Fall Tour, Sabbatical, & Rita Season 🍂
Happy September! 🍁🎃👻 It always warms my heart when people tell me “happy Rita month” and “it’s Rita season” and the like. Especially when it means they’re streaming “Love Me In September!” 😜 I try not to dwell on the implications of having “effective personal branding.” The corporate buzzwords of it all give me the ick; people are not brands or products or, in the words of Jenny Odell, “a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated.” (If you haven’t read How To Do Nothing, add that to your TBR list TOOT SWEET.) It’s just nice to be seen as the person I aim to be. And in a world where everyone friggin’ loves fall, I feel popular by association.
And unfortunately, in some ways I kind of … am a brand? 🥴 As an artist I offer up not just my music but myself along with it. It’s easy to exist to people as a song in a playlist in a vacuum these days. If you want streams to become a real audience, you have to make people like not just your songs, but you. And they have to be clear on who that “you” is and be willing to align themselves with it. All the jokes about everyone wearing the same outfit to the Lizzy McAlpine or Phoebe Bridgers concert – that’s effective personal branding. But it’s starting to feel GROSS again now, so let’s just leave it at pumpkins and toadstools and Over The Garden Wall are sooooo me, right?? 🤪🍄🫖🔮
Beyond aesthetics, it really IS Rita season right now, y’all. The big news is that I quit my coffee job! 🥳 Four years of declining fulfillment and increasing restlessness are finally over. I was starting to feel like the Lotus Eaters, trapped in the ease of passive perpetual predictability as my twenties breezed by. But no more! I’m on sabbatical now, baby – no survival job (grateful for diligent savings and art-related income) and nothing but time. Time to take that acting class I’ve had bookmarked for four years that I could never make work with my cafe schedule. Time to finish producing this new single and writing this new EP. Time to go on autumn adventures and spend perhaps both winter holidays with my family for the first time since college?! Time is my gorgeous and terrifying new best friend.
The ADHD brain does not like being in charge of its own schedule indefinitely!! While I’m excited for the freedom, I’m also super nervous about it. So I humbly ask:
If you are self-employed or WFH, how do you maintain structure?
If you are in NYC, where do you like to work from, and can we co-work there together sometime?
If you are an actor in NYC, what’s the first step in returning from a hiatus?
And finally, do you wanna go apple picking with me??? 😈
I know I’m getting pretty NYC-centric, but if you’re not in New York, this might be for you: Times New Rita are playing our first DC show!! 🤩 We are so excited to be playing the inaugural Capitol Hill Porch Fest on Saturday, October 10th. It’s an afternoon of like, BAJILLIONS of bands playing all across the city, and it is completely FREE! Our set is at 3pm on Kentucky Ave; find the full info here: https://partiful.com/e/xEltgmU3DbSYl9egLCk4?c=g1-ViPJp We’ve got the perfect “Intro to TNR” set planned for you, including some crowd favorite covers (maybe a little Shmeetwood Shmac Shmedley as seen on the Periphery tour? 👁👁️). If you live near DC please come hang, or if you have friends near DC please peer pressure them to come hang! It’s gonna be so fun!!🕺
Philly and New York, we are working on locking in some fall shows for you as well! This is the newsletter after all, and I’m extra candid with y’all on here. We’re planning a mini tour to celebrate our upcoming single, “Fish In A Barrel.” No official announcements or release dates yet, but we’re currently recording it for a feature and companion release with an upcoming indie short film called “Green Ribbon,” adapted from the children’s story and folklore figure. It’s spooky and smoky and jazzy and kinda out of our normal upbeat whimsy, but even in its current half-finished state it is SO. GOOD. And we can’t wait to share it!
More on this as it develops, dear reader. Thanks as always for reading. I hate to ask this of you, my realest homies, but if you are on Instagram or Tiktok, a follow and a lil engagement would really help us out. A lot of opportunities (festivals, representation, etc) care about follower count above all. So we work hard on our silly little posts, showcasing our music as well as our humor and dare I say … personal branding. 🤢 Thanks again and happy spooky season okloveyoubyeeeeeee 🧡
[PS – I feel like this goes without saying, but no AI is ever used in anything I do I just love an em dash SUE ME]
