Am I Just Gambling?

My tour continues Thursday in one of my favourite cities… Montreal! I hope to see you there. Some tickets are still available. Also I really appreciate all the kind messages about my new song Background Noise. This one felt different. It feels so good to play this one live. Sometimes they just hit right.

I played Vegas and Calgary this past weekend. Calgary was sold out. Vegas always makes me thing about gambling. How could it not? I don’t gamble in the casinos, but I was thinking, is my whole career just gambling anyway? Seth Godin once said that making art is playing a lottery. I think there’s an element of skill to it that elevates it above the regular lottery, but you can’t deny there’s not luck. 

I’ve really felt the heaviness of certain shows lately. I’m not sure if it’s from getting older… maybe it’s from a post pandemic-world of getting back into the constant touring. I think it might be because I know I’m all in at this point. When you’re young and you start there’s sort of this feeling of “this is exciting but who knows if this what I’ll always do.” After 15 years of doing this, I know this is my career now. I love it. I still learn so much from it, it’s challenging and fulfilling work. But the pressure of it hits sometimes, now that I’m all in. If a show is selling less, or a song performs less than a previous record. I feel that. I feel it hard. 

On the flip side, I can intellectualize my way out of not taking those things personally. I know there’s forces at play that need to be accounted for. The shifting landscape of social media, the increase in data disheartening us from creating, the competition of an ever-growing industry, the economy, global warming (probably!). I don’t know. Sometimes it’s all a lot. But I’m also aware it’s what I signed up for. That’s the thing with gambling, you feel that low hard but when the high comes… it’s so so good. Ah fuck.. I’m a gambler!

I’m all in.

- felix