Blog: Insomniac, Revisited

I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly stated this, much less done so in a full on blog format, but the release of my song “Insomniac” was a traumatic one for me. If you were around at the time & a follower of mine then you would possibly remember that the song, upon its original release, had to be pulled, remastered, & redistributed. All of this was to do with background drama & poor choices that were made against my better judgment & with promises that the decisions being made would pan out & be for the best. Once again, my intuition was right on that, but that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

Last night, while working on something for my socials, I stumbled upon the series of videos that Evan & I created to promote the release of “Insomniac.” These videos stemmed from an idea that I had which I referred to as “things you do when you can’t sleep.” They featured a single shot of someone one would do when they can’t sleep & then about halfway through the 10-20 second video, the intro to the song would cut in, it would pull up a title card & give the date of release as well as a call to pre-save. I remember that we started with a much larger list of activities but ended up cutting it down to nine for the promotion; exercise, watching TV, taking a bath, playing video games, eating, texting, taking a shower, drinking, & surfing the internet. We shot these little blurb videos over the course of several evenings & filled them to the brim with little easter eggs as well, mostly as call backs or little features of the things that I enjoy. For example, the one where I was surfing the web features me going to my website, this website. It also has a “Country Music Allies” pin in the bottom right of the frame, a group that I partnered with for the release of the song. Additionally, I’m snacking on “Smart Sweets” a brand I was all over at the time & there’s an Assassin’s Creed lanyard dangling by the computer, a gaming franchise I enjoy. We put so much thought & curation into these little promotional videos that I don’t feel like people even gave that much of a passing glance to.

What strikes me as odd about “Insomniac” is that for a lot of you it still remains one of your Top 3 songs of mine, despite the fact that it is one of my lowest streaming. Background meddling & a botched release have a lot to do with that. It’s frequently one of the songs I get asked to play in the live setting most often but for the longest time it was the song that I wanted the least to do with, simply because of how grueling a process it was to get it out & how it essentially became dead in the water upon release. Nothing went right with its launch, all the way down to the album artwork file being corrupted upon hours of completion & immediately requiring a do over. I guess that was foreshadowing.

But the more time passes, the more the content from the “Insomniac” era resurfaces, the more it saddens me all over again that this song that Jared Scott, Evan, & I had so much writing, & Joshua Gleave & I had so much producing, ended up as essentially a lost cause simply because of incompetence by those who I was prodded into trusting for its release. Even when we went back in & tried to salvage the song & re-release it, everything got lumped back together & was immediately null & void again. Unfortunately, I think that this was one of the last releases that I went “all out” on with the promotion & the efforts behind it because the project that I worked so hard on & had so much fair in essentially ended up amounting to nothing. I may as well have just cold dropped the song. I guess that comes with the territory of trying to be an artist though.

There are still embers of hope somewhere inside of me that “Insomniac” will have its day. I’m not sure if or when that will be, but I still hold on to its vindication somewhere in my heart.

I understand that art is meant to be, simply, without expectation, but it’s really hard to watch the things you spent countless hours getting off the ground immediately crash & burn with no immediate chance of redemption or salvation. Countless hours, countless dollars, essentially amounting to nothing, it cuts deep.

For those of you out there who tried tirelessly to salvage this song for me upon its release, I am beyond grateful. For those of you who still stream it, who still have love for this song, I hope to be one of you some day soon, it’s just still a very tender spot of my musical catalog for me.

I will continue to revisit this song which I have exiled from my psyche, in the hopes that someday I rediscover my love for it & I hope to someday be at a place where I feel comfortable & convinced to share the full story around the goings on of it all, but until then, I leave it to you all to give the love that it so desperately deserves.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: The Greatest Teacher, Failure Is.

This past weekend a friend of mine hit me up to go audition for a mainstage musical at TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center). TPAC is where we get all of our touring shows here in Nashville; Hamilton, Wicked, The Lion King, etc. The musical in question, May We All, was a Nashville based production being produced by the lead singers of FGL, Brian Kelley & Tyler Hubbard. The modern country jukebox musical was specifically looking for country artists over musical theater actors, would feature an array of country songs, in addition to featuring a nightly revolving country artist role with the likes of Hubbard, Keith Urban, Breland, Carly Pearce, Etc. set to appear. In addition to all that the six week run would pay a minimum of around $1K a week to each performer. I saw it as an opportunity for great exposure in addition to some major monetary gain. So I auditioned.

