Wren Hollis is not a real person. Well Made Plays invented this artist so we can show a complete deliverable at full size, with nothing blurred out, without putting a real client's career on the internet. The structure, the depth and the level of detail are exactly what you would receive. The name, the songs, the venues and the numbers are made up.
Wren has a day job at a print shop and this plan respects it. The content budget is one hour on weekdays, one afternoon a month. Anything the plan asks for that does not fit inside that box gets cut from the plan, not from Wren's sleep.
A 400-dollar single, a phone on a tripod, a truck with a tape deck. Do not hide the seams; they are the story. Nobody roots for an artist pretending to have a label. Plenty of people root for one writing verses on the paper cutter at lunch.
One capture afternoon a month produces three to four weeks of posts. Kitchen demos, dashboard harmonies, caliche-road drives at golden hour, postcard stills. Weekdays are for posting what already exists, not for making new things at 11pm.
640 mailing-list subscribers beat any algorithm. Every campaign moment reaches the list before it reaches a platform. Social media is the front porch; the list is the kitchen table. Grow it toward 1,000 by tour time, one honest letter a month.
Build a posting habit that survives a 40-hour work week, and spend nine weeks making County Line feel inevitable before it exists. Nothing in this phase requires money. It requires a phone, the print shop at lunch, the Tin Lantern on residency nights, and the discipline to post three times a week whether or not anyone claps.
| Platform | Runway (Aug) | Final 4 Weeks (Sep) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 posts/wk | 4 posts/wk | Reels lead, one carousel a week, grid stays sparse and warm | |
| TikTok | 2–3 posts/wk | 3–4 posts/wk | Same clips, rougher cuts, the lunch-break verses live here |
| YouTube | 1 every 2 wks | 1/wk | Tin Lantern takes and kitchen demos, full length |
| Bandcamp | quiet | quiet | Wakes up on release day |
| Mailing list | 1 letter/mo | 1 letter + pre-save note | Plain text, one story, one ask |
| Stories | 3–4/wk | near-daily | Print shop scraps, soundcheck, dog at the venue |
| Date | Milestone | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 9 | Capture Sunday #1: kitchen demos, dashboard run, caliche drive at golden hour | Wren |
| Aug 13 | Tin Lantern residency night; Marisol records the board, one song filmed clean | Wren Favors |
| Aug 20 | First County Line lyric fragment posts; nobody is told what it is yet | Wren |
| Aug 28 | August letter to the list: the story of writing County Line in the Ranger | Wren |
| Sep 6 | Capture Sunday #2: County Line cover art stills, pew harmony takes | Wren WMP |
| Sep 10 | Tin Lantern residency night; County Line played live for the first time, filmed | Wren |
| Sep 18 | Pre-save live. Announcement reel, letter to the list, cover art revealed | WMP |
| Sep 30 | Runway review: what pulled, what sat there. Set release-week queue | WMP |
Land County Line, throw Yard Sale Gospel a first birthday, and announce the tour. Three moments, one per month, each sized so a person with a day job can do it well instead of doing all three badly at once. October is loud, November is warm, December is a promise.
| Date | Milestone | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 8 | Tin Lantern residency, the night before the single drops. County Line played live one last time; filmed from the board and the back row | Wren Favors |
| Oct 9 | COUNTY LINE OUT. List letter at 8am, announcement reel at noon, Bandcamp live with liner notes | Wren WMP |
| Oct 16 | The budget post: where 400 dollars actually went, line by line | Wren |
| Nov 1 | Capture Sunday #4: anniversary content, yard sale signage made on the shop risograph | Wren |
| Nov 14 | YARD SALE GOSPEL TURNS ONE. Live take out, yard sale pop-up show in the front yard, letter to the list | Wren |
| Late Nov | Tour routing locked: 11 rooms, Texas triangle plus New Mexico | WMP |
| Dec 2 | Tour announce goes to the mailing list, two days early | Wren |
| Dec 4 | TOUR ANNOUNCE PUBLIC. Poster (risograph, naturally), dates reel, ticket links live | WMP |
| Dec 19 | Year-end letter: 62 shows and counting, what year one of this plan felt like | Wren |
Take the songs to the rooms. Night Shift Hymn opens the year with a six-week runway, the tour runs late February into March, and Heat Shimmer lands while the road stories are still fresh. The tour itself is the content engine for the whole half: 11 nights, each producing a clip, a photo set, and a story. When it ends, the plan has a year of proof and the next EP has a waiting audience.
