monopolization of the Music Distribution world. Because there are only a few Digital Distributors that allow you to upload your own music & go through the process yourself, artists are strapped to their rules, their overpriced distribution fees & subscriptions, & their extremely poor customer service.
Of course, as always, there are smaller Distributors that are more willing to help artists, however they usually come with a contract or a requirement to also sign to their “label”, they don’t distribute worldwide, or they require you to find your own Publishing Administrator or Royalty Collection.
There are a lot of brick walls in being an Independent Musician. There’s also lot of greed in the Music Industry. Artists seem to collectively, across the arts, be taken advantage of because of our Right-Brain nature.
Oskar & I have identified as more business persons than bleeding-heart artists that don’t know their way around a contract & get taken advantage of. We’re fighting to stay independent. We’re also fighting for the other artists out there that want to be considered Entrepreneurs, not just artists with intellectual property that corporations can pry out of our hands & tell us we’re lucky that we got signed by them, so they can market us & make all the money off of our ideas. No thanks! Let’s leave that to the Recording Artists that work well with having Songwriters write for them — that’s where that scenario works & flourishes.
It seems Singer/Songwriters were mistakenly grouped in with Recording Artists a long time ago out of greed on the Labels’ part.
Publishing companies are also guilty of this, when they offer you a 50/50 Publishing Deal stating you’ll make the Writer’s & Artist’s cut, then re-record your song with a Recording Artist & tweak a few lyrics. Then your Master Recording isn’t even being used & you’re out partial Writer’s Share. Do we sound bitter?😂
After learning about Music Industry contracts by trial & error with the snakes in this industry, we definitely gained a fire under our behinds to change it for the better somehow. That’s what this video is about: wanting to make a change.
We want to make a Digital Distribution platform & a Streaming Platform by Artists, for Artists, NOT FOR PROFIT. We don’t take a cut; the artist gets paid for their work.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we understand that platforms like Spotify, TuneCore, & the like have developed their platforms, pay employees, & have made artists’ reach further while giving them the ability to stay independent. However, in all forms of technology, there’s always innovation, & there’s always a way to do it better. If someone beats us to it, that’s fantastic. The purpose of putting this out there isn’t to patent the idea. If anything, it’s to get this idea circulating that there’s a better way to Stream & Distribute music!
Watch the full video to see us shoot a massive rifle & have a blast!💥
Naturally, we went shooting after our Anniversary Dinner & it was SO FUN!!!
We shot an AR15 & an FN SCAR Series rifle something or rather (can’t remember the name)! The big gun made the AR15 look & feel like fairy dust.
Oskar recently got some high-waisted pants from ASOS to try out that 20s/30s/40s style & had his mom, who is an incredible Tailor & Seamstress alter them & give them cuffs at the bottom! They look flawless & he wore them for our Anniversary with his cool double breasted suit jacket we got him for his birthday in November.
We thought Oskar achieved & reached his true form when his double-breasted suit jacket came in the mail, but what we didn’t realize was that his high-waisted dress pants tie it all together! He looks like a 1940s movie star!
One cool thing about Oskar is he doesn’t wait for the perfect moment to do something he wants to do — he does it when he gets the idea.
Oskar noticed that my dad was giving away a lot of nice ties from the past, & had his mom alter them to be thinner ties. This is one of them (in the photos).
We can’t afford tie bars from more expensive stores, so we purchased a pack of these $7 pins. I think it came with 3 or 4!
We can’t just go & spend $ on a lapel pin, so Oskar made one from scratch with some of the leftover tie bar pins & took a flower off a bouquet of fake flowers we bought for very cheap.
He used a pocket square he’s had for years & years, his hat he’s had for years as well, & a dress shirt he’s had for the same.
Oskar always keeps his things nice & takes care of them so that they last. He steams his own shirts with a steamer my brother generously gave us.
Coincidentally, my cool, stylish dad wears the same size shoe as Oskar, so a lot of the time, Oskar inherits really great quality dress shoes from him.
Finally, the jacket. We found this cool app called Rakuten that enables you to make cash back on lots of online & in-store purchases.
We also bought the jacket for Oskar’s birthday, which just so happens to be about the same time as Black Friday, with a coupon, we got it down to basically half off!
I love that Oskar is resourceful, authentic, & inventive.
We have wonderful families who help us, support us, & allow us to explore our style, like this!
We shot an AR15 & an FN SCAR Series rifle something or rather (can’t remember the name)! The big gun made the AR15 look & feel like fairy dust.
Oskar recently got some high-waisted pants from ASOS to try out that 20s/30s/40s style & had his mom, who is an incredible Tailor & Seamstress alter them & give them cuffs at the bottom! They look flawless & he wore them for our Anniversary with his cool double breasted suit jacket we got him for his birthday in November.
We thought Oskar achieved & reached his true form when his double-breasted suit jacket came in the mail, but what we didn’t realize was that his high-waisted dress pants tie it all together! He looks like a 1940s movie star!
One cool thing about Oskar is he doesn’t wait for the perfect moment to do something he wants to do — he does it when he gets the idea.
Oskar noticed that my dad was giving away a lot of nice ties from the past, & had his mom alter them to be thinner ties. This is one of them (in the photos).
We can’t afford tie bars from more expensive stores, so we purchased a pack of these $7 pins. I think it came with 3 or 4!
We can’t just go & spend $ on a lapel pin, so Oskar made one from scratch with some of the leftover tie bar pins & took a flower off a bouquet of fake flowers we bought for very cheap.
He used a pocket square he’s had for years & years, his hat he’s had for years as well, & a dress shirt he’s had for the same.
Oskar always keeps his things nice & takes care of them so that they last. He steams his own shirts with a steamer my brother generously gave us.
Coincidentally, my cool, stylish dad wears the same size shoe as Oskar, so a lot of the time, Oskar inherits really great quality dress shoes from him.
Finally, the jacket. We found this cool app called Rakuten that enables you to make cash back on lots of online & in-store purchases.
We also bought the jacket for Oskar’s birthday, which just so happens to be about the same time as Black Friday, with a coupon, we got it down to basically half off!
I love that Oskar is resourceful, authentic, & inventive.
We have wonderful families who help us, support us, & allow us to explore our style, like this!
We used to buy wholesale clothing, drop it off to a local screen printing business, and ship out our merch ourselves. We love supporting local businesses & always will, we just don’t have the money to keep a tangible inventory right now. Luckily, with redbubble.com, we were able to generate merchandise designs all online & RedBubble prints & ships the merchandise to our customers! This is awesome for us right now, in our current situation!
We’ve got two different “lines“ of merch right now — our business logo & our album artwork logo. There are T-shirts, hoodies, leggings, long-sleeve shirts, stickers, mugs, water bottles, blankets, bedding, backpacks, duffel bags, magnets — you name it!
We are just so thankful to companies like RedBubble that value artists & are trying to help. 2020 was so hard. It’s nice to have at least SOMETHING work!
We’ve got two different “lines“ of merch right now — our business logo & our album artwork logo. There are T-shirts, hoodies, leggings, long-sleeve shirts, stickers, mugs, water bottles, blankets, bedding, backpacks, duffel bags, magnets — you name it!
We are just so thankful to companies like RedBubble that value artists & are trying to help. 2020 was so hard. It’s nice to have at least SOMETHING work!
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