Hello friends!
Yesterday was Groundhog Day, made forever famous by the 1993 Harold Ramis film in which a disgruntled and depressive weather reporter, played by Bill Murray, finds himself trapped in a reality in which he is forced to relive the same day over and over and over again1.
Today, I must confess, I’m feeling very much trapped in that same reality.
We’re a week on from my last newsletter, in which I more or less promised you all exciting news and updates on our lineup for our next show, which (my mounting heart rate and sweaty palms tell me) is exactly four weeks away today. And yet, here we are, in the very same position we were in last week, with only two guests confirmed.
Now look, don’t get me wrong, they are two very lovely guests, - our old friend academic and author Keith Kahn-Harris, and our new friend comedian and actress Tiff Stevenson - and we’re very lucky to have them on the show. But I had rather hoped that all our efforts in emailing agents and managers and bookers would have yielded a bit more fruit by now.
It gets like this sometimes - an almost relentless effort to organise the show, book guests, publicise the event and sell tickets, yielding almost zero obvious results. And it is often extremely hard to resist the temptation to chuck it all in and go and watch something stupid on Netflix.
We’ve been doing OneTrackMinds for nearly nine years now - May 19th will be our 9th Anniversary - and I’m going to level with you: I thought it would be a bit easier than this by now. I thought that after doing the show for this long, putting on nearly 100 individual events, featuring nearly 500 individual storytellers, and playing to, oh I don’t know, several thousand audience members in that time, that, by now, it would have become a little easier. Maybe we’d have figured out how best to market the show. Maybe we’d have to spend a bit less time shouting about each event we put on, or moaning to you all on Substack in an effort to get people to buy tickets. Maybe we wouldn’t have to be writing the same begging emails to agents and managers to ask them if their clients might be interested in taking part in the show.
It all gets a little much sometimes.
Which is why, this morning, I needed to remind myself of a very important truth, when it comes to doing anything creative, anything artistic, anything worthwhile. That if you’re doing something you care about, then “every day is Groundhog Day”.
So writes artist Austin Kleon in his superb little book on creativity Keep Going2.
In the book - and frequently in his always excellent Substack newsletter, which I highly highly recommend to all OneTrackMinds fans - Kleon expands on the necessity for artists of all kinds to persist at their work. To keep going (as the title has it), even if the work feels dull, repetitive, pointless, or as though it isn’t actually yielding results.
As Kleon says:
Building a body of work (or a life) is all about the slow accumulation of a day after day’s worth of effort over time. Writing a page each day doesn’t seem like much, but do it for 365 days and you have enough to fill a novel. You do it your whole life, and you have a career.
Although days like today (and weeks like last week) feel thoroughly demotivating, and not inconsiderably depressing, it’s important to remember this. We’re still doing OneTrackMinds, after nine years, because we’ve kept going. Even when it’s been tiring. Even when we’ve had knockbacks. Even when we’ve had shows that haven’t quite gone to plan, or not enough people have turned up to make it feel worthwhile. We’ve knuckled down, and carried on, in the knowledge that it’s the work that makes it happen, that makes it feel worth it.
And that iterative effect does yield results. This time last week, we’d sold only 33 tickets for our show. As of this morning, we’ve sold 47. Now 47 isn’t enough to make the show profitable - not by a long shot. But it’s more than we’d sold last week. And we’ll keep going, and we’ll keep going, and hopefully, by March 3rd, we’ll have a decent audience again.
The shows themselves have gotten better too (even if I say so myself…). The standard of stories we’re hearing these days in each and every show is so high, compared to when we started out. (I hope you agree!). And that has to be, at least in some part, down to us learning how better to explain the concept of the show to our storytellers.
The work feels draining sometimes. And it feels from a day-to-day perspective, like it never gets easier and never yields results. But zooming out, taking a bigger picture view, it’s not hard to see that this is simply not the case. Every day, in every way, we do get better and better. If we put in that work… If we keep going.
Now, tickets for March are on sale, as you’ll know only too well. And we can promise you that we will have five guests on the show, and that, as usual, they’ll be five brilliant guests, who’ll tell five brilliant, joyous, engaging stories. If you haven’t done so already, please snap up a ticket or two (or ten). You won’t be disappointed.
Some other things to share with you this week…
It was the Grammys last night. Big whoop…
More interestingly, the Sundance Film Festival wrapped up over the weekend. One of the standout films was The Ballad of Wallis Island, written and starring old OneTrackMinds friend Tom Basden. It looks brilliant. Here’s a trailer:
Another recent OneTrackMinds storyteller is off on tour this week; September’s opening guest Rachel Fairburn launches the nationwide tour of her standup show Side Eye this Thursday at the Glee Club in Oxford. The tour runs through until June. More details here.
I was in Gothenburg last week for work (a very lovely little city - strong recommend!), and spent a lot of time listening to Apple Music Radio in my hotel room. I particularly enjoyed the show Classical Connections, featuring DJ Alexis Ffrench, an incredibly passionate and engaging broadcaster, who puts together amazing playlists of gorgeous music, crossing the boundaries between classical music and contemporary ‘pop’. It’s great. (Ffrench has made it onto the list of Holy Grail OneTrackMinds storytellers too…).
The Guardian ran an entertaining piece in praise of small gig venues last week, featuring contributions from KT Tunstall, Sleaford Mods and Gwenno.
An oldie, but a goodie - How to get an earworm out of your head.
An Album Recommendation - in an effort to keep alive the uniquely Scandinavian atmosphere of my trip to Gothenburg, I’ve been listening to Returnings, an ice-cool Scandi-jazz record by Danish musician Jakob Bro and his assembled crew. It’s very fitting for this time of year (even though the first track is called Oktober - just go with it):
Right, that’ll do! Season Two of our podcast returns this Friday! We’ll see you then,
KB.
Next Show - March 3rd 2025 | Tickets Here
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I’m a little embarrassed at explaining the plot of Groundhog Day to you all. How patronising of me! I know you’ve all seen the film. And even if you haven’t, you’re surely aware of what Groundhog Day has come to mean. I could have just written ‘yesterday was Groundhog Day’, and you’d have all got it. I’m sorry. I promise I do have much more respect for you as readers than this suggests…
Austin Kleon has written three books on creativity - Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work! and Keep Going - and they’re all brilliant. Check them out.
pleeeease keep going!
(some of this groundhogging is just the godawful weather)
and: thank you for the music!
(not into jazz but this is rather lovely)
oh and i have a recommendation too: Tripping with Nils Frahm should be right up this alley and his Music for Animals too (if you don’t know it already)