The Circle

I’m exhausted. Properly. The kind where you’ve been at the computer all day and your head won’t stop churning. Bills. Numbers. That quiet pressure of “How long before I have to take a day job I have no love for?” And then, like a cruel joke, I start questioning the one thing I do love. Music. Of course. Because in the build-up to a performance, that negative voice always shows up. Will people like it? Am I any good? Are they going to write me off in five seconds? Sometimes I have to stop and take a breath. Ten minutes lying down. Reset. Then I remember why I do this in the first place: I’m trying to bring people together. Not through perfection. Through shared humanity. Through a room full of strangers, feeling the same thing at the same time. And still… people walk in with assumptions. “Not another acoustic singer-songwriter.” Or the big one: “Live looping is all pre-recorded.” Like I’m just there with a guitar, pretending. That one gets to me, because it’s the opposite of what’s happening. Looping, for me, is a tightrope. It’s building a song from scratch in front of you and hoping the structure holds. I had a show where someone in the audience actually challenged me about it. So I stopped. I asked his name. He said, “Steve.” I asked if he played music. “A bit of guitar,” I asked him to give me three chords at random. Then I asked him for a genre. He said, “Blues.” So I made up a track on the spot, loop by loop, no safety net. I even named it “The Trouble With Steve.” The room shifted. Steve’s whole face changed. And after the show — this is the bit that matters to me — he bought my album and a T-shirt. Not out of pity. Not because I begged. Because he’d watched the thing happen in real time, and it clicked. I’ve been influenced by people who put truth before trends. Fink, doing it independently and still reaching people. Radiohead, refusing to play it safe. Paul Simon, writing beyond genre like it’s just air. And voices like Peter Crone and Michael Hunter (UpSpiral), reminding me that what we focus on expands — fear, or purpose. I’m trying to choose purpose, even when I’m tired. Please share your honest take: Is a man with a guitar and a voice enough? Or does live looping multiple instruments in real-time really get you going? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments 👇