| Date | Milestone | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 15 | NIGHT SHIFT HYMN OUT. Release show at the Tin Lantern | Wren WMP |
| Feb 7 | Tour prep capture Sunday: merch table, Ranger loaded, route map on the fridge | Wren |
| Feb 18 | Tour opens. Nightly clip protocol begins | Wren |
| Feb 27 | Mid-tour letter to the list, written in the cab of the Ranger | Wren |
| Mar 7 | Tour closes back home in Austin. Final night filmed properly | Wren Favors |
| Mar 26 | RANGER RADIO OUT, three weeks after the last date, tour footage as the campaign | WMP |
| April | Scheduled rest. Queue runs on banked content only | WMP |
| May – Jun | Year review, EP #3 writing clips, plan v2 drafted | WMP |
Each campaign follows a 3-phase arc: runway, release week, sustain. The arcs are sized for one person with a day job. Specific captions and shot lists get written per campaign as each one approaches; the blueprints below are the load-bearing structure.
The flagship. A 400-dollar single with a nine-week runway, which is longer than most label singles get. The extra time is the whole strategy: when the budget is small the calendar is the budget. By release day the audience should know the Ranger, the print shop, and one line of the chorus by heart.
| Phase | Timing | Content Focus | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runway | 9 wks before drop | Lunch Break Verses from the print shop, Caliche Reels with single lyric lines, Tin Lantern takes, the writing-in-the-Ranger story, cover art reveal, pre-save push in the final two weeks. | IG 3–4/wk, TT 2–4/wk, YT 1/1–2wk, 2 letters |
| Release Week | Drop ± 3 days | List letter first. Announcement reel, Bandcamp live with liner notes, full Tin Lantern release-show take, dashboard harmony clip using the real track, thank-you story thread. | IG 5/wk, TT daily, YT full take, Stories daily |
| Sustain | 4 wks post | The budget breakdown post, harmony stack breakdown, live takes, listener reposts, quiet bridge into the anniversary campaign. | IG 3/wk, TT 2–3/wk, YT 1/2wk |
An anniversary is a release that costs nothing. The 6-song EP gets a birthday: one live take from the residency, one letter about what year one taught, and an actual yard sale in the front yard with a 20-minute set from a folding chair. Neighbors welcome. Merch table is a card table.
Eleven dates, the Texas triangle plus New Mexico, late February into March. The announce is a campaign of its own: the list hears it December 2, the public December 4. The poster is a risograph print. The reel is a map, a truck, and a list of towns. Tickets move on trust built all year.
Single #2, written on closing shifts. Same playbook as County Line with the runway compressed to six weeks, because now the formats exist and the audience knows the world. Stacked pew harmonies front and center. The release show is the January residency night, ten days before tour rehearsals begin.
The tour is a three-week capture day. The nightly protocol is deliberately small so it survives night six: one song filmed from the board or the back row, one postcard carousel per town, door and merch tallies in the notebook. Everything else is gravy. The mid-tour letter gets written wherever the coffee is worst.
Single #3, three weeks after the last date. The campaign is already shot: eleven towns of footage, a truck full of stories, a chorus people heard live before they could stream it. This is the release that closes the loop and points at EP #3.
Not a release, but the spine of the whole plan. One night a month at the East Austin listening room: a guaranteed stage, a guaranteed live take, a guaranteed room of 40 people who chose to be there. Every campaign above borrows footage, audio, or an audience from this room.
Each month runs on one capture Sunday, one residency night, and a queue of scheduled posts. Weekdays are for posting and replying, not producing. Click month headers to expand or collapse.
The foundation month. Capture Sunday #1 banks the first month of posts; the residency night banks the first live take. County Line starts leaking out in fragments after the 20th. Nothing here costs money.
