77 gigs ago, I played my first ‘official’ gig as emzae.*
With help from my friends Simon and Autumn, the three of us played a three hour set at Derby’s Bookcafé for £100. I was 22, feeling extremely lucky to have found myself in the position to be able to perform in front of a crowd, and thought this was wonderful. I knew we were, for the most part, a backing track to people’s conversations - at one point, a member of staff even told us to turn our volume down - but I didn’t care. It had taken me so long to get to that point alone, my overwhelming feeling was one of gratitude.
I continued to play acoustic gigs with Simon across the midlands until I figured out how to translate my music - created on an iMac computer using a programme called Logic Pro and using a mixture of virtual and ‘real’ instruments - into a live setting.
23 gigs later, I made my solo debut at Nottingham’s Das Kino for their wonderful Hockley Hustle festival - still one of my favourites. Then 24, I was still playing in a very busy bar in which I was mainly the backing track to people’s conversations. But this time, there were people I’d met along the way in the crowd - who weren’t my family members - actively listening and supporting me. That year, I’d released my song Lucid Dreaming, and really started to make some progress.
I was particularly relieved by this progress as I had felt unexpectedly compelled to quit my day job during the summer of 2018, thereby catapulting myself into a world of self-employment and committing myself to living with my parents far longer than I had once hoped to be doing so (disclaimer: I obviously love and appreciate them).
The newfound free time, however, enabled me to focus entirely on my music career and play gigs whenever I felt up to it, rather than basing my choice on whether or not I could get annual leave.
I kept building and adapting my live set over the next few years - even landing support slots for the likes of LoneLady and Altered Images, and playing outdoor festival stages. I had once felt frozen with fear in front of an audience. Now I felt exhilarated.
As the pandemic came around and changed pretty much everything in our lives, I set about finishing my debut album with the aim of putting on a headline gig to celebrate its release.
For so long, I had been settled in my position as the bottom of the bill support act. Pivoting to being in charge of an entire gig felt almost fraudulent. I discovered, then, that no one ever has a lightbulb moment in which they discover that they are ready to take the next step in their music career. There is no concrete metric that informs us of the correct direction to travel in.
We either stay in comfortable situations and keep ourselves locked in to music as a hobby or a struggling pursuit, or we choose to construct an inner self-belief that is so strong it teeters on the edge of delusion.
Whatever we need to silence those voices that tell us we are not worthy or we might fail.
When I booked my headline tour (tickets here) earlier this year, I had to harness that self-belief. Now the dates are finalised, the announcements have been made and the tickets are on sale, the voices are getting stronger.
What have I done?
I fear embarrassing myself, letting my support acts down and losing money. Am I ready for this step or am I taking it too soon?
Sometimes I have nightmares in which I am on stage and there is no one in the audience. I envisage the faces of people I relay this experience to, ranging from pity to ‘I told you so’.
As ever, I watch my friends buy houses and start families and wonder if I have wasted time on something almost impossible.
But it is the ‘almost’ that keeps me hanging on. Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a voice stronger than any of those doubts, drowning them out.
It simply says why not me?
It encourages me to do wild things such as booking a headline tour with literally no idea of how many tickets I will sell. To write, record, produce and mix an album and release it alone. To gamble all of my money on something that may flop dramatically.
I like to think I don’t, and won’t, regret it.
One thing’s for sure - there is, as ever, a lot of hard work ahead.
*note: there was another gig before this at Fearon Hall in Loughborough, where I performed as part of a David Bowie tribute night. Because we played covers exclusively, I haven’t counted it as the first.
Join me on tour
I’ll be playing the following dates in 2024:
Chesterfield - Vanishing Point Records - 30/03/2024 - with Paytron Saint - (FREE ENTRY)
Manchester - AATMA - 19/04/2024 - with Factory Acts & The Junta - TICKETS
Birmingham - Dead Wax - 04/05/2024 - with Genevieve Miles & Lucy Crisp - TICKETS
Liverpool - Kazimier Stockroom - 21/06/2024 - with Lazygirl - TICKETS
** FOR THE PREMIUM EMBAES **
Here is a video of me playing a song I wrote when I was about 20 called Autumn, at my first gig at the Bookcafe. I hope you will appreciate it in place of a podcast episode this week <3