(An audio recording (English) of this blog is available at the bottom of the page) Click here.
It feels very weird sitting down to write a 2020 round up, because honestly I felt like so much and yet so little actually happened that year that it’s quite hard to try and condense it into a blog that makes any sense.
I’m not going to lament too much about the coming (and sadly not going) of the covid pandemic – because if you’re anything like me, you’re rather weary from it all. We all know it sucked, for some more than others; be it loss of career, money, social life or even sadly the loss of life of loved ones. So this is merely going to be from a personal, and I suppose selfish point of view.
So I started 2020 with a goal. It was a bit wishy washy in terms of it’s direction and doability but it was massively important – not so much in what in entailed but in the fact that for the first time, I was calling it a ‘goal’ and not a wish. I knew roughly what I wanted, and to be honest had simply no clue how to achieve it; but I was prepared to give it my best shot and was able to at least half plan a way to get there (or so I hoped!)
Up til that point, my whole background had been in a different field. Several actually since that’s generally the way my brain works best. I was an actor – film and TV occasionally but essentially Musical Theatre performing, as well as working as a portrait artist. Whilst it’s still considered ‘singing’, it’s a very different world to ‘metal music’, and the two don’t exactly have a huge cross over of contacts. So completely shutting down one, and wanting to go head first into the other – meant starting from scratch. Sure I had a huge wealth of performing, and indeed life experience as well as a versatile voice, but I had no idea where to start in the quest for a Metal Singing Career. I was a complete newbie.
So the plan was essentially this: start posting on social media, create cover videos of ‘metal’ and ‘rock’ songs, try reaching out to people, and make connections and hope upon hope, that someone, somewhere would see me and ask to be in their band or at least join them as a backing singer for their concerts.
…
I told you the plan wasn’t particularly great!!
It was rather relying on luck…and a somewhat ‘Cinderella story’ style approach – but “hey”, I thought: “I’m due some luck sometime in life!”
All of this of course whilst on zero budget, running a household, and also doing my other job as a pet portrait artist (which in truth I was rather exasperated with and ready to pack in).
Wanting to be cautious and not invest too much money in the new career goal, I started small with a cheap USB mic – it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in myself, but I very much see too many people thinking if they have all the latest equipment it instantly makes them a better musician. This isn’t so much a case of the phrase “The clothes maketh the man” but more rather “All the gear, and no idea”. It didn’t feel genuine to me and the journey I was starting out on. This set up would do – a phrase I used a lot very early on – “Make the best with what you have”….it’s actually a phrase I’ve lived by my whole life.
Of course everything is always much harder than we expect. Actually building social media and a youtube channel nowadays is rather difficult – since every one is now trying to do the same; and I certainly wasn’t in a strong enough position to start reaching out to anyone on a professional level – so what should I do?
Well I built a basic website, a couple of covers came and went, I even got to London to see a band I loved and had done a cover of weeks before (although that concert didn’t actually go according to plan either!) and the journey seemed to have started with promise….
and then the first Lockdown hit England and indeed the rest of the world and everything slowly ground to a halt.
As we all know initially we thought we’d all be out of the woods by the early summer, but as the weeks went by we knew this wasn’t like anything we’d dealt with before. Venues were shutting down, concerts cancelled or postponed and bands went into preservation mode as the main source of income suddenly disappeared.
For me, (as I did say this was a selfish blog) I presumed that was my goals scuppered for the year. Initially I still pushed on, continued to grown my voice and found some great people to collaborate with, just for fun, on various tracks. But as the summer approached, and we all knew we’d be giving that up – there still seemed some hope for the winter – or at least an early 2021.
And then in June of 2020, that’s when I then came down with what my doctor said was “likely to be covid” (I wasn’t able to be tested in time but that was his educated diagnosis) and suddenly for me everything stopped. It burnt my lungs and I lost around 4-6weeks, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it felt like forever as I was losing all the progress I had worked so hard for.
It’s always trite to hear the phrase “It was a turning point” but it kind of was. If you’re knowledgable of the ‘butterfly effect’ then this was definitely a moment in which I life could have gone one of two ways. All I can say is – thank f**…sorry…thank goodness, I’m a tenacious son of a bitch at times and I didn’t give it all up.
Once I recovered I tried to get going again, I had new plans – that’s where the Casual Covers started, and although I was now doing more art work all the way til Christmas, I picked up the social media again and tried to at least have a very small core group of followers who I actually interacted with on a weekly basis. It’s actually rather nice that some of these people I would now genuinely call friends, and that definitely makes it worthwhile!
So a few more covers came and went and then (through one of the new, aforementioned social media friends – Thank you David!) I saw a post where someone was looking for a female singer to join a band and this was, yes I have to say – another turning point.
If you’ve read my other blog – you’ll know how this all turned out, but if you don’t I shall summarise a little.
It would have been very easy to tell myself I wasn’t good enough to apply. This band had previously worked with a host of well known singers including Elize Ryd from Amaranthe; and there was no way in hell I was even close to that standard. But I really had nothing to lose other than some time putting everything together to apply.
It was around a week before I heard anything back from Andreas, the band leader and the emails were free flowing, chatting about the music but I’d never actually been given the nod. It took me doing a rough recording at home of one of the new album tracks to be officially “given the job”….I did it all – I cried, I did a little happy dance – and honestly it still hasn’t sunk in fully – but more on that later.
Essentially, here I was…in late October, having achieved my 2020 goal and it was both wonderful and highly confusing as to how on earth it had actually happened! I was going to say ‘I didn’t care how it happened’, but that’s not true. I did care. I had actually done the right things, made the right choices and it had come to fruition. Something I wanted, and planned for was now here.
It did all hit a bit quicker than I expected as I was now trying to juggle my art commissions and recording the first track for the album but it was wonderful and I was so incredibly grateful.
As it was I ended 2020 in an odd headspace – really excited and hopeful for a 2021 – where I would hopefully meet my fellow bandmates in Nergard and perhaps even perform the songs sometime that year. But I was also a bit lost, I actually had no idea what to set as a goal for 2021. I couldn’t really think. It had to be tangible and logical and achievable. But exactly what?
As it is we’re coming to the end of January (a notoriously awful month for me filled with anniversaries of deaths I’d rather not be reminded about) and I still haven’t really set my mind on what I want this year. And it is, I have to face it – because of Covid.
I’d initially told myself at the very end of 2020 that it didn’t matter about covid. I set the 2020 goals before I even knew about it and I still managed to achieve it so it shouldn’t matter this year. I can probably achieve what I want anyway if I work around the problems and just keep going.
But as we started this month, and tours were being cancelled or postponed to 2022; it felt dire. The first month of a new, and supposedly hopeful year – already being written off – ‘wait til next year’ they say. And so whilst I hate ending a blog post on a negative note – I do feel a little lost for this year. There are things I want for this year. Big and lofty achievements that, maybe, maybe aren’t achievable; who knows. But it’s certainly hard to put any kind of plan in place. That being said, I know if I wait a little, just to see how things progress in a month or two…that very quickly the entire year will be gone and I won’t have achieved anything – and honestly that would be such a terrible waste.
So here IS to positivity and goals for 2021, whatever they may be. I have an album to record, fun collaborations to write, and a long list of songs I want to cover for Youtube. Once the winter blues are gone there is going to be so much I can do, and I plan to keep reaching out, making connections, making friends. I just hope, that with all that music that will come from this year, it can all be celebrated….with a hug.
Don’t forget to come and follow me on Instagram for more regular day to day nonsense! @stefani_keogh.
Thanks very much and goodbye for now.
Stefani Keogh 