A Love Letter to Open Mic Nights

Open mic nights are the best. They’re really a great place to try new songs, face your fear of performing live and make new friends. In fact, I think my favourite part of the experience is making new friends. How often do we as adults, get this opportunity? It becomes harder and harder to connect with people and makes new friends once work life settles in after university or college, some of us even have a growing family back home to care for which makes it even harder to find time for ourselves. Also, how often do you get to be vulnerable with other humans once our lives become stable?

I think the key to creating friendships and relationships is just that: vulnerability. Doing difficult (fun, but difficult) things together. Showing up. I definitely felt the absence of new connections during and after the pandemic. I worked from home and was putting a lot of effort into my Youtube channel instead of going outside and playing shows. I still think growing a social media presence is important, I just think that live shows are equally important now. Neither can replace the other and neither should be absent in any artistic journey. As my friend Phil has told me:

Quote of the century right there ⬆️

Open mic nights have shown me that they’re a great way to create new connections and find people to collaborate with. I’m now a lot more “in the know” of upcoming shows local bands are part of, and some of these need more bands on the bill (like my band!). I’ve also learned a lot about how organizing shows work, booking tours. I was oblivious to all of this before.

I think a big thing that has stopped me from playing for so long had been the fear of not being perfect (i.e not signing well). Through going to more and more shows and open mics, I’ve learned that everyone has the same struggle and fear as me. Some folks are great on some nights and not so great other nights, we’re all human at the end of the day. Some people kill it every time and I am completely jealous of them haha.

The best thing to do to get better at performing live is to go outside and do more shows!

In other news, I’ve got a new single out today! It’s called ‘Home’.

This is a song I hold very dear to my heart, I wrote it in October 2022 after leaving home to travel for a year. I left my cat back in Canada and felt like I had abandoned her. She was well taken care of (one of my friends moved into my apartment for a year to look after her while I was away) but still, I felt so guilty. Home was written from the perspective of a cat who gets adopted, then left out on the street, only to find a new home and family later that cares for her. 

It features my friend Ameya Ajay from Melbourne, she’s the main vocalist and rhythm guitarist in a cool shoegaze band called Keaper who are currently touring Australia promoting their new album release.

I also got to do an interview with a Canadian art culture magazine talking about Two Bad Bricks recently, check out the article here.

Cheers,

Kim