The Fearless Performance

It is a paradox but I am more comfortable in my own skin when I am performing my music in front of a large audience. Smaller audiences, a coffee shop or house concert setting are more problematic for me. When I can see people's eyes, staring at me, I want to be anywhere but in that space. It unnerves me. Puts me off my game. It’s not until I can find the moment that I start forgetting that anyone is there at all. Ironically it is in the moment that I sense people joining me… and then I no longer care who is staring at me.

Performing in a stadium is relatively easy, once you get over the nerves of the occasion. And this assumes that you 'know your stuff' before you plug in and the curtains fall. But there is a phenomenon that occurs in a concert hall or stadium. Usually the lighting is so bright that I can only see what is on stage. The audience sits in such a deep darkness that an illusion is created, as if no one is really there and I am just singing to myself and or the musicians around me. One part of my brain tells me that there are people out there in the audience, but the other part of the brain gets all relaxed and, not being able to discern any of the actual eyes or faces of audience members, I’m set free to be me. And I become absolutely fearless.

It is surreal I grant you. But if you ever get a chance to perform on a large stage, the bright lights hitting your face, the hidden energy in the room in anticipation of for your first song, you’ll know what I mean.

There is also another, perhaps more important aspect to this lack of stage fright, because, up there, I am doing the something that I love to do and, when I am making music, I recognize in a knowing kind of way that this is really ME. As I grow older I have become less judge mental and given myself some grace… on being a dad, a husband, a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor and so on.

But I still feel more at peace or at my best when I am making music.

Like a bird that flies and a Kangaroo that jumps, I make music.

It just feels that I do a better version of me when I am on stage singing or in the studio recording. I’m also very comfortable, fearless even, writing and singing about the ups and downs of my journey.

I think that art makers need to be vulnerable, to talk openly about 'stuff’.

In a way our role in the community is to put into song (or on the canvass) what others around us are thinking or going through but don’t have the skill or nohow to say it… or sing about it.

I am not afraid of letting things come out into the open. Bottling things up and not talking about them is a prison. This freedom is something I hope other’s can find in my songs or music. A freedom to be true to themselves, fearless in their expressions and life journey.

“Fear is a prison where you are the Jailer.”

Bryant McGill

We start breaking free from the fear by talking, singing or writing about it. Then the fear has no hold on us.

Try it… you’ll thank me later.

What did Tom Waits say?

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."