I’ll admit, I’m a bit behind on my writing.
I’ve been super busy, working on my next three singles, organizing my music videos and still trying to improve myself as a singer. I jotted down some notes to remind myself what I’ve been doing and I’ll try to do a brief summary of everything.
Starting with my T-Shirts. I wanted to create a T-shirt to celebrate Horizon passing 10k streams on Spotify. The plan was to give away three to fans on a social media contest and then start selling them. By now, it’s passed 38k, which may not be a big deal to some, but it felt amazing to me, considering I was excited when “I’ll Write” managed to pass 1k and show up on Spotify. (update, some time has passed and Horizon has actually passed 50k streams by now which is unreal thank you so much.)
This was not as simple as in endeavor as I had hoped. I ended up completely scrapping the first design I paid for. Thankfully the guy who designed my website was able to step in and deliver me something that I felt proud to share for a discounted price given my situation (Shoutout Wyatt Scott Kassin.) I’ve actually got the merch store up on my website, but we’ve run into some technical glitches so I’m not promoting it yet. (I have promoted it since but I am still trying to work out some more glitches. Right now it is only accepting PayPal and I want to make it easier on everyone and make it available without a PayPal account, hopefully soon.)
I did, however, get some printed for my family, my best friends, and my Mom’s kindergarten class.
Some background on the kindergarten class. My mom showed them my song and they loved it. She’s sent me countless videos of them asking her to film them singing it and it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. Then I got to witness it in person when I came down for a visit. Let me tell you, as an artist, there is nothing more meaningful than hearing someone sing back something you wrote. A lot of times, it feels like I’m shouting into a void and it can definitely feel like nobody beyond myself and a few close friends cares at all about what I’m working so hard on. So when I was able to see and hear how passionate these kids were about my music, I had to give back.
This was a big cut to my budget, and ultimately contributed to some problems I’ve run into down the road (which I’ll talk about later) but I literally could not leave those kids without something to say thank you.
The song has been out since March and I still haven’t gotten the shirts out to the public in a way that works, but I’m hoping to soon. The design is honestly really cool and unique and the money generated will help me continue to make music. At the end of the day, it’s a learning experience. (Update, I have gotten it out but I'm still working out some technical difficulties/)
I also shot the promo photos for my single Rome (which you've all seen by now) It was quite the adventure. The notes I had written for this post were "climbing rocks, walking in sketchy creeks and cold" essentially I'll go on any adventure and sacrifice my body for the perfect shot. Not wearing gym shoes to climb up the steep rocky hill was not a good idea and I made sure to do that for the filming of the music video.
This next part I had wanted to make its own post on because it was a significant part of my journey here, but I feel like too much time has passed. Essentially, I was working vocals on my final single and it was not sounding good. Not only was I pitchy, but my low notes were sounding either completely robotic or nonexistent. My producer did not feel confident in the future of the song and wanted to scrap it for something new. The problem was that this song is very special to me, and I was not ready to give up on it. It was a very emotionally taxing day that ended with me crying in the studio and leaving early. Shoutout Mike for being a cool calm collected soul and dealing with all of my extra. I think what hurt the most about it was knowing how nice he is, and that he wouldn't have said those things unless he meant to be helpful, meaning he really did not have faith in me or the song at that point. A note I had about this was "knowing when to trust people around you our yourself" and I think that is so crucial as a creative in this industry. It's always good to be open-minded and take feedback, but you also need to follow your heart and your gut sometimes too. I wasn't ready to give up on this song yet, even knowing Mike's expertise, even trying to rationalize it in my head. I ended up going back and working on it with my voice teacher while we worked on "Heat of the Moment" instead. I made significant improvements over that time and even though I still am not perfect at it I improved enough to be able to get some decent takes. After adding harmonies and background vocals the song really came together. It's a song that represents a really important time in my life and I'm glad I fought for it.
Another note I had was "taking too many trips." I sort of remember having anxiety about this. I had traveled home and then to Nebraska for a leadership conference. I felt anxious that being away from Nashville was leading me to miss too many potential opportunities. I had planned to return to Nebraska the following weekend for the Spring Game (I actually already had a ticket) but I ended up staying to get my photoshoot done. It was a hard call and it does feel like I'm missing out on time with family and friends on occasion. I miss them terribly but at the same time, Nashville gives me a sense of belonging that is hard to explain, but one that I'd been missing throughout my life. So even though it's hard to be away from so many people that I love, I know I'm where I need to be.
I’ve realized I need to start putting dates on these blog posts. I’d like to turn them into a book one day.
This is all I've got for now! Sorry if it is scatterbrained or has typos, I'm writing this at 1 am and will fix them when I can, but I wanted to get these little stories out so I can get us back to real-time. I usually write notes after an event happens and then fill in the blanks later on but too much time has passed, so I did my best. Sorry if it was confusing. Once again thank you for your support and I can't wait to show you what else I've got going on.