I write this in my kitchen, with sun (sun!) pouring in through the window for the first time in 10,000 years. Or at least since the start of February. I am a little tired this week, busy with music workshops and a late night home after a special concert in bonny St Andrews. It was a small gig, run by good humans in a room full of character. I sang to a grateful audience and felt relaxed and full of joy, and later full of cheesy chips, when I returned home in the wee hours from a fulfilling night singing the songs that are so dear to me.
In my teenage years, every musical experience felt joyful, for it was play. Later, when I was a student in Glasgow, and during my teacher-training years during lockdown in Auld Reekie, I would speed through my work for the day. Awaiting me, at home in my bedroom, was my keyboard and a very rough recording set up. Many a grainy and unsophisticated recording was released from my bedroom. I would wait with profound excitement as the video uploaded painfully slowly on the dodgy wifi, and eventually appear on my youtube channel. Almost nobody saw my videos, except for, of course, ye who have been there with me since the very start, alongside my own mother and my girlfriends.
There was something intoxicating to me about recording songs on my own, in my room. Time slipped away. As someone with a busy mind, recording is still the only occasion where I reach ‘flow state’. There’s something special, also, about writing and immediately releasing in this way. And being so unknown, that there is nothing to lose in terms of posting a rough-and-ready song about, say, the Council’s recent decision not to fund a foodbank. Or, more often (if I’m honest), an angsty love-song about my 20-year-old love life.
In my early twenties, bar a few opener slots at the Glasgow Star folk club, music was simply my evening past-time, my joy. I have had many conversations with fellow musicians who now also play music for a living, that one of our 2026 resolutions was to ‘get a hobby’. We playfully berate ourselves, as we recognise we don’t do much outside of work, are too attached to our screens, and are beginning to resent recording yet another short instagrammable clip to advertise our next concert.
It struck me recently, that until music became my work, writing and recording songs in my bedroom was my greatest hobby. In fact, it’s the only hobby I have never given up. Singing came above all else. It whiled my Saturday evenings in the Captain’s Bar, or got me up on a Sunday morning to record another rough-and-ready half-baked song. Somewhere along the line, over the last years, music changed from being a hobby I loved, to being work that I loved.
This is not to say that I don’t appreciate how I get to earn a living, these days. But I’ve felt a little paralysed since the release of FOLKMOSIS. I’ve been wondering what on earth to record next, what my audience might be expecting, what kind of material might be good for ticket sales.
It was so special having some time away at the end of last year to miss singing. I arrived home to ‘Celtic Connections’, Glasgow’s world-renowned music festival, in January. Glasgow in January is a special place. I went to inspiring gigs, and popped into sessions where phones were tucked away, and pints were flowing. It’s infectious watching on as many young folkies play tunes at a thousand miles an hour in big, joyous groups. Pub-goers listen in incredulously, amazed that they have stumbled upon this standard of musicianship in their local boozer. These moments remind me that music isn’t just our industry, it’s also our joy.
I am joyed to tell you that I’ve been rushing to my bedroom again, with new ideas for songs. Losing myself in demos, until my hungry stomach ruins a good take. I’m relearning that music is my light and my inspiration, and not just my work. I’m hoping that where my music is going next, will all start to make sense now that I’m looking at my creative life in this way.
What a privilege to spend it, writing songs in my bedroom.
Yours in music,
Beth
P.S. I have enjoyed reading your kind and interesting replies to my January blog immensely. I do hope you’ll keep writing to me in this way. Thank you for these moments of connection through music in this strange, and at times, very sad world just now.