Ep 22: The Childlike Musician

In this episode, John dives into the childlike qualities that often disappear as artists get older and more cautious, and why reconnecting with those instincts may be one of the most important things a musician can do for longevity, creativity, relationships, and mental health. Grab yourself a popsicle or some Nerds and kick back for a bit.

Transcript

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You are listening to the Gig to Live Podcast. Welcome everyone. I'm John Folsom. I'm a full-time working musician. This podcast is about building a music life that builds up over time. It's practical, enjoyable, sometimes uncomfortable, but it's always about helping you stay in the game and actually enjoy the life that you're building. We'll meet some wonderful working musicians from time to time. So whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years, you're in the right spot. This podcast is for you. Hey everyone, John here. Welcome, coming to you live today, live, live, live, from the studios in Twin Lake, Michigan, outside of Muskegon. And I'm glad you're here today. I'm going to start with a story again today. I am a grandfather. I have five grandkids. That is what happens when you get married young. You have babies young. Your babies get married young, and they have babies young. I was a grandfather when I was forty one years old. I love spending time with those kids. They make me feel so young. We play games constantly. We imagine together. We stay so active. And after a day with my grandkids, I am pleasantly exhausted. I try not to plan gigs on days that I have with the grandkids because I know I am going to be absolutely spent by the time the gig rolls around. And I don't I don't want to start a gig exhausted. I love watching the world through their eyes when we're playing games together. I love watching them do some of the same things that their parents did as children and some of the same things that I did as a child. And you know it's funny, I was thinking the other day about how interesting it is that we use childhood, we refer to childhood as an insult for grown-ups. Quit acting like a child. Don't be so immature. Stop your whining. Grow up. You're living in a dream world. This is not a game, bro. Kids are often the most honest, imaginative, curious, emotionally alive people in the room, and meanwhile, adults are out here, you know, stress eating and uh pretending that everything is fine and we're all business casual, you know? I get why we use the phrases why we refer to childhood, because honestly, there are things that we need to grow out of as we become adults, right? We need to get potty trained, stop pooping our pants, we need to learn how to support ourselves. We can't rely on our moms and dads to be there for us every minute. Duh. I get that. We need to learn responsibility, but I feel like growing up sometimes throws the alive to the world baby out with the responsibility bathwater. We somehow discard the things that are meaningful and that help us navigate life, the ones that help us navigate in a more beautiful way when we're tossing out the unnecessary things. So the process of growing up can unfortunately taint us. We grew up learning about manners, I know I did, respecting authority, loving our country, working nine to five, dressing appropriately, using our inside voices. Those things aren't they're not inherently bad, but we somehow also became fine with being controlled, not being expressive. We learn to tolerate boredom, uh, the status quo, we learn to squash our emotions, we learn to hold things inside. Sometimes we quit asking questions, not entirely, but you know, we suppress our wonder and our daydreaming and our imagination. And we're always attracted to people who don't act like that, though, right? The people who go against the grain. We love the curious people, the expressive people, the imaginative people. We love the silly people, the playful ones, the class clowns, the ones who inspire awe in us. Some of us flirt with the childlike qualities because we miss them so much in ourselves, right? We miss what it felt like to be a kid, but we're afraid to jump in with both feet and embrace our inner child out of fear of what other people might think about us. I think where this is a big deal for the musician who's trying to make a living is that we have to live like a child in many ways to be successful and to have longevity. Kids come straight out of the box ready to explore and learn and experiment. They're constantly gathering skills. It's what they do. They pay attention to everything, they love learning. We could go on and on about the things that we can learn from kids and apply to our music life. So guess what? Ha ha we will. So here it is. Drumroll, please. The top ten ways musicians need to be like a child. Number ten. We're gonna count down today. Number ten, curiosity. Kids don't stop asking questions. Why? Where? How come? Are we there yet? They have a desire to learn all the time. They're like little computers constantly downloading information from mom and dad and teachers and grandma and grandpa. Some days I feel like Grandpa Google and I love it. I cherish it. I egg it on. We play games together like Ask Poppy Anything. I did that game with my kids too. Some of us as adults, though, we we quit asking questions. Again, not completely, but we do settle into some level of I know everything I need to know, and I'm tired. No more reading, no more school. Just tell me what I need to know and leave me alone. Kids will test boundaries too. The classic mom said no, so I'm gonna go ask dad thing is a great example. My kids were pros at that. And who can fault them really? Kids are always touching everything, they're getting into stuff, making messes, taking things apart, putting things back together. When I was a kid, I was not allowed to touch any of the instruments at church. Couldn't touch