Biting More Than I Could Chew

Last post I dished out a whole lot of info, with little explanation, but I’m here to offer one of the more interesting stories.

Stage 72, NYC

So back in 2014, I asked a friend of mine if she would be interested in managing my music career.  She’s a very well respected individual in the music scene in New York, who had charted on Billboard during her time as a recording artist.  She had been encouraging me for ages to keep singing, since watching me perform years before.  I was delighted when she said “yes”.

Her idea was to set up a live performance as a way of “reintroducing me” to the music industry.  We were going to have me headline my own show and I thought it would be a great idea to document the time by making my own documentary.  I had figured out a name for the show and the documentary: Yuan Fin, which I made reference to back in my January 2015 post.

I asked quite a number of my friends to help out shelled out more cash than I could afford at the time to ensure this thing happened.  Lots of folks coming and going before the start, and finally was able to land a crew of folks who were a Godsend.  Funny enough, even an ex-boyfriend/co-songwriter of mine was willing to join the band for this show.

That documentary, unfortunately, fell to the waist side, since I wasn’t able to secure a full time videographer and editor to work throughout all the rehearsals and planning, but I was able to pay for a trailer to be put together, which is what’s on the top of this post and I still have the additional footage, which I might be able to use one day.

My manager secured a venue and had a music reporter show up at my performance, which happened on April 22nd, 2015 at Stage 72 in New York City.  It was the first time in my career where I was headlining the show, not as just a member of the band, but this was my band.  It was fun and terrifying at the same time.  The show itself was well received by everyone who attended and went off with little issue.  The venue manager was kind enough to waive the cost for the minimum requirement for the show, so the venue didn’t cost me anything extra, however I ended up behind.  With the added cost of a last minute musician and rehearsal space, I ended up several hundred in the hole.

Now here’s the kicker…

October rolls around and, I meet a film student from Hunter College who had a short form documentary class project he had to complete.  We had met by chance through karaoke and I hadn’t given my documentary much thought.  We talked and he asked if he could do his documentary on me and my experiences.  I was like “sure, why not”?  He released his documentary in November 2015.

…so essentially, a documentary was released, but not necessarily what I was expecting.

At the end of the day, everything I was originally hoping for would happen, did.

I can get hyper-critical on the little things, but it was a big thing my manager and I pulled off and I have to say, it’s a pretty big high point.

I could have worried and obsessed on the details and get nothing done, but I just decided to go for it, and it all came to be.

Lesson learned.