Finally Presenting... Dirt City Songbook

Originally shared Feb. 17, 2023 on Patreon.

Nearly a year ago, I embarked on a huge project. I applied to Telus STORYHIVE near the end of 2021 to do a video series where I would interview and record seven emerging Edmonton artists. I was pivoting from the Instagram Live series I started during the first couple years of the pandemic (Tuesdays Together, which evolved into Making Out with VISSIA). Like all applications, I submitted it and carried on with life, completely forgetting about it.

A couple months later, I received an email. My project had been approved! Hold on. This meant... I could actually do this project.

Somehow I managed to fit filming in before I left on my two month Canadian and European tour. It was mid-March 2022. It was a LOT. But how could I turn down $10,000 to do a cool project that felt like a neat little contribution to my local scene? I couldn't! So I did it. (Huge thanks to my producer, Nich Davies, for recording and mixing all of the audio. I couldn't have done it without him).

Editing this thing was a completely whole other thing. It was a journey through learning new skills and just how much work it takes to pull off this kind of project. It was a lesson on how realistic it is for me to take on that amount of work on my own. Oh, how naive and silly of me to think I could pack up all the footage and my computer and accomplish anything while out on tour. 🤡

I can't say I would want to tackle all of this on my own again, but I'm proud of how I managed to push through and get it all done. I had to write and record an intro, write synopsis for each episode, write a description of the whole series, create four different pieces of artwork for each episode, submit a written transcription of each episode, and deliver each episode to technical specs with the required intro and outro bumpers. And all of this came after the actual scheduling, recording, directing and producing of the episodes. I'd done a lot of music videos before, but a whole video series is a whole other thing. Goddamn.

By the first part of August 2022, I was done editing and submitting my episodes and their accompanying materials. Everything had to be approved by Telus, and once it was, it would be uploaded to YouTube and available on Telus Optik TV.

My episodes were finally available on YouTube November 22, 2022.

It's the middle of February now. So why haven't I talked about it and told people about it and shared it yet? Why didn't I do it in November? Why have I waited so long?

Well.

Between the months of October, November and December of 2022, I was really struggling mentally, emotionally, and existentially. I was, in one word, depressed.

I felt stuck.

My inner critic was driving the bus and I was cowering in a crumple on the back seat. I couldn't bring myself to promote this thing, which of course just fed into my self-worth spiral. These musicians trusted me with their stories and songs, and I couldn't even bring myself to make a few social media posts? Pathetic!

Besides that, I was fixating on every little thing I wished was better about how the videos looked. How the first couple shoots could have had better audio if I'd just used different microphones. How I should have known better about the back-lighting at the one location. How I should have had more lighting at another. I felt like a failure.

This is a glimpse into a lifelong battle with perfectionism, desperately wanting to belong, and believing that if I can just be good enough – no, the best – then maybe I will be worthy of love and appreciation. Maybe I will be accepted. Maybe I will be valued.

It's not a unique story. I know that so many of you have chapters that read very similarly to mine. But this is still part of my story, and I need to be able to accept my own version.

And acceptance looks like:

Showing up even if I'm late.  
Sharing something even if it's not "perfect."  
Recognizing and celebrating the things I've done really well.
Honouring the process more than the outcome.

So here I am, and here it is. A labour out of my love for asking questions, a desire to learn from my peers, and an audacity that never ceases to surprise me.