Memories 🐘
During a dinner with a group of friends last night, we got to talking about Americana Fest which is taking over Nashville this week. Everywhere you go, there are musicians: playing day and night, and the city feels (even more) alive with music. My first Americana Fest was in 2013 which coincided with my first trip ever to Nashville. I was part of a group of 20 songwriters brought out to Music City under the tagline ‘the British are coming’ (!!!) and for 3 weeks, we spent our days writing songs and laying down demos, and our nights playing at Belcourt Taps (which is sadly been knocked down).
At dinner, I mused with my dear friend and co-writer, the amazing artist Elise Hayes, who’d said she’d spent most of her evenings gigging at Belcourt Taps back in the day, whether we might have met and not realised it. Elise and I met in 2022 at a writing camp in South Carolina, where we found out we had so many friends in common and were utterly livid that none of them had introduced us earlier.
But when doing preparation for this post today, going down memory lane from my 2013 photo album, I found this:
I was at this round, at the OG Listening Room, to see my dear friend Lotte Mullan (far right) play with her friend Anna Krantz (second from the left), also from the UK, who was an artist I loved and has since become a dear friend and co-writer. Inbetween the two British gals were Maren Morris (second from the right) and Elise Hayes (far left). Now, don’t get me wrong, it was cool to remember I saw Maren before she was MAREN MORRIS but I was beside myself at the fact that I’d seen Elise play in 2013 and it took us 9 years to finally meet! It was wild to have wondered about whether our paths would have crossed, nearly 11 years to the day, and to then have digital proof that they had quite literally blew my mind. It also goes to show how you never know who’s just about to break and become a mega superstar when you go to a writer’s round (like Maren) and you never know when a future bestie is up on stage, getting ready to change your life (like Elise).
That whole trip to be honest was so magical for me and is what led me to living here today. From accidentally stumbling into Paul Williams’ birthday party, to having front row tickets to Taylor Swift’s Red tour, to singing Craig David’s Walking Away with the writer Mark Hill (the original Artful Dodger), Ed Sheeran and Gus from Alt J in Santa’s Pub, to weeping openly in front of Holly Williams as she debuted Waiting On June there was opportunity, hope and joy everywhere. Was it because I was seeing the city, that way of life for the first time? Was it because it was so out of the ordinary for me that I found that magic everywhere I looked? Is it when something becomes daily, mundane or expected that we lose that sense of wonder?
Speaking of Holly Williams, this August I got to support her down in Florida, and speaking with her back stage, I shared with her that her music, her song Waiting On June and her performance at Groove Records in East Nashvile changed my life 11 years ago and made me want to move to Nashville. She was delighted, and she thanked me for sharing it and said ‘isn’t it incredible, all the people we’ve inspired, that we’ll never know about whilst at the same time, how many people who won’t get a chance to say how much they’ve inspired us?’ It was such a full circle moment for me. Sometimes stepping into the past can be tricky - it can lead you down the ‘should have’, ‘could have’, ‘if only’ path - a path I have followed far too often. But sometimes the past can remind you of how much you’ve done, how far you’ve come, how far there is still to go, how close you are to the magic, every single day - it’s always there, it’s just if you choose to see it, to be near it, to cherish and nourish it.
Quote For It 📜
"Finding your way in life is like unlocking the combination of a safe. You have to go forwards and backwards. Life is not a direct march from A to B. The twists and turns are progress, not regression. What feels like a setback in the moment is later revealed to have been part of the path all along. Each move was necessary to get to your end goal."
Getting Prosey 📚
Sometimes, when I feel like I have lost the magic, when my path of crumbs is empty and when victim mindset (hello Pisces full moon) begins to drown me, this passage gives me air and like Lee Ann Womak once sang, when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I also hope you dance, and also choose to harmonise.
There are two paths to magic: Imagination and paying attention. Imagination is the fiction we love, the truths built of falsehoods, glowing dust on the water’s surface. Paying attention is about intentional noticing, participating in making meaning to lend new weight to our world. An acorn. The geometry of a beehive. The complexity of whale song. The perfect slowness of a heron.
Real magic requires your intention, your choice to harmonize. Of course it does. The heron cannot cast starlight onto the dark shallows to entrance the bluegills. Not unless you do your part. You must choose to meet her halfway. And when you do, you may find that magic isn’t a dismissal of what is real. It’s a synthesis of it, the nectar of fact becoming the honey of meaning.
Peach Picks 🍑
This week, I’m sharing music from a new platform - Apple Music. I finally stopped my subscription to Spotify after their latest scandal was revealed, and I’m sharing the playlist from Americana Fest 2023 - let me know your favourites!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s newsletter and thanks so much for following the crumbs with me - I can’t wait to share more in a few weeks!
Love,