It happens to everyone - and seriously, I mean everyone: the famous and the not-famous, the seasoned and the fledgling, the confident and the wobbly-kneed. All of us at some time or other freak out IN a performance or ABOUT a performance. It's debilitating. The self-talk tends to be vicious and crippling. Hands shake, voices [...]
I don’t come from a musical family. Sure, they liked music. My mother kept a stack of 45’s, including old hits like “Tom Dooley” and “Davey Crockett.” We had a hi-fi with LPs that included the soundtrack to “Black Beauty” and a wonderful, dark recording of “Peter and the Wolf.” There was a Chickering spinet [...]
Once upon a time, I - and perhaps the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived - thought if people could just see things my way, the world would be a lot better. I'm a tree-kissing liberal, pantheist (as in, it's all holy), well-wishing, pro-education, art-loving person. To me, my views are so [...]
I’ve got pretty good all-around intuition, but in one area my spidey-sense is just about 100% accurate. Specifically, I can read your future as a musician. Within about 60 seconds of talking with you, I can predict whether or not music is going to play a joyful and expansive role in your life over the [...]
After a recent performance of poetry and song, a man approached me and told me that he wanted to learn my "method" so he could replicate it in an upcoming performance of his own. "What method do you mean?" I asked, thinking that what I do could scarcely be called something as systematic as that. [...]
I've often joked that if I ever made bumper-stickers, this is what they'd say: Show up & be nice. Simple, isn't it? When musicians ask me how to get booked and re-booked for paying gigs, this is my advice. Show up and be nice. Help with the chairs. Be glad to be there. Appreciate the [...]
It seems that's a topic on the minds and in the mouths of many people on the web these days. There's a million paid trainings that purport to teach us exactly this: how to win fans, grow your list, and make a zillion dollars in the wild west of the world-wide web. But for a [...]
Last evening I sent out my monthly-esque newsletter and almost as soon as it winged through the ether an unsubscribe notice came in from MailChimp. “Darn,” says the notice, “You’ve lost a subscriber.” The reason for unsubscribing was given: “No longer interested.” Ouch. I’ve read the blog posts and the enlightened FB memes and I [...]
Every single new thing we do - everything - brings up fears, teaches lessons, and leaves us with gifts. Whether we are climbing Everest or going to a party, taking up salsa dancing or singing a solo, this is all part of the package. It's a package that leaves us different than we were: expanded, [...]
Have you ever suffered insomnia for so many nights running that you feared that you'd forgotten how to sleep? Or had - shall we say - trouble in the loo-department and wondered if perhaps your body had forgotten how to perform certain key functions? Well, the same applies to writing. Here, specifically, on this blog. [...]
