I'm coming back! And...sorry.

Hello everyone!

It's been a long time.

First off I want to apologize. I stopped posting to and moderating this Patreon page, along with my youtube channel, earlier this year. The stop was abrupt and I didn't warn anyone or post about it at all. I've felt absolutely terrible about how I did this, but I did it for my own mental health. At the time Covid was really affecting me emotionally to the point where I felt physically sick when I even looked at my bass. This really sucked. It's an extremely complicated combination of emotions that I'm honestly still trying to sift through and completely understand, even now many months later, but suffice it to say I absolutely needed to cut myself off from all of this stuff in order to figure it out and get back on track.

Now, that's my deal, but I am SO aware of how annoying/unfair/sad that may have been for you, who have pledged to support me, and are also looking for PDFs, etc, from my page, as it promises. So again, while I know I did this for me and know that it's absolutely what I needed to do at the time, I'm really really sorry for the inconvenience and mystery that it must have caused for you, especially for new members who signed up during the time when I wasn't responding/granting access to any of the features of the page. Again I truly apologize to you all.

The good news is that I'm coming back now :D

Over the next week, I'm going to be working through all (there are literally hundreds) of messages that you've sent, and responding. I will also be adding all of you to my dropbox so that you can (finally) have your PDFs that some of you have been waiting months and months for (I'll probably remove everyone entirely and just mass add the current list of members (let me know if you find yourself removed and not added back. I know some of you use different email addresses for Patreon and for dropbox so this will happen to you - I'll sort you - just message me with your proper dropbox email).  AND, fair warning, I will hopefully be uploading my first YouTube video back, in a month or so. I say fair warning because this will mean, as I upload to youtube, you will begin to be charged your pledge amount when I post. So, if any of you are disenfranchised and want out, but have been hanging around, this is your warning! Thanks for giving me a shot and sorry I wasn't around when you did. For those of you who are here for the benefits but also to support me, I'm grateful more than I can explain, especially for sticking with me while I fixed myself and wasn't talking about it. It wasn't just me - it took family and friends too - but I think I'm finally in a place where I can do this again, and I'm really happy about that. Thank you so much for all the kind messages while I had disappeared - I did see some of them and they really mean so much. Kindness goes a really long way. Thank you.

I'll be making some changes around here too, in the near future.

The vast majority of you are $2 members, and for you nothing will change. But, for you $4 members, I'm going to be changing that tier's rewards. The $4 extra videos were never taking off - I got around 1-4 views on them, and they were taking me hours and hours and stressing me out quite a lot, especially when I got behind. Instead, I'm going to be starting a Discord server, the details of which I'll talk about in another post. Cole's notes are that ALL Patrons will have a special banner upon entry (and maybe some special privileges, TBD), and $4 patrons will have a special room that I'll frequent as well for more 1-on-1 time. I feel like this will be a great way for the community to come back together, and we can all hang and talk bass and life during Covid, and hopes for the future, etc.

I should end by saying that I really hope all of you are well. Covid has affected me a great deal, and I'm sure it has for many of you as well. I hope for your health and happiness and the same for your families.

All the best and please bear with me while I start this up again! Again, new bass cover, coming probably late November.

<3

BennyTheBassman

EDIT - 10 minutes later - ok - so dropbox has a limit of how many people can be added per day! It seems to be around 60. This'll take me around a week to add everyone back. Stand by, and thank you for your patience!! I'll send another message to everyone once I've been able to get through all the emails.