EP Release Retrospective

Well, Sunday was the night of the EP release event and I have some thoughts. I originally imagined presenting the Good, Bad, and Ugly of it all, but I decided to reframe it this way.

The Easy

• Being back on stage again. I have always loved connecting with people like that – for me, connecting through music can be a lot simpler than through, for example, a conversation.
• Our opening act, Kate! Honestly, I had originally planned to spend at least some of her set centring myself in the green room, but I was out there listening because she was just so good. So grateful to have had her involved.
• Hearing that people were having a good time. That was what we wanted for the evening, fun, and hearing that we succeeded there was wonderful.
• We had an amazing audience. First off, we sold more tickets than we thought we would. It was a rainy Sunday night and the city closed off a big section of the highway for construction and somehow we did far better than we ever could have imagined. And then they were also friendly. Huge thank you to friends and family, and friends of family, and family of friends, for coming out, because, wow. The audience was great. I couldn’t believe it when I heard the cheers during our first song.
• Surprisingly, singing original songs to people including strangers. At this point, I’ve been working on these songs for so long that they’re not something I’m worried about sharing with people. They don’t feel like “my songs,” just, “songs.”

The Difficult

• Being back on stage again! Performing, for me, used to feel as easy as breathing. Or maybe I just hid my nerves, even from myself. But somewhere along the way, those nerves made a vengeful appearance, and now performing takes more of an effort of will than it used to. Noticing the difference between then and now makes it even harder.
• People slipping out mid-set. This was a bit difficult, but not bad, as such. I could come up with lots of perfectly valid reasons for this to happen. And it was only a few people. But given that my imaginings pre-show had included most of the audience leaving, there was sort of a sense of foreboding.
• Flubbing lyrics. Although honestly, I was pleased with myself for just… continuing to sing. This was something I really worried about, leading up to the show – I was very afraid I would forget my lyrics, panic, and stop singing and not be able to get going again. It has happened once before in a low-stakes setting and led to one of the songs on the EP. But this time, no, I stumbled a bit and I kept going. But difficult, yes.
• Social media etc. leading up to and even after the event. This is exhausting and distressing for me. I recognise the necessity but it will never be easy. An attempt to write a press release, for example, led to so much anxiety that I was in physical pain.

The Learning Experiences

• The band can cover a multitude of sins. Not all of them, of course, but singing with a band at a live music venue like that is not the same as, say, singing in a competition with an accompanist on piano, where every nuance of your singing is being judged.
  • Learning experience point 1-A is “TRUST the band.” I spent weeks being terrified that I would accidentally skip a section of a song AND I DID, and the band just followed along and it was amazing and probably sounds better without that section anyway.
• Use your soundcheck effectively. We did not, and Adam and I both ended up having trouble hearing ourselves. Our fault; we should have used the soundcheck effectively.
• Know how you’re getting onstage and how you’re getting offstage. We did not. We will in the future.
• Warmup trumps makeup! I’m not very good at applying makeup or, apparently, guessing how long it will take me, so when we ran a little bit late and I tried to follow my makeup-then-warmup schedule, I ended up completely running out of time to warm up. Then, when I should have warmed up at the venue, I fell victim to my fear of making unwanted noise around other people and still didn’t warm up. I sang that show almost completely un-warmed. Not good.

Finally

I (probably) have lots more to say about this topic. If you have questions, ask me!

Also, some people have asked if it’s possible to buy the EP. Well, there are no physical copies, but if you don’t have access to one of the streaming services it’s on (or you just really want to own it), you can always buy it on Bandcamp! (link)

Don’t miss the “liner notes” in the site menu!

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Thank you to Denis for today’s photo!