Photo by Cy Winstanley - Brandy Clark tour 2023
When I departed for tour in September, I thought it might be my last.
I left home for the month-long run with Brandy feeling confused about everything in my life and wondering if I even still enjoyed playing music.
With the benefit of hindsight (and medication) I can now see that I was depressed, probably for the first time in my life, and that everything had lost its shine, not just music.
The path that landed me in this dark place started after the Tattletale Saints New Zealand tour in March. I arrived home from the month-long tour sick, with no voice, and feeling completely drained, physically and mentally.
A month later I started questioning whether I wanted to continue life as a musician, or whether 20 years was enough to give this music dream: a pursuit that feeds while simultaneously sucking so much from us.
I wondered if I still enjoyed music or if I just kept doing it because I’d done it for so long. I questioned whether it was time to try something else completely. Re-train as the human rights lawyer I’d wanted to be as a kid perhaps, or throw myself completely into my non-music business. And in the thick of this mid-life crisis, I stopped teaching and writing.
I write this blog to share the truth about the experience of being a professional musician. And that means being honest even when it’s hard. But I also want to inspire and encourage, so it seemed better for me to just keep quiet until I emerged from the dark tunnel I’d found myself lost in.
I believe you can only give to other people when you are full up yourself, especially when teaching. With my creativity and musical joy waning, I didn’t feel like the best cheerleader for others. So I put down my pom poms to try to figure out what I wanted out of life.
Partway through a busy summer, while I was traveling home from a tour in London, my partner was hospitalized and the career crisis that had been consuming me evaporated in the blink of a jetlagged eye.
I flew back from Heathrow and landed in Chicago, not knowing how, or even where, he was. The first big lesson I learned this year is that nothing else matters when someone you love is in danger.
I sobbed through immigration and almost left my upright bass at baggage claim after waiting an interminably long time for it to come through the oversize door. I was so desperate to get home that I truly didn’t care one way or the other about what happened to my prized possession, ready to abandon the instrument I usually don’t want other people to even touch if that’s what it took to get there faster. The bass appeared minutes later, I re-checked it, got my connection home, and finally reached the hospital several hours later exhausted and frantic with worry.
He spent two weeks in the hospital and I slipped into a period of sleeplessness, anxiety, stress-induced weight loss, and profound worry as I tried to navigate his recovery and keep our retail business running without him.
Over the next month, as he recovered and life got back to relative normality, the career anxiety that had disappeared with the news of his illness came surging back.
I worried about leaving him and going on tour again. I worried about how I would balance touring and our business next year. I worried about how to decide what I wanted in life. I worried that not knowing what I wanted was a sign that it wasn’t music. I worried about how much I was worrying. Yay, anxiety.
In the midst of all that worrying, we decided to buy a second location for the business, because, obviously, making huge life decisions when one person has been recently hospitalized and the other is deep in a career crisis is a great idea.
For better or for worse, we did it, and I found myself energized and excited by the prospect of expanding. Over the previous few years, I’d come to enjoy working on the existing business. Creating and implementing the marketing strategy, developing a business plan for growth, designing the online store, and exercising my brain in a way I hadn’t for a long time. It had felt great to be inspired by something again and I was eager for the business to grow.
But I was also starting to think that because I enjoyed something else and was deriving so much joy from something outside of music it must therefore mean I didn’t enjoy music anymore.
I was fretting over this all-or-nothing ultimatum I’d constructed for myself as I went on tour, truly believing it might be my last. I thought I would have one last hurrah after 20 years of being a professional musician and then pack up my basses forever.
We rehearsed in Nashville and I slipped back into music mode like the comfortable, well-loved glove it’s been for the last decades. Nothing had changed for me mentally yet, but I was able to do my job well and it felt nice to do something I’m good at.
Over the next few days of rehearsing and traveling to start the tour, I felt little glimmers that maybe I’d been wrong about wanting to quit music.
Then, barely ten minutes into the first show, it hit me deeply and unequivocally: I love playing music. I always have, and I always will.
I love the act of creating something in the moment. I love the energy of the audience and creating harmonies with other voices. I love putting into action the skills I’ve developed over my lifetime and I love experiencing all this with the people dear to me.
Settling into the performance and with the constant stream of intellectual analysis finally quiet, I was able to feel the undeniable truth: I absolutely could not walk away from music.
The following weeks spent on tour was incredible. The band was fantastic both on and off stage, Brandy and I further deepened our friendship and working relationship, and we got to play some serious bucket list venues like Red Rocks in Denver, Colorado, and The Troubadour in Los Angeles, California.
It became easy to remember why I’d worked so hard to get to this point in my career.
Now, home again, I’ve had time to process the last few months and these are my takeaways:
It’s possible to appreciate and desire multiple vocations at once. Enjoying working on my non-music business doesn’t therefore mean I don’t want to play music anymore. It simply means I enjoy both pursuits. Nothing more, nothing less.
It is ok if music (or whatever your passion is) isn’t the only thing that makes you happy. That doesn’t make you less of an artist or mean you’re not committed enough, it just means you’re a multi-faceted person. You don’t have to choose one or the other to demonstrate your devotion to it.
Playing music with people you love is the best feeling in the world, and it’s a great reminder of why we do all the hard work outside of performing. When you hit a low spot emotionally, or feel buried by the music business minutiae, it’s easy to forget why you do music in the first place. Playing with friends will always remind you.
Sometimes you need to re-invent what you do to find that spark of joy again. Whether it’s trying a different live line-up, jamming with someone new, learning songs by an artist outside your normal genre, or - in my case as a coach - teaching musicians about websites instead of marketing for a while. Do what you love whenever possible and if the love wanes a little try re-imagining how you approach it.
Untreated depression and anxiety are what initiated this questioning of everything in my life, but the most surprising lesson I learned this year is that the experience of honestly entertaining the idea of quitting music was the only way I could truly know I didn’t want to.
Now that I’m taking something for the depression and anxiety and the fog has dissipated, I can remember why I’ve been playing music for so long. That standing on stage, playing music I love with people I treasure, is still the best feeling in the world.
The pursuit of that feeling is what unites us as musicians, and it’s why I’m still here, sharing the hard stuff.
I reveal these very personal difficult experiences this year in the hope that if you’re going through something similar you’ll see you’re not alone and that there’s a way through it. That medication is sometimes the best way through a tough time and it’s not something to be ashamed of.
Your path might not lead you to the same outcome as mine, but it will take you exactly where you need to be if you trust it.
Dear Vanessa: I am not a musician, I am a nurse so I cannot begin to understand the pressure you are under. However, what I do know, is that the last half of 2023 has had some of my darkest hours with still some really hard things to power through in December. The show at the Ryman was my first introduction to ‘Tattletale Saints’ your gifts are magical and lifesaving. The show definitely filled my life/love tank to rally through my divorce and child custody details. I love you all and I worry for you, Cy and Brandy. I worry about the other side of the biz and the pressure. I pray for you all frequently, specifically for your hearts, voice health, overall health, and for your hands because Lord knows the world needs your musical gifts. Thank you, thank you for this post. I hope to see you soon in 2024. Happy Holidays. ❤️
It’s not just ok if music isn’t the only thing that makes you happy, it’s ideal! Breadth in one’s interests makes for a well rounded human. Very glad you’re still chasing that musical feeling tho x