About the Authors

The Indie Band Survival Guide is the brain child of two bandmates, Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan.

Randy Chertkow

Professionally, Randy Chertkow is an Information Technology specialist with over fourteen years of experience in enterprise-class Fortune 100 companies. He has a Bachelor's in Business Administration in Information Systems from University of Iowa and a Master’s of Science in Computer Science: Data Communications, with a secondary concentration in Artificial Intelligence from DePaul University, where he graduated with distinction. Randy has played music all his life, including jazz, rock, and classical music. His instruments include baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones, flute, Bb and bass clarinet, guitar, bass, and anything else he can get his hands on. He started at the challenging New Trier High School Jazz program and went on to study jazz at Berklee College of music and then completed a Perfect Set course at the Bloom School of Jazz. He writes, records, and performs with Beatnik Turtle as well as performing with theater companies around Chicago. Randy also writes Sci-Fi and fantasy (dreamofanotherworld.com), and about computer topics (effectivemonitoring.com).

Jason Feehan

Professionally, Jason Feehan is a practicing corporate attorney that works for a multinational executive search firm. He plays guitar, keyboards, sings, records, engineers, and produces. He founded Beatnik Turtle in 1997, growing it from a four-piece band into an eight-piece rock machine with a full horn section and a recording studio all its own. Unfettered by a formal music education, he often learned to play instruments as he wrote the music, and used nearly anyone in arms-length who could play or said they could play a musical instrument. He is a very prolific songwriter and has written close to a thousand songs, three of which are actually not too bad.

Beatnik Turtle

The authors' band, Beatnik Turtle, has released over 400 songs within 18 albums. In 2007, they succeeded at the self-imposed challenge of releasing a song for every single day for a year, throughout 2007, at TheSongOfTheDay.com. They have written music for TV shows, commercials, films, podcasts, theater (including Chicago's Second City), and have licensed music to Disney/ABC Family. If you are curious what they sound like, click here.

Interviews

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