First Monday of the month, new Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple
You probably don’t turn on Bruno Mars to get sad.
And you probably don’t turn on Sabrina Carpenter to feel sophisticated.
Every artist incites a mood. It’s all mood music. A list of words. Emotional connectivity. No artist can be everything to everyone but every artist can create a mood and live within the mood their music stirs up.
I was on stage playing with an artist and I got a call.
I had no idea. I was on stage.
When I got off stage I listened to the voice mail. It was for a bigger gig.
I called back. The gig was already filled.
It was a easy to chalk it up to ‘it just wasn’t meant to be’…but the deeper insight was that I needed to put in the work to become a musician who was worth waiting thirty minutes for a call back.
People don’t move to Nashville to have a quiet life. They don’t move to Nashville to blend into the background and modestly go about their business. The don’t move to Nashville because they’ve given up and are looking to lay low.
People move to Nashville to be someone. To achieve the dream. To come out on top. To leverage talent, skill, relationships, time and hard work into something that is respected and desired by peers and maybe even the world.
And that type of pursuit changes people. It changes the bars and the coffee shops. It changes the neighborhoods and the vibe of the entire city.
Nashville has a lot of magic and a lot of heartbreak. Heartbreak for those who didn’t get what they dreamed of and heartbreak for those who got what they dreamed of only to realize it’s never enough.
But when that intense pursuit is distilled down to simply pursuing the creativity of the moment, it’s magic. It’s more than magic. It’s life giving and life changing. And maybe it could change us enough to dream deeper than ‘the dream’.
If you walk into the room and say, ‘I have this song…’ and then play it, you’ll probably get a complimentary response. After all, it’s your song, they don’t want to squash it right in front of you.
On the other hand, if you walk into the room and say, ‘I have an idea for a song…’ and then play some of it, you’ll get a much more interesting reply…I liked this part but not that part, what if you tried this, what if it went here next, keep working on that section, that word sounds cool.
The words we use in the setup dictate the way it’s listened to.
We want sincerity…OR something that looks enough like sincerity that we can’t tell the difference.
Because if we’re getting what we want, we don’t care.
Why does this matter?
Because it points toward the idea that we can care for our audience, our people, and our clients without constantly carrying a burden of questioning our own sincerity.
If ‘acting’ sincere is enough to connect and convey our care, then acting can be enough.
»» And acting just might get us better at the real thing.
»» And if we’re better at the real thing we’ll be better at calling on those skills when we don’t feel like it.
If you do all the things an artist is suppose to do in order to be successful…then being a successful artist isn’t unexpected…but it’s still unlikely.
Even the best plan in this business is unlikely to bring fame and riches. But if you follow the plan, fame and riches aren’t unexpected…just unlikely.
»» I often hear artists talk about the ‘unexpected phone call’ to be part of a cool opportunity. But the opportunity has everything to do with what the artist is already good at…so while the call is unlikely, it’s not unexpected. On the other hand, it would be unexpected if the artist got a call to preform surgery on an elephant.