Wren Hollis · COMPASS Dashboard

Next up

Aug 13, 2026 · 2nd Thursday

Tin Lantern residency night · The home room · East Austin

Sep 11, 2026

"County Line" distributor upload · Master and artwork final Aug 28

Oct 9, 2026 · Friday

"County Line" release · 9 weeks out on the demo calendar

Headline metrics

Monthly listeners

8,400

Total streams

310,000 across both EPs

Shows played

62 self-booked

Wren Hollis

Songwriter · Guitar · Austin, TX

Learned harmony in a Lubbock church pew and songwriting in a Ford Ranger. Two EPs in, self-managed, day job at a print shop, songs written on lunch breaks. Quiet songs with grit under the fingernails.

The COMPASS: C Craft   O Output   M Money   P Presence   A Admin   S Stage   S Scene. The operational source of truth: tasks, budgets, and tracking. The decisions and risks are at the end.

Priorities right now

1. The County Line Rollout · Recorded on 400 dollars · release Oct 9
   The single is tracked. What remains is the unglamorous part: shoot the cover in the alley behind the print shop, get the master and artwork final by Aug 28, upload to the distributor by Sep 11, and run the 9-week campaign without missing a week.
2. The Residency As Engine · Monthly at The Tin Lantern · list growth
   Every residency night feeds the mailing list. The clipboard by the door has outperformed every other tactic. Target: 640 subscribers to 800 by release week.
3. The Long Road Home Tour · Feb 18 - Mar 7, 2027 · 11 dates · TX + NM
   First regional tour, in planning: Austin out and back through San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, smaller rooms between. Routing locks late November, tour announce Dec 4.

Craft

The instrument and the hand. Church-pew harmony instincts, a writing practice with two registers, and a recording approach that treats 400 dollars like a genre choice.

Skills inventory

The two writing registers

Concrete · 60%

Things you can hold. Caliche dust, folding chairs, gas-station coffee. The song names the object and lets the object do the feeling.

Dry · 40%

The joke that's not quite a joke. Deadpan lines that land a beat late. Never mystical, never hustle. If a lyric sounds like a motivational poster, it gets cut.

Production chain

The chain is small on purpose. Sam Ordoñez (invented for this demo) produces and engineers at Corner Room Recording, a converted garage in South Austin, and mixes and masters in-house.

Recording plan

"County Line" was cut mostly live in one long Saturday: guitar and vocal together, brushed drums, pedal steel like heat shimmer, group vocals from whoever was in the room on the last chorus.

The next single gets chosen from the candidate pool after tour routing settles, and gets the same treatment: one day, one room, 400 dollars, no rescue-it-in-the-mix thinking.

Output

The release map: two EPs out, one single on the calendar, and a candidate pool for what comes next. No album talk until the tour is booked.

Catalog · released

"County Line" · 9-week campaign

Candidate pool · next single

Mile Marker 71 · Box Fan Summer · Persimmon Tree · Second Shift · Caliche Reprise · Night Shift Hymn · Heat Shimmer.

The single campaign · 5 phases

Each single runs the same 5-phase campaign. The calendar is the discipline.

1. 1Tease
2. 2Pre-Save
3. 3Release
4. 4Sustain
5. 5Convert

Money

Envelope budgeting across three tiers (Perfect, Good, Minimum), scaled to a self-funded run. The numbers are small because they're real-shaped. Actuals are tracked against these envelopes.

Per-single budget envelopes

Perfect-world envelope, all categories. Self-funded from the day job and the door.

Six-month operating envelopes

Projected inflows

Presence

The brand world: one visual register, four equal-weight fan archetypes, two writing registers, and the lines that carry it all.

Palette

The four fan archetypes · equal weight

The Front-Row Regular

Shows up · brings a friend. Knows the residency schedule better than Wren does. The mailing list exists for this person. Fictional reference lanes: listening-room circuit regulars.

