Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #30: Mastering the Craft: The Secrets of Success with Alex Sharpe

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 30

Interviewee: Alex Sharpe

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong, and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast.

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 Jason: Well, welcome to the podcast today. We have Alex Sharpe with us, a good friend of mine. Just as a little bit of an introduction, Alex is one that you may recognize from the group Celtic Women that toured all over the world, all over the US. We’re excited to have you here with us today. I know you’re doing a lot of other things since Celtic Women now, but Alex, maybe you start right at the beginning. How did you end up getting into music in the first place?

Alex: I ended up getting into music because I was trying to get out of school classes.  (laughing) When I was in primary school, which is your elementary school, I was probably about eight, my brother said to me that he had joined the school choir and he said, “Alex, if you join the choir, you get off school half a day early on a Friday“, and I’m like, “Sign me up.” Literally, that’s what I did. I was like, anything to get out of being in the classroom. So, I ended up just joining the choir. The choir director was also a teacher in the school but she loved to do Gilbert and Sullivan productions, which are operettas. They are incredibly challenging, difficult pieces of music. That’s what she wanted to do with a bunch of primary elementary school kids. I was actually a very naturally shy kid, like really shy. I was the only girl. I had two brothers but I was very close and clingy to my mom.

The first time I got on stage was actually in a production. After all the rehearsals, I felt really at home. It was a place where I was able to feel not inhibited. It was a place that I was able to escape to and I guess it was a place where I had a sense of freedom of expressing myself which was a huge release and it was just a magical place for me performing and being on stage. I never thought I would end up in the industry professionally, but it was definitely a magical place where I really came alive and was able to escape this shyness, which is quite contradictory to what most people would think a shy child would end up doing but it’s actually quite common that a lot of performers are naturally actually quite shy and introverted. Yeah, so that’s how it started.

Jason:  So, as you were a kid, did your parents, especially your mom encourage you to do the choir and the music at al,?Or did she say, no, you need to learn a real job?

Alex: No. Anybody who would meet my mom would know she’s the most unserious person in the world. My mom is a big child at heart, and she’s got a great imagination. Our family are actually all very creative, although none of the family were professional musicians or anything. My granddad would play by ear, he would play the piano and he was a great storyteller. My mom’s sisters were all very creative, artistic, great dress makers. So, there was always creativity in the family, but nobody had gone into performing or anything like that. I think it came as a surprise. In fact, it was a surprise to my mom that I could actually sing. She didn’t know I could sing. I don’t think I knew I could sing, and it happened all at the same time when I joined that choir. I remember actually being in my mom’s bedroom and myself and my brother were just playing around and messing and joking and I started to do this impression of my grandmother and I pretended to be her singing and so I would do the wobbly vibrato the way she used to do it and my mom’s goes, actually, that’s actually not that bad.

She’s tried to get me to sing properly and adapt a bit of the vibrato. That’s how I found out I could have some singing voice just by, I don’t know, just playing around. That was the first time my mom actually found out I could sing just by messing. So no, it was never out of a serious place at all. Yeah, that’s how it started off.

Jason: You were in the Ireland area, but you ended up going fairly early in your career into London and doing the Broadway type of career a little bit, right?

Alex:  Yeah. Well, I spent a lot of years here in Ireland. Originally, I never knew or never thought that I would end up professionally in the industry. I had no clue of how to even go about it, particularly back in Ireland then, when I was of that young age, there were no real theater schools. There are loads of them now but there was probably just one and it just didn’t seem like an opportunity financially that was open to me, so I didn’t finish school.

My two loves were performing and traveling so I actually ended up going to a technical college to become a travel agent. I worked for a couple of years in the industry as a travel agent. At the same time, I was still performing. I was performing in school, and I was entering karaoke competitions or talent competitions in a local pub or whatever and the money I would earn if I won or came second or third, I would go on a holiday. That’s what I would do in my summers.

I‘d earn the money, get to these competitions, get the money to go on a holiday. It worked out great. Yeah, so I actually had heard on the radio that they were doing open auditions for a production, a professional production of the Wizard of Oz, and they were looking for somebody to play the role of Dorothy and they had an open call, open auditions and so I went along. There were hundreds of other girls and just kept getting whittled down through the audition process, kept getting callbacks, and then got cast in the role. It was an absolutely incredible experience for lots of different reasons but out of that, the production manager of that production was opening up an agency at the time. I got an agent, which is really vital if you want to be seen for stuff. I ended up getting an agent and I actually spent eight years in Ireland working professionally before I went away to London. I’d been back and forth and auditioned for different productions, but I’d get callbacks, but it never came to anything.

