A new found confidence
It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I started calling myself a musician. Even though I'd been writing, playing and performing my own music for a long time I still couldn't bring myself to say the word 'musician' when asked the common question 'what do you do?'. Let alone get passed the wall of cringe to utter the word 'songwriter'.
I was having a conversation with a 'writer' when I had the epiphany.
We'd just met, and I asked what she did. I'm a writer, she said. I was instantly interested to find out more about her, she must be good at it, she must be doing really cool stuff I thought. As it turns out she was pitching some TV ideas to the ABC and writing a book on the side. Wow, just wow, I thought.
Later in the conversation as we continued to chat about this and that, she also mentioned that she worked 5 days a week as a receptionist. WHAT! But you just called yourself a writer!
I wasn't sure what to think now. I was confused. How could someone have the gall to call themselves a writer if they didn't earn any money from it and worked 9-5 doing something else. At first I thought she was deceitful for telling me she was a writer. I didn't even call myself a musician and yet I had been touring with my band and releasing music for years.
But after thinking about it a little more I realised she was being courageous. But more to the point, she was correct.
It didn't matter what she had to do to earn an income. The thing she spent all her time thinking about and working on was her writing. That was the thing she was passionate about, the thing she was proud of. That's how she defined herself.
And that's what she taught me. It's so important how you define yourself because it's not only the message you're sending out to the world but also the message you're sending to yourself.
I hadn't yet found the confidence to define myself as a songwriter and musician because I was embarrassed that I'd never really made any proper money from it.
But the truth is, money isn't how a person’s artistic merit should be judged. Money is something we all need some of in this society to, well, you know, eat and stuff.. but you'd be hard pressed to find an artist who was originally inspired to do what they do for the money.
There are much, much easier ways to make that stuff.
This might be obvious to some. But it wasn't obvious for me and unfortunately I spent a big part of my artistic life feeling like a bit of an imposter.
But luckily I've seen the light. I've now spent nearly 10 years in the same band, it's a band I started with my sister and friends, we're called the Little Stevies. I write some songs on my own, and I write a lot of songs with my sister, and we're really good at it now, because we've been doing it for so long.
Just recently my sister and I made our 5th collection of songs into an album. Last year we returned from our third tour of North America. Later this year we'll tour within Australia again and play gig number 'five hundred and something'. And I can't wait.
It's occurred to me that I might never make any proper money out of my music, it's also occurred to me that my band might never find a level of notoriety that would be considered successful to some. And it's at those times I wonder if I should do something else. But what else would I do? This is my passion, this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm proud of, this is who I am.
I'm a songwriter and musician, just ask me.
- Byll
