What a difference a month makes. At the beginning of March I wrote to you about plans to travel out of state, shows I was excited to play with The Mess Makers, and ambitions to do more touring over the coming months. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that none of those things happened. We find ourselves at an unprecedented moment in our lifetimes, staying at home and keeping our distance to help keep one another safe. While I’m sad that the performances and travel plans have all been cancelled or put on hold, I’m heartened by seeing my fellow Ohioans taking steps to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. I’m also greatly encouraged by the heroic efforts of those on the front lines: the medical professionals showing themselves to be the superheroes we know they are, as well as the workers keeping essential businesses up and running.
Fortunately, we finished production on the long-promised music video for my new song “More Than You Believe You Are” right before lockdown started, and the video was released April 3, right on schedule! You can watch the video on YouTube or Facebook, or listen to the song on Spotify.
As musicians, most of us thrive on live performances, and that’s also where a lot of us make the majority of our income. With events and performances canceled for the foreseeable future, figuring out how to turn being a musician into a work-from-home job has been a challenge, to say the least. Livestream concerts have become the norm, and the “virtual tip jar” has suddenly become a common sight. I had the pleasure to take part in a 48-hour Livestream Festival at the end of March (you can watch my performance here), and you’ll be able to catch me tomorrow for a Sunday Brunch Livestream show – I’ll be taking requests for both my original songs and cuts from my covers list, so pour yourself a mimosa, fry yourself up some eggs & french toast, and join me tomorrow!
I’ve also been spending a lot of time in the studio working on new material (what else was I going to do, right?), and breaking from tradition, I’ve been sharing the demos of those songs on Facebook. Here are links to a few of those demos: “End of the World” “Learning to Stand Again” “Hope is the New Contagion”
I’ve got several more I’ll be posting in the coming days, so make sure to follow me on Facebook to catch those when they go up, and for info about other upcoming livestream events.
Thanks as always for joining me on this (for now, virtual) journey. I can’t wait to see all your smiling faces again out in the real world once this pandemic is behind us!