anything on that stage. Don't sit at that piano, get away from that. It was crazy sad. And when I'm playing a gig today, as a when I see a kid that's mesmerized by me playing guitar, then I ask them if they want to strum the guitar. I hold my fingers on a chord, I let them strum my guitar so they can see how cool it is. What would happen to our gig life if we took back our curiosity? If we walked through doors we never walked through before, we met new people, joined up with new musicians, asked someone to join us on a gig to see what happens when we collaborate, we try a song from a different genre that's usually not you we're not used to playing, and we we just want to see what will happen. What would happen if we asked more questions? If we tested more boundaries. I've learned that if I don't ask, then I don't get. As a musician, we need to not be afraid to ask for what we want. What's the worst thing that can happen? We can ask for more money, uh to set up in a different place in the room, to shorten the set list for the night, to plan an entire year of gigs with that owner. The worst thing that they can say is no, and there's usually some sort of compromise. So yeah, we need to we need to take back our curiosity. Number nine, be imaginative. Kids will take a cardboard box and they'll turn it into a fort or a race car or a rocket ship in like four seconds flat. Give them some markers, they're gonna draw some gauges, give them a string, they're gonna tie it to it, pull it around, they're off and running. You can be a superhero easy as a kid. As long as you are not afraid to wear mom's robe and use it as a cape and take your underwear and put it on the outside of your pants. No kid is afraid of doing those kinds of things. They will hop in that rocket ship and explore the galaxies with their imaginary friends, and it doesn't cost mom and dad a dime for that toy. I mean, except you have to buy a new refrigerator, but you had to buy that anyway, and it came in a box, so give the kid the box. That's besides the point. What would happen if we tapped into our imaginations more? What would our song lists look like? What venues would we be playing? Where would we tour? What risks would we take? What would we wear on stage? What songs would we write? I'm curious if we sat down and made an exhaustive list that included all the ways we envisioned the perfect world for our music, how many of those things are actually approachable if we just were to start imagining? If we tapped into our imaginations with an unbridled resolve to make something beautiful in our communities, what music events would we create and collaborate on? If we imagined ways to raise money for people in need through our music based on the needs in our town, what kind of amazing events and partnerships would be created? Imagination is what helps us get past being reactive. It makes us the kind of people that make our own way. Imagination gets us out of the same old gigs with the same old songs. Imagination is a major building block for hope, and dang it, we need some hope, right? Show me someone who feels hopeless or someone who's cynical about their music life, and I will show you someone who needs to visit the ten year old version of themselves and remind themselves about imagination. Number eight. Now you can be a joyful person and still cuss when something bad happens at a gig. You can be joyful and be really pissed at your current circumstances. You can be joyful and sad because joy isn't the same as happiness. Some days I am happy in the morning, I'm angry by midday, and I'm happy at night again, depending on what happened, you know, during the day to push me over the edge. I'm not I'm not talking about pasting a smile on our face or, you know, turn that frown upside down, happy campers. Joy is something in our guts. And a million things can rob our joy over time or fight us for our joy. Joy is more about internal peace and contentment and satisfaction with our work and knowing we're doing what we love. Sometimes we can get so consumed with creating content and marketing ourselves. Well, I mean, because we have to eat, but we get so consumed that it hijacks our joy and it becomes we become content claustrophobic. You know, it begins choking the life out of us. Have you ever had a favorite food and you just can't get enough of that food? But one day after you have eaten it so much, the very smell of it makes you want to throw up. That has happened to me on a number of occasions. That happens to us as musicians too. We build a machine around us and it starts to bleed us like a joy phlebotomist. We create systems surrounding our music that begin to steer our ship and we forget why we loved it from the beginning. But remember when music was fun for no other reason? Remember that? Remember what happened in our souls when we began to play? Sometimes we we need to find ways to get back to that space. Maybe we take a break, maybe we host a jam session on the front porch or we go busk somewhere in a town that nobody knows us. Maybe we go on a songwriting retreat, but man, we gotta find that joy. Number seven, be an observer. My granddaughter Colby is almost five and she hears everything. She sees everything. She remembers everything. Sometimes she'll remind me of something that she did or we did together when she was three years old. She never forgets anything from the last time that we talked together. Case in point, we were away from her for six months in California for the fall and winter, and the first time we saw each other again, she proceeded to tell me inside of five minutes everything that she was excited to do with us based on her memory of the previous spring and summer. She remembered everything. She's smart, yes, but you know, she's also just a careful observer. And I think this is a key n this is a childlike skill that's key to musicians. We need to hone in on it. Paying attention to what's happening at