Three hours, four setups: kitchen table demos (two songs), dashboard harmony run in the Ranger, caliche-road drive at golden hour for reel backgrounds, postcard stills of the parlor guitar and the folding chairs. Enough raw material for four weeks.
Also this week: set up the free scheduling queue, one folder per format in cloud storage, captions drafted in the notes app on the bus.
| Day | Platform | Content Type | Description | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | TikTok | Lunch Break Verse | 60 seconds at the print shop: humming a line over the sound of the risograph | Wren |
| Tue | IG | Caliche Reel | One lyric line as text over dust-road footage. No context. Let them wonder | Wren |
| Wed | Nothing posts. Wren has a job. | |||
| Thu | IG | Reel or Tin Lantern clip | Residency week: the live take. Other weeks: dashboard harmony or kitchen demo | Wren |
| Fri | TikTok | Cross-post | Thursday's clip, rougher cut, captioned in plain talk | WMP |
| Sat | Stories only: merch table, coffee, whatever the day offers | |||
| Sun | IG | Postcard Carousel | 5–7 stills: folding chairs, gas-station coffee, the guitar. Grid anchor | Wren |
This shape repeats all year. Campaign weeks add volume on top; they never replace the base rhythm.
The runway steepens. Capture Sunday #2 shoots the cover art and the pew harmonies. County Line gets played live for the first time at the September residency, on camera. Pre-save opens the 18th.
The loudest month of the plan, which for a solo act with a day job means five posts a week instead of three, and one very good party at the Tin Lantern.
| Day | Content | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 8 | Residency, the night before. County Line played live one last time, filmed from the board and the back row. Best take posts within 48 hours. | YT, IG, TT |
| Oct 9 | List letter at 8am. Announcement reel at noon. Bandcamp live with liner notes. Dashboard clip with the real track at 6pm. | All of them |
| Oct 10 | Thank-you stories, listener reposts, the cover art story carousel. | IG, TT, Stories |
There is no team. There is Wren, a plan, and a short list of people who owe or trade favors. The roles below exist so the work has owners, not so anyone gets a title. Posting is scheduled and automated; nobody posts live at midnight.
The whole plan runs on about five hours a week plus one Sunday afternoon a month. If a week needs more than this, the week is wrong, not Wren.
| Activity | When | Who | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content goes live (automated) | Per schedule | The queue | 0 min |
| Replies and comments | Lunch break + evening | Wren | 20 min/day |
| Stories from daily life | Whenever they happen | Wren | 5 min/day |
| Edit session from templates | 1 evening/wk | WMP or Wren | 90 min |
| Captions + scheduling | Sunday evening | Wren | 45 min |
| Numbers check | First Tuesday/mo | WMP | 30 min |
| Capture Sunday | 1x/month | Wren | 3 hrs |
| Residency night | 2nd Thursday/mo | Wren Favors | Already happening |
Eight repeatable formats. Each has a fixed capture and edit recipe so making one takes minutes, not evenings. The audience sees a life; Wren sees a system. Example captions are written in Wren's voice and are safe to reuse as patterns.
Wren at the print shop, humming or half-singing a line over the rhythm of the machines. Work shirt on. This is the format that carries the whole identity: songs written on lunch breaks by a person you might know. Example caption: "Wrote this between two banner orders. The risograph keeps better time than I do."
Capture: Wren, self-shot | Edit: phone editor, 5 min | Platforms: TikTok, IG Reel
A single lyric fragment over caliche dust and heat shimmer. No hook reveal, no chorus, one line at a time across the runway. The visual signature of the whole project: pale road, white sky, words that sit still. Bank a season of backgrounds in one drive.
Capture: dash mount, one drive per capture Sunday | Edit: template, 10 min | Platforms: IG Reel, TikTok
The monthly guaranteed live take. Board audio makes phone video sound professional for free. Full song to YouTube, best 30 seconds to Reels and TikTok. Twelve of these a year is a live album's worth of proof that the songs hold a room.
