Happy New Year!

 It has been far too long (over a year, yikes!) since I have written in this blog! But it is a new year, and that seems like the perfect time to re-begin things that have been on the back burner for a while! Don’t cha think? 🙂

But of course as the new year brings forth new beginnings and new motivations to finish projects we have left behind, the New Year is also a great time to look back at all the amazing things you and others have been doing! Over Thanksgiving, there was an issue of one of my favorite magazines called Breathe which was entitled “Gratitude”. It was in sync with the Thanksgiving season and the upcoming holidays. It is full of awesome articles on being more grateful as well as journal fill-in pages to focus on and jot down what you are grateful for. Sometimes being grateful means taking the first step of exploring to figure out and become AWARE of all the wonderful things you have or the wonderful things you have created. (for instance, the songs you write!)

This year, things shifted for me a bit as I took focus away from my own music and shifted towards you all, wonderful songwriters, you! Sometimes it feels GOOD to stop thinking about ourselves so much and turn to others and see how we can help them with any issues they are facing, or help them get higher. Are you of this opinion as well? Sometimes as we help others, we figure out a whole lot more about what matters to us, what kind of people we want to be around, what we are all about and what we hope to change for the better.

This New Year also reminds me that we have been at Bar Nine for over a year now (1 year and four months to be exact)! Since the beginning of hosting the Open Mic, we have seen it and the songwriting community grow tremendously! I have been truly floored by the talents that have walked in the door, from amateur yet impressive talents to serious professionals who will no doubt go on to have intense careers! We also see newbies to songwriting who are here to grow and collaborate with the more experienced songwriters and it is such a beautiful thing to watch these interactions.

The Sunday “We Love Songwriters” Open Mic grew so much that it went from 9pm to an 8pm start time, and as of a month ago, we are experimenting with an even earlier start of 7pm! We do this to ensure that no acts are turned away and so that we all have time to breathe a bit and really enjoy the evening.

And last but not least, we did our first WLS songwriting workshop ! The goal of these workshops is to provide an educational setting where songwriters can share their original songs with others and learn new techniques, ideas, and tools to better themselves not just as songwriters but as overall performing singer-songwriters in the music industry. These will be very interactive workshops where various songwriters will be able to ask questions about songwriting or other music related matters, and will share their songs with the group and if open to it, will receive feedback, suggestions and ideas on things to work on to improve themselves as songwriters.

Looking forward to doing a ton more of these in 2020. 🙂

What are your goals as a songwriter? Do you also have overall goals for the songwriting community in NYC and beyond? What about for the world? What are some changes you would like to see and how can you as an artist start to make those changes a reality? Things to think about!

Thank you to all who have made the continuation of this open mic possible.

Trust me when I tell you I have more exciting developments to the Open Mic and for We Love Songwriters to unfold in 2020.

Feel free to let me know any topics you would like to see covered in this blog for the year to come. 🙂

Your host,

  CC 🙂