tables around us as we're setting up for the gig, listening to the chatter of couples as they're coming through the door and we're setting up, watching what songs people get up out of their seats and throw a 20 in our jar for, noticing when audiences tune us out, paying attention to what makes venue owners stress out, noticing how the weather affects a playlist. Do you think certain songs work better in warm weather and some better in cold weather? I will submit that I absolutely do. All of these things will help us plan for the future, you know, observing these things, but they also help us right in the moment. There is nothing quite like surprising somebody with a birthday or an anniversary song 30 minutes after they sit down at a restaurant because you just happened to overhear their conversation on the way in. You were being observant. Number six, take naps. Maybe you're not a nap taker, maybe it doesn't work for you, but I'm really talking about something bigger than actual physical naps here anyway, even though I love a literal nap. We need to find ways to recover, to rejuvenate, to let our bodies heal, to turn off our brains, to let the stress hormones recalibrate or do whatever they do, the cortisol. Maybe we need to find or we need to have an emotional fast. Maybe we need to unplug from the things that are emotionally robbing us, hijacking us. Maybe we need to get away from the sources of our fear or our outrage or whatever intense feelings we have, and we just need to let our bodies slow down and take a nap. Maybe it's actual sleep we need, or maybe it's just time out. Maybe it's just being unavailable to the outside world, just us and our bodies healing. Number five, believe in ourselves. Man, kids do. They write songs, they draw pictures, they put on plays for the family before they ask permission or seek approval from others. I remember my kids did this all the time. You'd be busy, you know, right in the middle of something, and they would plop a note in your face that said, uh, the play starts in the living room in five minutes. See you there. Here's your tickets. Kids haven't they haven't learned about disappointment or the comparison game or cynicism. They create because that's what they do. Of course they create. I mean, why wouldn't they? They don't know any better. The act of creating for a kid, the act of creating something is the reward in and of itself. Their creations aren't judged by whatever kinds of metrics they or someone else has set for them. That comes later. Their creation isn't monetized to put food on the table. Every picture goes on that friggin' fridge because it's awesome. Just like it is. And there's another picture coming right around the corner that you need to find something to do with. Every Christmas, when I look at the little ornaments that my kids created over the years, I am reminded of someone who believed in themselves enough to express it with macaroni and clue and glitter, and pipe cleaners and and paint. And then they they they put that thing on display proudly because nobody is judging them, especially not themselves. Number four. Imitate and role play. You know, we need to ask what are the best musicians we know doing? How do they look on stage? How do they express themselves? How are their transitions? What stories are they telling? How are people reacting? Sometimes I think we can become so obsessed with being original that we forget that music is communal. And the only reason we play music in the first place is because we learned by copying. As kids, we grab a hairbrush, you know, use it as a microphone, we stare at ourselves in the mirror, and we channel our favorite stars. Sometimes, for fun, I will cover a song and I will pretend I'm that artist in my mind. I don't mimic them, I mean, actually I have done that, uh, but I try to perform the song through their eyes. I'm not going to sound like them. I'm I'm trying to borrow their inspiration, though, and let their mojo flow through me as I interpret the song. I have a friend who's a professional touring musician, and I've heard him say a few times uh something like this our role is to sometimes take the music of the past and mess it up in our own way. Man, I love that. We bring our own stuff to the party, our own little bells and whistles, our tricks of the trade, but we're thankful for those who came before us and gave us a voice, and you know, it's okay to imitate. Number three, make friends. The musicians that I feel most comfortable around uh have playground energy. There's an instant bond because no one is trying to impress the other, no one's trying to win a competition, and we start conversations with questions like, do you want to play with me? And that's enough. The venue owners that I love to be around, they don't make everything feel like a transaction. They're the ones who embrace the entire evening. Like we are, we're in cahoots together, we're doing something together. The audiences that I love the most are the ones, you know, where it feels like we're all in it together. They're conversing with me, laughing with me, throwing out requests, telling their own stories. It's a conversation and it's friendly. To live in that kind of a world, then you and I have to be available to people. We have to be friendly to people, and and remember that friendly people attract friendly people. To live in this world, uh, you and I need to be approachable. We need to be easy to work with. We need to make friends. Number two, take risks. Was your childhood like mine? Uh, did you make bike jumps and rope swings and go rock climbing and explore caves? Oh, we had caves in our area. Man, they were great to climb through. They were actually mineshafts, probably extremely dangerous. Uh, we climbed huge trees. We raced our motorcycles and did tricks on them, you know, standing on the handlebars. My childhood was full of risks. With no Cell phones, we'd leave the house in the