Capture: Marisol (board + booth angle) | Edit: WMP template | Platforms: YT, IG, TT
Sunday evening, one lamp, the pawn-shop parlor guitar. Unreleased fragments and stripped versions of released songs. The imperfections stay in; the chair creak is part of the arrangement. Example caption: "New one. Still arguing with the second verse. The chair gets a writing credit."
Capture: tripod, clip-on lav | Edit: minimal | Platforms: IG, YT
Wren singing harmony against a phone playback in the cab of the Ranger. Church-choir stacking in a pickup truck: the whole biography in one frame. Always parked. The seatbelt chime made a cameo once and the comments demanded it return.
Capture: dash mount, parked truck | Edit: phone editor | Platforms: TT, IG Reel
Self-stacked choir arrangements filmed in separate takes. The most technically produced format in the plan and it still costs nothing but an evening. Save these for campaign moments; they pull the biggest reach and shouldn't become wallpaper.
Capture: tripod, marked floor position | Edit: WMP (layout template) | Platforms: IG, TT, YT Short
Folding chairs, gas-station coffee, the merch card table, setlists taped to monitors, the guitar case in the truck bed. Micro-stories in stills. Strong save rates, zero production cost, and over a year they become the visual archive of the whole run.
Capture: phone, whoever is standing there | Edit: one preset grade | Platforms: IG carousel
The monthly mailing-list letter is the plan's most valuable deliverable and its cheapest. One true story from the month, one clear ask, no graphics, no subject-line tricks. 640 people signed up to hear from Wren; the letter is where the relationship actually lives.
Write: Wren, always | Edit: WMP proofreads | Platforms: email, excerpted to IG
The baseline weekly recipe during ordinary weeks. Campaign weeks add volume; they never break the base rhythm or the hour-a-day rule.
| Format | Qty/Week | Primary Platform | Cross-Post To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lunch Break Verse | 1 | TikTok | IG Reel |
| Caliche Reel | 1 | IG Reel | TikTok |
| Tin Lantern Clip or Kitchen Demo | 1 | YouTube / IG | TikTok cutdown |
| Postcard Carousel | 1 | IG Feed | none |
| Pew Harmony | Campaign weeks only | IG Reel | TT, YT Short |
| Stories | 3–4 days/wk | IG Stories | none |
| The Letter | Monthly | Mailing list | IG caption excerpt |
One Sunday afternoon a month. Three hours produces three to four weeks of posts because every format has a fixed recipe and the setups are modular: change the shirt, the light, or the location and one afternoon reads like a month of separate days.
| Block | Duration | What | Gear | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | 15 min | Tripod, lav check, lamp placement, shirt options on the chair | All of it (there is not much) | none |
| Kitchen Demos | 45 min | Two or three songs, one take each, one lamp. Shirt change between songs. | Phone + tripod + lav | Kitchen Demos, YT uploads |
| Pew Harmonies | 40 min | Split takes against the plain wall, floor position marked with tape. | Phone + tripod | 1–2 Pew Harmony reels |
| Dashboard Run | 25 min | Parked in the driveway, two harmony clips against playback. | Phone + dash mount | Dashboard Harmonies |
| The Drive | 45 min | Caliche roads at golden hour. Windshield footage, pull-over stills. | Dash mount + the Ranger | A month of Caliche Reel backgrounds, Postcard stills |
| Review + File | 10 min | Flag best takes, drop into format folders, done before supper. | none | Organized raw media |
Total: about 3 hours. The tour replaces March's capture Sunday entirely; eleven show nights out-produce any afternoon.
| Session | Target Date | Focus | Content Produced For | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Aug 9 | Habit building, first bank | August – early September posts | Q3 26 |
| #2 | Sep 6 | County Line cover art + harmonies | September runway + release week | Q3 26 |
| #3 | Oct 11 | Sustain + anniversary prep | Late October – November posts | Q4 26 |
| #4 | Nov 1 | Anniversary artifacts + posters | November – December posts | Q4 26 |
| #5 | Jan 3 | Night Shift Hymn visuals | January runway + release | 2027 |
| #6 | Feb 7 | Tour prep: truck, merch, map | February pre-tour posts | 2027 |
| #7 | Feb 18 – Mar 7 | The tour itself, 11 nights | March – May posts + Heat Shimmer campaign | 2027 |
Ideas not yet assigned to a month. Pull from here when a calendar slot needs filling. Add freely; cut ruthlessly at the quarterly review.
