We have a rough job. And it’s one we volunteered for. There are plenty of singers and songwriters and guitarists that are far more talented that I that never give a go at doing it professionally. It’s something that’s definitely rubbed in while I’m sitting, running sound at my open mics, marveling at the talent I get to witness every week. Even more-so at House of Musical Traditions as I listen in awe to some deft player who says that that Huss and Dalton will never leave the house, or that he never plays out, the Goodall is just for the Living room.
And so, since I signed up for this arduous road, I can’t bitch too much about it. And in truth, I Love my job. A couple of weeks ago I worked my ass off for a tiny room of just a few people, and a week after that I worked my ass off to get a couple of people into a bigger room. Last night I worked my ass off with no visible results, firing off just under one hundred booking emails – messages that are hard to see the results of, especially this time of year. Finding a way to make the message of ilyAIMY rise above the noise in the world is hard. We rise above the average, of course – and we rise even higher because we’re professionals… but the signal to noise ratio in booking is very, very hard to overcome and booking Teavolve has given me a whole new level of appreciation for this.
And yet we keep playing and keep Loving it. We make a Living and get to do amazing things. 2015 probably won’t be THAT much different from 2014, except in the same way that 2014 was different from 2013 – in that things keep getting better, we keep meeting new people, we keep playing new places, and returning to our favourtes. I’m incredibly grateful that we get to do what we do. I write this as Kristen and I drive in to the setting sun where she’s going to play a set with her electric string quartet. I’ll be playing videographer for the night. The rest of our bandmates will be somewhere, probably with their families. I don’t know if Lex and Ella get to stay up late for New Year’s Eve, but I imagine they’ll be sleeping into 2015. Someday soon they’ll get THEIR first tastes of the music we make. They won’t know what hit them.
New Year’s Eve found me filming and recording Kristen’s other other band Anthem at the Winchester FIrst Night in Winchester, VA. Above, the spectacular Mad Mary was the other act on their stage for the night.
