When I decided to remaster and re-release “Bottom,” it was the first time I’d released an album in, uh, about a couple of decades. Back in those innocent days, I didn’t have a structured way of thinking about how to approach an album release, or what to expect from it. One just sort of hoped that each release would be The One That Makes Us Rich.

This time, being the tempered and thoughtful adult that I am, I actually did some cogitating in advance about my goals for the release.

I mean, goal number one, obviously, was just to make the music available to people who wanted to listen to it. And maybe to make myself feel good about having more music on the wires!

But beyond that… what? What would I consider a really successful launch?

To be honest I was not trying to be super-ambitious. The larger goal definitely wouldn’t be to match the sales for Taylor Swift’s latest album, or to top the Billboard charts, or to sell out Madison Square Garden for a DLF reunion tour; I believe the technical music industry term for those is “daydreams.”

And I can be realistic here: “Bottom” is, I think, a very good album, but it’s also a 25-year-old bootleg recording of a band that’s not together anymore. So I approached this question with some humility.

I thought of basically three things I wanted.

First, to reach new fans for Dog Legs & Feet. When “Bottom” came out on CD back in 1999, there was a small but enthusiastic core group of fans who bought and listened to it. Obviously it would be great if the online version of the album could reach beyond that original group and endear DLF to a new generation of fans. I didn’t have a specific target number in mind, but I feel like doubling our listener base would be a modest-yet-satisfying achievement.

Second, to connect listeners to my other ongoing Jerome Freely projects. I wanted to find a way to let people know that, if they like this music, there’s more where it came from, and I’m making new music all the time!

And third, to test out the machinery of indie-music-album-release-and-promotion that exists here in 2023, and see if I couldn’t learn something about how it works. I basically wanted to make a Lessons Learned guide for myself to use for future album releases.

So in my approach to releasing the album, I’ve tried to keep these three things in mind and not worry too much about other possible metrics of success (like, for example, making money).

In future blog posts I’ll delve a little bit into how things are going on each of those three fronts.