Here’s the breakdown:

$0.09 from Napster. $0.30 from eMusic. $0.12 from mediaNET. $0.07 from Rhapsody.

Just click on any of the CD covers here for samples of the secret sauce.

Here come the big hitters: $12.74 through Apple iTunes. $4.64 through iTunes-Europe. The balance (too lazy to do the math) came from shrink-wrapped CDs sold through CDBaby.

Woo baby!! And I mean that in all sincerity.

Royalties are a very special category of income, worth much more than the amount deposited at the ATM.

They make you feel all glowy and noble and validated… like a king, even. Hey!… So that’s why they call them…

Never mind.

Royalties are concrete evidence that you’ve created art that is both original AND good. There are others, of course: hearing a young guitar player struggling to recreate your tune at a music jam, or watching little kids dance to your toe-tapper in an open air concert, or hearing grown men sniff back tears at your touching lyrics. In a world where people tend to measure value and success in dollars, such moments are priceless — and probably why it seems perfectly reasonable to tilt at windmills.

An original song, a blog post, a cartoon, a book, a photo… finding and giving voice to an idea is like bearing children: it can be an exhausting, frustrating, incredibly fulfilling and often under-appreciated labor of love that leaves huge stretch marks.

As for Rick’s music, it’s all here…

Enjoy!

He’s the punchline to my Dad’s favorite G-rated joke. Here’s the joke:

Funny Man asks: “Why do little ducks walk so softly?”

Obliging Straight Man answers: “I don’t know. Why DO little ducks walk so softly?”

Funny Man responds: “Because little ducks can’t walk, hardly.”

And by the way, you’d walk funny too if you had one foot that was a square and the other was a triangle. Kind of throws off your rhythm, ya know? I think Rick may have been sick at home with a terrible cold the day they covered how to draw bird feet at Cartoon School.

He also apparently missed a few biology classes along the way. That is most definitely not a duck’s beak, and since when are ducks yellow? He looks more like the runt of a pterodactyl litter than anything that would be served “a l’orange.” But I can’t squawk too loudly on this one.

In the first place, L’il Duck plays an incredibly important role in our cartoon world. He’s most often the voice of reason, the state-er of the obvious, the keen observer of what’s really shaking in any given situation. Plus, he’s consistently drawn, even if he’s somewhat inexplicably conceived of, and he’s cuter ‘n a baby buffalo.

How fabulous is it that Rick took a character that I’ve know since I was old enough to mangle a joke and brought him into living, breathing, and chatty color on the pages of our shared life journal?

He’s the icon, in our world at least, of delightful word play and intelligent fun. We love him dearly and won’t abide one word of ridicule about his beak, color, or pointy little triangle feet, ya hear?

One just casually places the soft pads of one’s fingertips gently on the sweet spots on the neck. The other hand strums and plucks with confidence. Steel laughs and hums into the wooden cave, and then the miracle happens: beautiful ballads, haunting love songs, and soft pink lullabies waft forth.

Not.

The reality is that learning how to play my upright bass activates myriad uncharted neuropathways, all clamoring for personal and immediate attention. What note am I supposed to be playing? What string do I need to find, with both hands committed to completely different tasks? The tender tip of my finger needs to press the thick steel string on to the neck at precisely the right spot, and hit it HARD.

I am to ignore the pain.

Simultaneously, my right hand has its own assignment: damp the previous note, find and play the new one. All this while my short-term memory gropes for the words, and my ears, lungs, and vocal cords strain to croon like Diana Krall, with the whole thing on pitch and in perfect time.

I know it’s possible. I just don’t know if it’s possible without peeing my pants.

I’m seeing glimmers of hope, though. I played a whole song without an error yesterday. (Okay, there are only 2 open-string notes in the bass line of “Sally Goodin,” so technically, you could do it on a set of well-tuned drums, but still….) I can play both the C and G scales in both directions. I figured out both “Frere Jacques” and “Doh! A Deer” by ear.

Rick and I even wrote a song together: Silent Angels. We’re going to perform it, as well as ten other songs, at a Rett Syndrome benefit concert in Teton Valley.

In front of many attentive people.

Just the two of us.

With nowhere to hide.

Excuse me. Gotta pull on the Depends and practice now.