Then when I was 27, I got cast as Eponine in Les Misérables. That was my first exit from Ireland. It was wonderful to be here for those eight years because I got to… It’s quite a small community here. It’s a small city and country. I got first-hand experience of doing lots of different types of performing. I would do musical theater, I would do concerts, or I do pantomime, or I do cabaret, or I do some recording work. I really got to hone my craft and just learn different skills on the job and learn from seasoned professionals that I’d be working with, which was hugely beneficial -really, really beneficial just watching all these people who’d been doing it, veterans at their art for years.

I eventually went away to England and turned with Les Mis for two years, which was an amazing experience because it was like another step up from what I was learning here in Ireland, just to see how things were run, to see how this very, very slick machine runs a tour, but a production on that scale. Also learning to maintain a level of performance for two years, eight shows a week. That was hard. I had to really learn.  You have to keep it at a standard. You can’t fall below that. You can’t just turn on automatic pilot because you have a new audience every single night coming in.

With the touring production, we weren’t set down. We weren’t at the London show. We did 10 weeks in each city, so we were reviewed. Local newspapers would come in and review us. The maintenance of the show was always really, really, very, very high because it was a reflection on Cameron Mackintosh’s company if they got a bad review. We got a lot of attention from the creative that would come in from London. That was a huge learning experience, just having to maintain that level of commitment to a performance – eight shows a week over two years.

Then after that, we were the original cast for a Beautiful Game, which was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show, which was We Were in London. I ended up doing that for a year and then came home to Ireland for a little bit and then ended up getting called to go into Celtic Women.

Jason: Celtic Women, tell me how that happened. They just called you and they’re like, hey, she’s a good singer? so we need…

Alex: Well, it’s huge. A lot of the stuff, a lot of opportunities that happen in the industry, they usually come about because you’ve worked with somebody before and they remembered you, or when something has come up, they’ll think, oh, I think that person is right for this, or they weren’t right for that other thing that we were casting, but I think they might be right for this.

I had David Downs, who was like the brainchild of the musicality of the whole show and did all the arrangements and everything. It was really his baby in a way. I had worked with David many years ago, many years before that, on a concert that was just a one-off concert in the National Concert Hall here and he was just a musician in the orchestra. He remembered me from that and had approached me a year or two later to do work with him, actually, in a hotel down the country. That never came about because I think he got offered another job. I never actually had worked with him outside of that, but he had remembered.

Oh, I know what happened. I was doing a musical called the Wireman and he was very good friends with Shay Healy, who was the composer and the writer of the Newspaper. He had been in to see the musical that I was working with that Shay had written. It was just prior to when Celtic Woman. Anyway, it was just, I think, a year or maybe two years at the top when Celtic Woman had started, and Lisa Kelly was having her baby. She was having Ellie with her child, so she needs to go on maternity leave, and he just recently saw me in the show, and he made that connection. I thought, oh, okay.

Jason: It made an impression on her. That’s awesome.

Alex:  Well, he remembered me. That’s for sure. I think they were a little hesitant at first. I don’t think they knew because he hadn’t actually really worked with me on a production yet. It worked out well so that’s how I ended up getting involved with Celtic Women. I was only supposed to just fill in for Lisa for her maternity leave but it ended up being something that was long term because Orla Fallon left and so I ended up being there full time.

Jason: Got it. How many years was that? You guys went on tour, I know the US, and then you did the Asia tour too, right?

Alex: Yeah, I actually didn’t end up doing the Asia tour but I did go out to Japan and China to do different one-off promo things with them. I just kept missing those Australian tours and those Asia tours but like I said, I did go out to do some promotional stuff where we were just doing concerts out there.  I didn’t tour with them outside of that. We were just all in the US. I did three years with them full time and then I went back in 2015 for the 10-year reunion and then back again in 2018 for I was filling in for Susan. She had a family emergency, so I filled in for that. Then we did a private corporate event for them as well. Lynn and I did that. I think that was, I want to say 2019.

