The biggest thing I’ve learned about being an artist is that confidence isn’t natural. It’s built over time. At least that’s been my experience so far.
I started performing consistently about nine months before writing this blog post. My first “shows” were open mic nights where I could get comfortable on stage in a low-pressure environment. My roommate Kaelan plays guitar for me, so we would go together and our other roommates and friends would come out to support. We played at Axelrad Beer Garden here in Houston, which is a great spot if anyone is looking for a cool open mic. We still go every now and then.
The first couple times I played there, I was absolutely quaking in my boots. I barely remember a single thing that happened during those performances. My throat would get dry and I would try to come up with every excuse not to get on stage. But one day I just walked up there without thinking about it. Starting in a small, intimate environment helped a lot. When the crowd is smaller, it feels less like you are performing and more like you are sharing something with a room of people. There is less pressure to be perfect and more room to simply exist on stage and connect. A lot of artists start at open mics for that exact reason.
Once I started doing full shows with my band, where people were actually buying tickets to come see me, that was a whole different hurdle. For my first real show I decided I wanted to be the promoter too. I picked the venue, chose the other artists, sold the tickets, bought the drinks, and handled the whole thing. Looking back, that was a lot. I am not entirely sure why I decided to take that on. Actually I probably do. I can be a bit of a control freak when I am facing the unknown, and performing live for the first time definitely felt like the unknown. But that show built a lot of confidence for me. We sold out, I sold some merch, and most importantly I did not die. That night proved to me that if I kept performing there might actually be a future in it, so I kept going.
Fast forward to now. We film all of my shows and I watch them back later. It is incredibly humbling, but it has also been one of the best ways for me to improve. Now I am able to nitpick details about my performances without getting too down on myself about it, which is important. Because of that I started taking dance lessons and working with a vocal coach. I wanted to feel as comfortable as possible on stage, and those things have helped tremendously. I still feel like a wet noodle sometimes when I am performing, but now it is maybe only ten percent of the time. The bigger change is how I feel about my voice. I feel confident singing now and I do not cringe when I hear recordings of myself anymore. I actually like how I sound, which is a place I never thought I would get to.
Another unexpected hurdle for me was stage outfits. I have never been the most fashionable person and at home I basically live in sweatpants. But when I thought about the best version of myself to present on stage, it probably was not sweatpants. For a long time I would pick my outfit at the very last minute, which I think was a form of avoidance. I would end up with a pile of ten different outfits on the floor and feel like I hated all of them right before I had to leave for soundcheck. Now I pick my outfit the day before and try it on ahead of time. It sounds like a small thing, but it makes a big difference in how confident I feel walking into a show.
I also have a bunch of pre-show rituals that help me relax and get into the right mental space before performing. I will probably write another blog post about those later. If you are anything like me, confidence on stage does not just appear overnight. It builds slowly through repetition, doing something over and over until it starts to feel normal. And honestly I still feel like I have a long way to go before performing feels completely second nature. But I am getting there.
