People Who Inspire #1

Shameless Maya

This Chick.  Seriously she's just amaze.  From where her Youtube channel started until today, I mean YAAASSSSS honey!  I can completely relate to this woman.  Self promotion is mad, and makes me feel kinda sicky really.  Being in the music industry and generally in the creative arena, self promotion seems to kind of go with the territory, but I haven't found a way to do it without feeling icky.  Is there something wrong with me or is there something wrong with it.  Hmmmm... Answers on a postcard welcome.  And check out Maya! 

Maya's blurb: 

What would happen if I shamelessly promoted myself for a year? Ever wonder how to gain confidence? How to get over social anxiety? This is my 365 day journey of shameless self promotion that helped me gain strength to overcome my fears and gain confidence.

Jake Isaac

I mean this dude is just DOING it right now!  His new EP Warchild is banging.  His grind is banging.  This video is BANGING!

I love what he stands for and I love the authenticity of his sound.  I mostly love seeing peeps make progress and do well. 

Truths and Tiny Tragedies

As we plan for the release of my debut album, I'm getting my affairs in order.  Long overdue I know, but my first ever recording, 'Truths and Tiny Tragedies', is now up on the site and available for download here.  Yay!

Reset

I wrote this a few weeks ago: 

I know I've not been living very well recently. I'm rushing forward, straining towards the next thing. Unappreciative of the ordinary and the beautiful. Internally complaining about my situation and the people around me. Critical of pretty much everything. Thinking if this and that and the other we're different, then I'd be different, and that difference would make everything so very much better.

Forgetting to stop and smell the coffee, or the flowers. Passing over the urge to take another photo of my child, and capture a moment that I know is so fleeting. Choosing to eat dinner quickly in the kitchen so I can get a head start on the cleaning instead of enjoy our family meal.

Ignoring that all to rare feeling of creativity. The kind that births songs and other things. It's that feeling where the hair on my body kinda stands on ends, there's a stillness in the chaos, and my heart beats funny. It's that place in between this and that where new things are born. And I'm just passing it up for the great pleasure of vegetating in front of the box. Again. And the thing is I know, whilst I'm doing it that I'm just not living right. I really do know better.

Since writing the above, my granny sadly passed on from this life. More on this in another post I'm sure, but one of the obvious side effects of loosing one of your most cherished human beings is that one inevitably receives an acute sense of ones own mortality as well as the unstoppable passing of time.  So I'm living life abit better now.

I'm cherishing moments again. Well not as fully as that statement implies, but I am buying up my opportunities and making better use of my time, well a lot more of it, and it feels good.

In other news, I've ventured into songwriting for others again and it's been soooo fun! In the past I've always found this to be a struggle. The pressure of having to come up with something, and having to write with other people, erghh. I write all of my own music alone, and that's the way I like it.  Writing with others has previously proved quite incapacitating and unenjoyable, however it seems to be different now. I've been writing with a great team, and whilst we were given the task of writing an album in a few weeks, it was really easy! Things just flowed. Yeaaahh. And the most amazing thing ever was that I could take Ava into the studio with me! And she was fab...most of the time, providing lots of light relief, thanks honeykins!

Progress...

So I've finally finished recording my new album!! Whoop!  I feel a great sense of accomplishment.  This project, working title 'No Fear Here', is a long time coming.  I took such a long break from creating music, and this collection of songs are the first I wrote after coming out of that season.  

It's so strange though, because I feel as though I've moved on and grown alot since writing these songs, and they don't really reflect where I am now.  I'm glad I've documented that season of my life in song, but now the hard work starts; Creating an interesting way of putting it out and presenting it to you all!  I have so many ideas, and I'm determined not to rush the process. 

I start a residency next month which I'm very excited about!  Working on acoustic versions of my new songs, as well as some fun covers - Fun, fun, fun!  If you'd like to come along, click here.

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