cool gig!

My show Friday night was awesome! It was a small crowd, but that's usually what it is for this particular setting. I was the most excited about getting to perform my songs in a scaled-down way with just piano, and getting to sing 3 new songs. If the songs sound good with just piano, then I feel good, that the songs are good. Plain and simple. And they sounded great! It always gets me excited to hear them this way and gives me confidence as a writer. I heard Sade's new songs from her new album, and yes, they are cool, but would they work with just piano? I don't think so...interesting production, lots of drums, but not sure they work as complete songs on their own. But that's just my opinion.
And the 3 new songs went over great! Actually everyone came up to me after the show and expressed that those songs were their favorite songs! I had been nervous about performing them - one of them I had never played for anyone, much less perform on stage. I usually take my songs to the songwriting workshop to get feedback, but hadn't done that with this one particular song. And when I write them, I program the songs into a program called Band In A Box, which adds tracks with a groove, but they always sound cheesy and computerized. And when I add my vocals with my limited engineering skills, the demos always sound pretty bad. So I'm never sure how they will turn out either in a real recording or live. But this time, I took a risk and it paid off big! My song "Who I Am" seemed to be everybody's favorite, and it was the one I was most unsure of. Isn't that interesting that what I fear the most is the thing that becomes the greatest gift...? And now I have more confidence in my writing skills, that I'm getting better and better..that feels great! And it feels great to know I have a list of great songs, not just a couple. It takes years to create a list of songs that are good - for every great one, I have to write 3 or 4 OK songs. So I have to keep writing..
I'm still looking for my outlet, the pillow for my songs to rest upon...where is my audience? Where are the artists looking for songs like mine to record? I'm trusting it's out there somewhere, and I can't worry about it. I just have to do what I do, which is create. Eventually, my ship will come in - or I'll have to swim out to it!