Shy Musician - 2025 09 18

 

View from my chair this morning. Musical instruments, recording equipment, broadcast equipment. Getting ready for Monday evening house concert. Trying not to check email for registrations.

It takes courage to for a shy musician to make friends. 

I was listening to my mom and dad sing folk songs before I could walk. I took piano lessons while I was in Grade 1 and 2. My dad gave me a second hand guitar from the Salvation Army when I was about 10 years old. I played double bass in my dad's elementary school band. I played double bass in the Vancouver Youth Orchestra, Junior and Senior level. I played clarinet in the North Van Youth Band while I was still in elementary school. I played my first 'show' at the Argyle Secondary High School Talent Show in 1969, singing folk songs with my sister. I played french horn in Mr. O'Malley's high school music program, switching to double bass in grade 10. I studied double bass with Ken Friedman, Principal Bassist with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, with the goal of becoming a professional orchestral bassist. Throughout these years I always had a guitar, learning songs from the Joan Baez albums in my fathers record library. I played bass for a community square dance band. I played guitar and sang songs for my son's grade two class. I was a busker in the translink system for three years. I played in the rhythm section for the Rainy City Gay Mens Choir and Out in Harmony Choir. I played bass in the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra.

I really love playing music. I love reading music. I love improving my skill. I love playing in bands and orchestra. I love to sing.

I was born into a family of singers. We sang together at every family gathering. I sang when I was alone, I sang when I was lonely. I sang when I was in nature. I sang when I worked to help pass the tedious hours of manual labour.

Singing turned into songwriting. Writing songs is a way to articulate feelings and experiences that give meaning to otherwise perplexing events in life.

Music never left me. However, somewhere along that life story, I developed crippling performance anxiety. Stress hormones would flood my body and brain when I would play for auditions or attempt to solo. I became a shy musician.

I am happy on the bass, singing backup, out of the spotlight. My shyness meant there were only a few that even knew that I played, much less that I wanted to work on music projects. At the same time, I started to develop my own voice, my own musical sensibility. I started writing songs. Music never left me, and it started to insist that the music I was creating be shared. I wasn't only a shy musician, I was a lonely musician.

I was listening to a conversation recently about the drive to make creative works and the drive to bring them to the world. They spoke about our artistic desire to see and hear creative works that we can't find out in the world and so we make them ourselves. But because we made them ourselves, we know that they can be better, they are incomplete, we must try again. We make another, and another, we keep making this artistic work that we want to see in the world, but no one is making it and so we make it ourselves. We may not even see ourselves as artists or musicians. We just have a drive to create artistic works. An irrational persistence. We are the creators of work that is only revealed to us through the creative process. The work we create is always in the process of becoming, it never feels like we get it exactly right. 

Sharing my music has been a confusing, almost baffling drive. If ever I was under an illusion of seeking fame or fortune, I know that is no longer part of my story. Nonetheless, the music I am creating is pushing me to share it. That it be part of the world outside, that it be witnessed somehow. It is like my music wants to make friends.

I am a shy musician who has spent a lifetime with music, I have left music many times, but it has never left me.

This brings me to this next Monday, September 22, when I am offering my first house concert. It has taken as long as it has taken to get this far. There is more to come. I may always be a shy musician. My music wants to make friends. I am a shy musician who wants to make more friends.

It takes courage to admit that I am a musician. It takes courage to admit that I am a lonely musician. It takes courage to ask musicians to play with me. It takes courage to be a shy musician who wants to make musical friends.

House Concert Registration