Recurring transparency post. The 400-dollar single, line by line. The merch table math: 60 to 180 dollars a night, and where it goes. People trust an artist who shows the receipts.
Tour series. One review per town, deadpan, five-word verdicts. "Brownwood: tastes like the drive here." Low effort, high personality, and it maps the tour without a single "come to my show" post.
One carousel: every show ever played, pinned on a paper map. Folding-chair venues and all. A history post that doubles as proof of work before the tour announce.
Print County Line lines on print shop offcuts using the risograph. Photograph them where they land: taped to the register, left in library books, under a windshield wiper. Physical media as content.
Mailing-list perk: one reserved folding chair at every residency night, front and center, with a name card. Costs nothing. The photo of the name card is the post.
Short series on how the church pew taught the harmony stacking. Old hymn arranging tricks applied to new songs, explained in one minute, no jargon. Craft content in plain clothes.
A single warm, dusty color grade on every clip: pale road, white sky, worn denim. Consistency does the work a logo would. Preset saved once, applied forever.
The truck recurs until the audience greets it. Dash, tailgate, bench seat, odometer. By the tour, a photo of the odometer alone should read as a tour update.
Posters, lyric scraps, tour numbering, yard sale signage: all run on the shop machine in two inks. The print texture becomes the brand at zero design cost, and Teddy gets a liner note.
One specific folding chair appears in the cover art, the yard sale set, the merch table, and the final night of the tour. Nobody points it out. Somebody will notice, and that comment will be the best post of the year.
Marisol's board recordings, collected. By next winter there are enough clean live takes for a quiet Bandcamp live album: Second Thursdays, a year at the Tin Lantern. Zero recording budget.
Monthly portrait at the print shop front window, same spot, changing seasons. A year of them becomes the press photo set and a time-lapse of the whole run.
| Tool | Role | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 13 | The only camera | Everything. Demos, reels, stills, tour footage. Knowing one camera well beats owning four. |
| 20-dollar tripod | The crew | Kitchen demos, pew harmony split takes, residency booth angle. The single best money spent on this plan. |
| Clip-on lav mic | Voice | Kitchen demos and talking clips. Kills the room echo that says amateur louder than any visual. |
| Dash mount | The road rig | Caliche drives, dashboard harmonies, tour windshield footage. Set once, forget it. |
| Marisol's board feed | Live audio | Every residency and tour room that has a board. Free professional live sound; always ask, always say thanks. |
| Tool | Use As | Never Use As |
|---|---|---|
| Golden hour | The main light for drives and stills; free, warm, on schedule | An excuse to shoot at noon and grade it later. |
| One kitchen lamp | Demo lighting, moved around until it flatters the guitar | A ring light. This plan owns no ring light on principle. |
| Print shop front window | Monthly portraits, lunch-break clips when the light rakes in | Anything during the morning rush; the job comes first. |
| The risograph | Posters, lyric scraps, yard sale signs, tour numbering | Full-color anything. Two inks, always. The limit is the look. |
| The Ranger | Set, rig, character, and tour vehicle | A prop it isn't. It is a real truck with a real tape deck. |
The software budget is zero and stays there until a paid tool would save more hours than the day job pays for. Current stack:
Phone editor for everything under 90 seconds. Trim, caption, the one saved grade preset. Most posts never touch a computer.
Free desktop editor for Tin Lantern syncs and the pew harmony layouts. WMP maintains one template per format; a clip drops in, a post comes out.
Free scheduling queue so Sunday's 45 minutes covers the whole week and nothing depends on remembering to post at lunch.
Voice memos as the songwriting archive. Every idea since the pawn-shop guitar lives here; the Lunch Break Verse format is basically voice memos with a face.
Plain-text mail service on the free tier for the 640-person list. Upgrades when the list clears 1,000, which is the point of the whole plan.
One spreadsheet: door takes, merch nets, follower counts, list growth. Updated monthly by WMP. If it is not in the sheet, it did not happen.