The Craft Listener

Liner notes · vinyl. Values the make of a thing: the take, the room, the brush on the snare. Notices the group vocal is one mic. Fictional reference lanes: tape-warm acoustic playlists.

The Homesick Texan

Left home · kept the accent. Lives in another city now and hears the feed store and the county road in every verse. Fictional reference lanes: expat-Texan and small-town nostalgia rooms.

The Sunday Driver

Everyday warmth · gateway. The widest door in. Wants a song for the drive, not a thesis. "County Line" lives here. Fictional reference lanes: easy-Sunday folk playlists.

The two writing registers

Concrete · 60%

Things you can hold. Caliche dust, folding chairs, gas-station coffee. Objects first, feelings by implication.

Dry · 40%

A beat late on purpose. Deadpan, plainspoken, never mystical, never hustle-culture. Short sentences.

Tagline library

• Songs for the long road home.
• Quiet songs. Grit under the fingernails.
• Harmony from a church pew.
• Written in a Ford Ranger.
• Dust on everything.

KPI baseline · demo calendar, Aug 2026

Admin

The infrastructure beneath the music: registrations, platforms, and the small crew that makes the work happen.

Registration & infrastructure

• Sole proprietorship filed
  Done
• Separate business checking account
  Done
• PRO membership
  Done
• SoundExchange
  Done
• Distributor account
  Done
• Spotify for Artists
  Done
• Apple Music for Artists
  Done
• Mailing list platform + door clipboard
  Done
• Website live
  Done
• MLC registration
  Pending
• Merch print run for release week
  Pending
• Tour insurance quote
  Pending

Team & crew

Confirmed

Wren Hollis

Artist · self-managed

Well Made Plays

Management systems · this dashboard

Sam Ordoñez (invented)

Producer · Engineer · Mix & Master

Dell Hartigan (invented)

Pedal Steel

To be determined

Drums (brushes)

TBD for tour

Tour booking help

TBD · self-booked for now

Merch table volunteer

Usually whoever owes Wren a favor

Stage

Live as the proving ground, built out in stages. Near-term, the duo for listening rooms; later, a trio with brushed drums for The Long Road Home Tour. 62 shows in, all self-booked.

Live build-out

Near-term · The Duo

Voice / guitar + pedal steel. The residency configuration. Quiet enough for a listening room, cheap enough to tour. The "County Line" release show runs this lineup plus friends: Dot Calloway on fiddle, Ruthie on harmony.

Later · The Trio

The Duo + brushed drums. Built out for The Long Road Home Tour. Slightly bigger rooms, same restraint. No band bus fantasies on this budget.

Shows

Signature format

Scene

The map of neighbors and doors: sonic coordinates, amplification targets, and the lanes to pitch. Every name below is invented for this demonstration.

Sonic coordinates · invented references

Anchors

Cotton Row Revival (harmony anchor) · Mabel Crane · The Standpipe Brothers · Ada Lammert

Adjacent

Dry County Strings · The Feed Store Sessions · Panhandle Hymnal. Tape-warm acoustics, brushed drums, pedal steel like heat shimmer.

Amplification targets · all invented

Venue & pitch lanes

The Tin Lantern (invented East Austin listening room): the home-base proving room and the residency host.

Listening-room circuit

For the Front-Row Regular and the Craft Listener. The tour is built on these rooms.

Editorial playlists · alt-country and Americana

"County Line" pitched 4 weeks ahead of release.

Regional press and radio

Hometown-kid angle for Lubbock, new-voice angle for Austin.

Decisions & risk

The decisions ahead with their deadlines, and a watchlist of risks: the guardrails that keep the rollout and the tour plan on course.

Key decisions & deadlines

Risk register · R1 to R6

Wren Hollis · COMPASS Dashboard · Well Made Plays · Dusty Alt-Country. Wren Hollis is a fictional artist we built these examples for. This document is shown at full fidelity. Back to the top.