My friend Kimi, who was the one insisting I go to the open call audition, had done a private audition through her acting school on Friday, the day prior. Having made the decision to go, Ev & I set out to preparing audition material at around 10:30 PM Friday evening, the open call was Saturday morning at 10. We did headshots in the upstairs bedroom, ran to Walgreens at 11:15 to print off said headshots, then I came home & made up an acting resumé & chose an audition song. All-in-all I ended up getting to bed around midnight 30 that night.

The next morning I got up around 8 to start warming up & finalize the sheet music I needed for my audition. I got to Starstruck, where the audition was being held around 9:45 & the audition list already had 65 people signed up in front of me. I waited around 4 hours to audition & was finally called in around 2 PM where I sang 32 bars of “Speechless” by Dan + Shay. I was immediately asked to come back in on Sunday afternoon for a callback. That evening I received my callback packet with the music & lines to prepare, it was for one of the supporting leads! I prepared the lines & the song, “One Man Band” by Old Dominion & prepared to return around one the next day.

Enter Sunday Morning. I wake up & my voice is exhausted, flat out exhausted. I warmed up through it, being gentle & trying to get back to at least a semi-decent voice for this audition. I had the song memorized, as it was one I was already familiar with, & felt complete & utterly ready to go nail my call back! I went back to Starstruck, ran into a few old Belmont friends of mine I hadn’t seen in a while, & waited to get called in.

After an hour or so my name was called & I got in line with a few other people who were called back for the role as well. I was last in my group to go, & again, felt completely confident in my auditioning capabilities. Boy was I wrong.

I get called into the room, nerves are fine, nothing out of the ordinary, & get told they’ve cut the song from the Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, to just Verse & Chorus. Totally fine. I get halfway through the first verse & my brain goes blank. To be completely honest I’m not sure which went first, the lyrics or my voice but one of them said “deuces” & bounced. Having completely forgotten the words to this song I’m very, very familiar with, I started making them up. I flat out started making up lyrics. THEN I did my best to find the words in my sheet music & got further lost. It was a catastrophe. Between my made up lyrics & my voice not working every other note it came as no surprise to me when I finished singing & the casting director said “I think that’ll be all for us today,” to which I replied, “I completely understand” & proceeded to laugh my way out of the room. They didn’t even have me attempt to read lines, something each person in front of me had done. I went back to where I’d left my coat & just bounced.

Surprisingly I wasn’t mortified. Quite the contrary. I had screwed up this callback so horrifically that it didn’t even feel real to me, it felt like a farce. I had gone into this room feeling 100% on top of it & had, at best, delivered 40% of a performance for them. It was baaaaaaaad.

I’m sure some of you saw me post about this on my story. There I expressed that I was actually proud of the magnitude at which I’d failed & I still stand by that. You see I went in confident, I went in prepared, but nothing I could have done would have prepared me for the flub up I made. It was out of my control.

Did I fail? Yes. Exponentially. Was I embarrassed by it? Partially. Was I upset? Not in the least bit.

You see, so often we put so much pressure on success, so much pressure on the avoidance of failure that even our victories fall short. I failed this last weekend in the ultimate form. I failed not because I didn’t try, but because I did. There was no room for “what if” there was nothing different I could have done to have made that audition stellar. Why? Because at the end of the day I had reached the limits of what my body was capable of at that time.

A day later, Monday, I came to find out I was sick with a cold that’s still pinning me down a little today. I knew in that moment, on that day, that my extreme mess up was not the measure of my success nor was it a measure of my talents. It was my body saying “enough.” But hey, at least I tired right?

We put so much pressure on ourselves to be the best, to be better, at all times & for what? Exhaustion? Burnout? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t push yourself but I am saying you need to allow space for yourself to have grace. It’s okay to fail, it’s how we learn. Imagine how boring life would be if we got it right all the time, there’d be no point in celebrating anything. Nothing would ever be exciting.

At the end of the day I clearly wasn’t meant to do this. This clearly wasn’t the path that had been set for me & I may have very well dodged a bullet or cleared the way for something even greater & more in line with what I want & who I am. I remember sitting & thinking before my first audition, much in line with FGL, that if it’s meant to be it’ll be. Which clearly it wasn’t.

Failure is an excellent teacher, or as Yoda put it “the greatest teacher, failure is.” It requires us to look at our short comings, requires us to see where we need to work harder, requires us to acknowledge when we need rest, but it also gives us a chance to course correct & rediscover the path we’re meant to follow.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

As always, much love to you all!

-C