The yin and yang of releasing a single during a residency
During the month of October, 2022, Electropop artist Thea FitzGerald was resident artist at Melbourne’s Gasometer Hotel. This month-long residency coincided with the release Thea’s soulful single Woman.
As an independent artist preparing a single release and organising a month shows, we asked Thea to share the insights gained from this dual experience.
Over the month of October I had the absolute privilege of combining my latest single release 'Woman' with a weekly residency at the Gasometer (my favourite Melbourne venue!) on Wednesday nights.
Without a doubt it's an experience I will never forget and am so so so grateful to have had!
The shows and their preparation were a perfect concoction of excitement, anticipation, creativity and pure joy of getting to do what I love with so many brilliant people who I admire enormously, but also a significant amount of fear, anxiousness and stress at times.
Things kicked off in July when I started chatting to Bridget (brilliant booker at Gaso who I’d worked with for my EP launch back in April) about if/how it might work for both of us. Once we’d nutted out the details around dates etc. I had the joy of putting my brain to workshopping and curating a line-up of my favourite Melbourne music.
It's couple of weeks on and I'm still digesting it all, but thought it would be fun to share a couple of my favourite things about the shows and the bits I found the hardest (cause everything is yin and yang).
2. Witnessing the amazing supports I was lucky enough to share the shows with do their thing! I still can't believe that over the month I was supported by Alisya Rae, Angus Legg, Dreaming Soda, Hassall, Sidney, SKŸE, Tom Riccioni and Tyra Lewis.
They are all insanely talented, so different and unique, and I was/am very very inspired by each of them.
3. Getting to turn what is often a pretty solitary process into something I could share in real time with a mixture of nearest and dearest, friends, and new faces!! The writing and creative process of developing songs and the behind the scenes work that goes into planning and promoting shows can often feel pretty isolating and lonely, which is a real battle given I think the most beautiful part of music and art generally is its ability to bring people together.
These shows were so special in terms of really allowing my music (and that of the supports) to be something for everyone and experiencing the community around it, and in many ways reminded me why I do it in the first place.
4. Unleashing brand-new songs live before I've even recorded a basic tracking demo!
A couple of songs were written a day or two before some of the shows, and I decided to bite the bullet and chuck on the set list. Playing songs that are so raw and new is pretty rare for me, as I usually spend quite a bit of time workshopping my stuff before it leaves my personal safety net, but in the context of these shows reminding me that what I write is for other people as much as it is for me, it was super empowering to release it from my own brain so early in the piece.
The hard bits:
1. The weekly pre-show stress that no-one was going to turn up!
2. Imposter syndrome in two respects:
a) Being so in awe of the amazing supports I had each week that I'd pretty significantly second guess whether I was actually ready to follow them.
b) Watching video snippets of the shows back and being aware of the flaws I could see in my own performance as opposed to remembering how it felt at the time, and also that iPhone footage is not always a great gauge - haha.
3. Trying to be present and enjoy the moment as opposed to focussing on any particular goals or outcomes.
I'm sure my thoughts and reflections around the residency will continue to evolve and it'll be something I'll continue to revisit for a long time, but for now I just feel very lucky that I had the opportunity and support around me to make it happen!
These are a few of my favourite things:
1. Getting to play my little creations with such a killer band who also double as very brilliant humans. It will never fail to blow my tiny mind hearing them work their magic on what usually start as pretty basic guitar/piano brain-dumps, and there is nothing I love more than getting to share the stage with mates.
Woman by Thea FitzGerald
is out now!
lnk.fu.ga/theafitzgerald_woman