morning, we would not come back until dinner time. We were involved in every kind of shenanigans imanageable. We were involved in every kind of shenanigans imaginable. We blew things up. We lit things on fire. And a few times we walked so close to the edge that I swear we could see death and look it in the eyeballs. We were fearless. We'd fly off bike jumps, land face down in the gravel, then we'd get back on the bikes. We didn't want to get hurt, but man, we did. And it didn't stop us from risking everything again just for the thrill of it. Man, if my mom only knew what we did back then. Like back then, if she knew what was going on, I think she would shut that down. As adult musicians, we often build something and then we just begin to hunker down and protect it for a bunch of reasons. Uh we don't want to lose what we have, we don't want to look foolish in front of people. Pain is no fun, can I get an amen? We don't want to be judged for our experiments. And it's true, you know, staying safe eases the pain. But it also keeps us from growing and expanding. And we can we can lose our edge. We can become reclusive taking risks. Yeah, it's it's a hard one. We just have to ask ourselves what we want. For some people, safe works. Or at least, you know, it works for a while, but sure enough. Welcome to life. Something is gonna tweak with our perfect world and send us into a tailspin if we don't take a chance by walking through a new door. That is life. Safe is great until it isn't. Number one, finally, color outside the lines. Did you know that that one was coming? My wife often draws digital pics for our grandkids and uh makes them a color book page for the day. You know, she takes her Apple pen on her iPad and she'll make a color book page. And I love hearing them tell her what to draw. They direct her. Okay, Nani, there's a hill and a tree and a swing and a sun, and there's grass and a rabbit. And then boom, she makes the page. And when they hand it back, the grass is, you know, some strange blend of colors looks like poop. The sky is yellow, the rabbits purple, all the lines are crossed, and it looks beautiful. They are so excited to present it, and they are so excited to tell a story about it because man, there is a story in that page. As adult musicians, our lines have been drawn by culture, culture we grew up in, parents, teachers, family, fear, institutions, churches. Quite frankly, by some people who gave up on their dreams a long time ago and they feel quite content having you be more or less successful than them. You know, they want to keep you in your place. There was always someone telling us growing up to wash behind our ears, which, by the way, was another thing. Uh honestly, because I feel like every show in the 50s and 60s had some episode where a child was told, Now don't forget to wash behind your ears. I was so paranoid about like dirty behind the ears skin as a kid. I just imagine kids walking around with filth back there, you know, growing gardens behind their ears. Was that a thing? I don't know. Anyway, I got off track. I learned to get a good education at a four-year college, to get a job in a big company with benefits, to have 1.94 children, to live in a sticks and bricks home, to save well for retirement, to stay out of trouble. And like Tyler Childers says, keep your nose to the grindstone and out of the pills, and then oh yeah, that's right. There's a thing called reality. There's a thing called real life, hiccups, potholes. The conventional life looks good on paper sometimes, but then we hit the suck, you know, chapter two, the suck. As artists, we have to take our broken crayons, flip over that paper that's already been drawn on one side, or we had to scrounge from the scrap pile, and we have to color like our lives depend on it. And there is no nice naughty making an outline for us with bunnies and swings. There's often a faint outline of coffee stains and cigarette burns on the paper, and we have an opportunity to color as we see fit. The picture's gonna look different for everyone, and that is the beauty, that is the key. Maybe it's playing unconventional venues or not playing the cool spots in exchange for the weird ones, or staying local and never going on tour, or playing the songs that conventional wisdom says that's not gonna work. Like Stevie Nick sang, it's only right that you should play the way you feel. And let's be honest, if you're trying to make a go of this thing, this full-time music thing, you are already outside of the line, so good for you. Just know that some people, even the ones you love, won't be so anxious to brag about your art and put it on display. But there's going to be quite a few people who are going to find life and energy in your creation. Man, that was a fun thing to think through today. So to sum this all up, if we approach our music life like a child, then we are the ones who benefit. Sure, everybody else too, but we benefit. We are the ones who learn to live in the moment without a care in the world, feeling safe and protected and curious and imaginative, experiencing the thrills that others don't. We're the ones who can smile brightly like we just had our face painted at the fair like a butterfly. We're the ones who make friends easy and stay up past our bedtime for special occasions. We notice the tiny details that give color and shape. We're the ones who put bugs in a jar and keep them as pets when everyone else just wants to exterminate them, just wants to squash them. And you know what? I hope whatever season you're in, little you shows up to greet you and says you want to play? Alrighty, that's it for today. Kids, I really hope this was helpful for you. I'd love to know if you have ideas for new podcasts. Uh you know, interact. Drop me a line. I'd love to talk, I'd love to become friends. Send me an email at gig the live podcast at gmail.com and stay creative, stay after it, stay hired. Oh, and stay childlike.