Honestly, I half expected to end up playing a show to an empty field of flowers… but I was absolutely delighted to be wrong!
Recently, I had the exquisite pleasure of performing a two-hour set of original songs surrounded by trees, picnicking strangers, and a field of flowers. Not a single person I invited came, and it was everything I could have hoped for and more.
I could just give you a play-by-play of what happened, but I wouldn’t expect you to care. If you were there, you know what happened; and if you weren’t, reading over the meeting minutes isn’t going to give you the experience you missed. Instead, I want to discuss the deep magic of feeling truly seen, using the events of last weekend’s Music in the Flowers at Nothing But Daisies to illustrate my ideas.
Honestly, I half expected to end up playing a show to an empty field of flowers… but I was absolutely delighted to be wrong!
I invited everyone I knew well enough to text and who lived within a reasonable radius of the flower farm (and some who didn’t), and not a single person I personally invited came to the show…
But (surprisingly?) a lot of other people came. (I mean, I think two dozen people is a lot when you consider that I’m a pretty no-name headliner and there was no foot traffic — you literally had to RSVP to even get the address.)
And you know what? I think I like it better that way. Not that I didn’t want my friends to come. Of course, I’d have loved to see them anywhere! I’d have been thrilled to see them at my first show since becoming a mother. But the success of the show despite their absence proved something important to me…
And in order to help illustrate that something, I’m going to tell you a story.
I honestly fully expected to end up performing to an empty field of flowers… so I was beyond delighted that so many lovely families showed up to hear me play my music!
I Don’t Want to Milk my Friends & Family Like Cows
Please entertain this deeply relevant tangent (this is the story I mentioned): Several months ago, I had a discovery call with a certain well-known recording studio that promises to help musical artists crowdfund the production of their next album with said studio. I went into the call thinking that if they could actually help me reach and effectively advertise to my music’s target audience, it would be a great partnership. I know I write good songs, but I need serious help (who doesn’t?) getting them in front of the right people and getting those people to listen long enough to realize that they are in fact the right people. So wouldn’t it be grand to work with a studio who could help me record one professional-sounding single and then leverage that to grow and market to an emotionally invested audience who would want more music badly enough to financially invest in making it happen?
Well, yeah, except… that’s not what they do. What said studio actually does is set you up with email templates and telephone scripts to basically cold call your family and friends and guilt them into financially supporting your dream. They only help you “market” to people you already know, they don’t really provide their own discovery platform or help you reach any of their audience. They are not invested in artist growth — just in helping you milk your friends and family dry to support “your dream.”
(I promise this is relevant. Stick with me.)
The thing is, that’s not my dream. My dream isn’t just “record a professional sounding album.” My dream isn’t “enough of my friends and family want me to shut up about my music that they’ll help pay for it to get made so I’ll finally stop bothering them about it.”
My dream is that enough people → actually care about the music I write and sing → enough to pitch in to make it happen → because they want more of it in their lives → so that I can actually afford to make it sound both professional and authentic…
And that’s a much bigger dream.
Anyhow, I ghosted the studio. For one thing, I don’t think I can milk $10,000 out of my friends and family — I’m not sociable enough to have that many friends; most of my friends are at least as poor as I am; and while some of my family could certainly afford to contribute, they’re even more skeptical than I am and probably wouldn’t.
And besides, even if I could somehow milk $10k or even $5k out of my relations and acquaintances… where would that land me? Sure, I’d probably end up with a few decent recordings… but no guarantee that anyone cared about them or would ever hear them. And then what about the next album? I’m a songwriter till the day I die. There will be more songs. I don’t want to end up in a position where my best-sounding recordings are behind me because the bar was raised unsustainably.
My debut album was recorded in about a week entirely on my iphone. In terms of production quality, there’s nowhere to go from there but up.
I’d so much rather spend $1-2,000 slowly recording my next album funded entirely by people who enjoy and believe in my music and my art enough to support it and be able to do that again and again in the future than spend $10k I was given but didn’t earn to churn out one record to an empty room and find the cow dry next time I’m ready to hit the studio.
I attended the first Music in the Flowers event at Nothing But Daisies last year (2025) and immediately thought “I want to do this. This is where my music is supposed to be heard.” Now that that dream has come true, I can confidently say I was right!Guests were free to wander the flower field and gather bouquets to take home by donation. Does it get any better than this?I thought Rosemary would be all over me and my husband would have to pry her away or I might have to perform with her on my knee (she’d been super clingy the week leading up to the show, probably because she could tell the show was drawing a lot of my focus and attention), but there’s nothing she loves so much as being outside, and as soon as she saw the other kids she was GONE. I don’t know who she got this ribbon wand from, but she loved dancing with it!
More Than Polite Applause
People are generally pretty polite, and inertia is a powerful influence. If you go to a free show, it’s polite to tip. If someone is playing officially sanctioned live music at an event, it’s polite to applaud between songs. If a family drives out into the countryside with their kids for a free two-hour concert at a flower farm, and the kids are busy and happy, the music would have to be pretty offensive to make the adults want to pack up early.
So while I genuinely do appreciate being tipped and applauded and seeing that people came and chose to stay for the whole two-hour set, I don’t take it personally. None of those things feel like evidence that what I’m doing on that rug of a stage is really worthwile or truly meaningful to anyone.
And even if all my friends had come… it would have been evidence that they like me and wanted to support me… but it wouldn’t have been evidence that my music truly meant something to them.
