Music and travel. Somehow, putting these two things together turned out to be one of the best decisions I could have made for my project.
It’s probably the combination that kept the fire going all these years, and it still does.
I remember a time, before I bought the van, when I felt a bit stuck. I was going through one of those periods where everything seemed to lead to the same limited set of possibilities, and I wasn’t really sure what to do next or where to take the project.
So I decided to add something big to the plan.
Actually, two things: travelling, obviously, and street music.
The idea was pretty simple. Every winter, I would pick an area and start digging. Festivals, venues, small events, local scenes, anything that could potentially turn into a show. I’d spend weeks researching, sending emails, basically doing the whole 9-to-5 office job thing, except the office was wherever I happened to be and the goal was to build a tour.
The shows I managed to confirm would become the backbone of the itinerary.
And whenever there was nothing scheduled, I could just go out and play in the streets and squares.
What could go wrong?
Nothing, right?
Well... exactly.
It was a hell of a plan, and somehow, it worked.
It took, and still takes, a lot of effort both practically and emotionally. But it gave me the chance to move around Europe and the UK, to experience travelling in a completely different way, and to discover sides of myself that I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise.
And for the music project, it opened up something I really couldn’t have planned from home.
I got to play in front of people from different countries, in completely different situations and places. A proper venue one night, a street corner the next day, a small festival somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a square in a city I had never seen before.
Every day added something to the jar.
Some days were great, some were weird, some were exhausting, and some made absolutely no sense. But they all became part of the story.
Looking back, I think the moment I decided to actually make this happen, to put the money, time and energy into this idea and get the whole machine moving, was when I realized I had unlocked a different way of doing things.
A way of traveling, playing, meeting people and working towards professional goals at the same time.
Over the last two years, my trips have been much smaller compared to those first van tours. I’ve been putting my energy into other parts of the project, and into other parts of my life too.
And now I see this upcoming EP as some kind of doorway into a new phase.
A conscious decision to do things differently.
To take it a little easier. To stop trying to control every single step and just let some things happen.
Right now, the biggest challenge is actually a very simple one: deciding when a recording is finished.
I keep going back to the tracks, listening again, changing things, wondering if I could get a better sound with the gear I have.
And, of course, I probably could.
There is always something you could improve. A different mic, a different take, a different setting, a different piece of gear.
But at some point you have to stop.
Musicians know what I mean.
You have to listen to it and say: okay. This is it.
At the moment, three out of the four songs are almost there. The last one is still taking shape.
And with the end of the year getting closer, I also feel like it’s time to start defining what comes next.
It’s time to finally share this thing.
This little independent project I’ve been building with the help of only a few people, mostly on my own, with all the doubts, mistakes, experiments that came with it.
For the first time, I’ll be putting it out there for strangers to hear. Raw. Free.
And honestly, I already have a pretty good feeling about what might come after.
I have some ideas and I’m quite curious to see where they take me.