But during and after this lovely little concert among the flowers and trees, I encountered a surprising amount of evidence that my music did truly reach people; that it did really mean something to them; that all my writing and playing and singing was more than just a self-indulgent game of make-believe.
I’m Drunk on the Feeling of Feeling Seen
You gave me the highest praise The echo has been haunting me for days and days And as I stand with my feet upon the earth Digging my toes into the dirt I’m drunk on the moon, I’m robed all in green I’m drunk on the feeling of feeling seen
~Vervain and the Roses, “Drunk on the Tune”
Speaking purely for myself, there is no better feeling than feeling truly seen, and I feel most seen when someone really resonates with my creative work. My songs, my writing, and my art are, after all, the creative manifestations of my essence. I don’t give a fuck if you like my outfit. I mean, I do, that’s great, I probably put a lot of thought into it — but it’s like… okay, you like the dress I bought on Amazon, but do you like my soul?
But if you like my songs… then I know you like my soul. I know you saw straight through the outfit and into the heart and you wanted to keep looking, and there’s no better feeling than knowing that.
So anyhow, these are the moments and memories from Music in the Flowers at Nothing but Daisies that made me feel most seen, delighted, and encouraged:
Play it Again, Vervain
I debuted a new song (Like a Chandelier) early in the evening… and someone who had to drive home before sundown tipped me FIFTY DOLLARS to request that I play it again before they left! Then when the show was over and I had a moment to chat with some folks in the audience, someone else told me that they really enjoyed getting to hear it a second time and really soak it up. As a singer-songwriter, there is truly no higher praise than “Will you sing that one again?”
My Lyrics in Your Life
I spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time leading up to the show making a frankly unreasonable number of meticulously handcrafted bookmarks embedded with pressed flowers and manually typewritten lyrics from my songs. More than once I wondered if anyone would actually pay to take home a piece of a song like that…
And then, to an audience of maybe 6-ish families, I sold NINETEEN of my precious pressed flower lyric bookmarks.
NINETEEN TIMES, someone said, “I want to take these words home and tuck them in my books and look at them over and over again and remember this music, this magic, this moment.”
And now my words get to live between the pages of up to nineteen different books at any given moment (or hidden under as many pieces of furniture to be synchronistically rediscovered at a delightfully appropriate future moment).
I think these pressed flower lyrics bookmarks are seriously the coolest, but I hadn’t really dared to dream that other people might think so, too. Turns out they were a hit!
“Your Song Made My Eyes Water”
I received a few messages the day after the show, and that alone already really feels like recognition — the fact that someone not only enjoyed the show but went home and was still thinking about it and enjoying looking back on it the next day… it feels really good to know that my music can have that kind of staying power with anyone. And while the fact that anyone messaged me about the show at all afterwards is delightful in itself, the content of the messages meant even more to me.
One gal sent me a tip the next day (which is so cool of her — I seriously never would have known or noticed or cared if she hadn’t tipped, but it’s so affirming that she went home and, the day after the show, thought “that experience, that music was valuable to me, and I want to give back.” When I thanked her, she told me how glad she was that I had played Big Degree (my second single ever that I feel like no one knows about but apparently I’m wrong) since she loves it! And maybe even better: when I looked over the video clips the host took of the evening, I definitely heard someone singing along to Big Degree. Is there any better feeling?
Someone else wrote to me about looking me up on Apple Music and sharing my songs with her family, and said “the song A Familiar Tune made my eyes water. You are a one of a kind artist and an enchanting lyricist. So thankful to have come across you in a tangible way, picking the wildflowers with my children while your music drifted around us.” Um… well that made my eyes water! It is such a gift to get to be a part of this sort of beautiful memory-making for families in the flowers, and so affirming to hear that my music can really make people feel things.
Some of the messages and comments that really warmed my heart after the show!
(As an aside, if any of my songs have ever made you cry, please tell me. As a songwriter, I have three primary goals: to get stuck in your head; to have songs you associate with certain things so powerfully that every time they come up you think of my song; and to make you cry.)
I feel like this probably isn’t normal, but my merch table was about 90% handcrafted goods and original art and 10% samples of made-to-order items like shirts, scarves, and tote bags.
This one made me laugh, but it was also incredibly heartwarming and encouraging. A young girl bought one of my zines and sent her mom to ask me to autograph it for her! I’m pretty sure the only other time I’ve been asked for my autograph was at a Harry Potter book midnight release party when a little girl wanted me to sign Hermione’s autograph (which I proudly did, doing my very best to imitate the perfect curve of Hermione’s “H” as I remembered it from the books).
I don’t know that I can necessarily trust a child’s musical taste to tell me anything about the quality of my work, but I do trust a child’s sense of enchantment… which is a lot of what I do… so this one’s a win in my book.
All told, getting to play Music in the Flowers was such a gift! It was so special to get to share my music with so many lovely people in such a beautiful place (and in such perfect weather! The report kept saying it might storm; not only did it not rain, but the most delightful breeze blew in to temper the 90 degree afternoon so that it felt perfectly pleasant). I’m so grateful to Mickey for inviting me and my songs to her gorgeous flower farm, and to everyone who happily shared their snacks with my free range toddler so that I could play uninterrupted.
I would absolutely love to play more shows like this! Do you have an intimate space (indoor or outdoor, public or private) in or near central Texas that could use a bard like me? Do you have friends and neighbors that crave shared magical experiences in person in this lonely age of the machine and the zoom call? Drop me a line and let’s figure something out!
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