Jason: As you look back, two very different experiences. You’re doing the Broadway productions and then you’re doing a concert on the road where you’re moving often. If you were in front of a college class and talking to somebody, like, okay, here’s what it’s like here, here’s what it’s like in the other. Is there a big difference or things you wish you would have known going into one or the other that would have been helpful to know up front of each type of tour. I’m sure there’s things that you learn from doing each thing.

 Alex:  Well, the nice thing about when I was touring with a musical production then (now it’s probably different) is that they don’t set down as long, we set down for a while, so you got a time to just settle into a new space, get to feel what that theater is like, get to judge what your performance level needs to be at, how to work this space.

Whereas with Celtic Woman, it was actually more restful because you got to go home to the same bed every night. Once you’re touring, you’re moving on every night, so your space is changing every night, the arena that you’re performing in. I had to get used to hearing. I had to get used to just a very different way of using my voice even. Just a very different acoustic with doing a musical theater show as well, getting used to that, but once I got used to that, it didn’t really change. The sound didn’t change in each venue for me. That was an adjustment. Having to sleep on a bus some of the time, interrupted sleep.

Although, to be honest, the demand of the show wasn’t particularly… When I did Les Mis, it was nearly three and a half hours long. It was a long show. We also played ensemble before we turned into our actual characters. A lot of people don’t know that in Les Mis, you always play an ensemble and then you’ve got a couple of scenes and you change costumes and then you go into your principal role. It was very physically very demanding in that way, the actual show. Whereas Celtic Woman itself, the show wasn’t as physically demanding or even vocally as demanding because of the constant sleep changing every night, you might get on the bus and travel for four hours and wake up and go into a hotel, or it might be two hours, or it might be six hours. It was constantly changing, and I found that quite demanding, so you really have to look after yourself on a tour like that. People would say, like the Celtic Woman tour was like a rock concert tour. The schedule was like that.

Then I had my son on the road with me for some of the time as well.

Jason: That was what led you eventually to step away from?

Alex: Yeah, it was too tough. Initially, I had him with me for as much as I could. When I was full time and then we had a tutor on the road, but then when he would go back into mainstream school at home, it was very difficult for him to adjust. I was just feeling guilty, and I just didn’t think it was fair on him. Then on the very long tours, I’d have him come out for maybe halfway through it. But they were like three- or four-months tours sometimes. I’d actually not get even halfway through it. He probably came out for about the last month. Then on the autumn tours, when I was gone for two months, I didn’t have him come out at all. It was very, although physically I was able to have a bit more rest, emotionally and psychologically, it was very tough. That was the thing. I couldn’t really… People used to say, oh, it must be incredible going to all these amazing places and you’re performing at all these amazing venues, which I was but my heart was always with my son, and I was just, it was difficult.

It was just very emotionally challenging for him and me and so in the end, it just got to be too much. I couldn’t do it. I developed stomach problems and everything. I’d have nightmares that I was losing them in the airport, or I would get left behind. It was terrible.

Looking back now at all those places, I’m so grateful for the opportunity of being a Celtic Woman. They are places and venues, iconic places that I will never… I know unless some miracle happens, but I know I’ll never get the opportunity to perform in such amazing places.

I remember actually one elderly gentleman who was one of the caretakers in one of the theaters we were in. There were actually two stages. They built a new stage in front of this old stage, and we got chatting before one of the shows or just in soundcheck and he said, “Elvis used to play this backstage, this space every time he would turn.” Just even having those moments and those opportunities to be in these venues has such history. It was an incredible experience and it led on to other work opportunities.

I guess my advice to anybody going on tours, you really do have to look after yourself physically and at the same time, enjoy it. Just enjoy every moment of it because you really don’t know when those… That’s this business, it’s so precarious. You really don’t know. It’s so unpredictable when work is going to be there and when it’s not or when a big opportunity is going to happen. I wish I could have enjoyed the whole aspect of it, but yeah, it was just difficult being so foreign that way as a mom.

Jason: I know they’ve brought you back. You and I know Lynn, who was with you, you guys have gone back and forth several times there. As that wound down, what did you do with your career from there?

Alex: …because of Celtic Woman, I got to work a lot in the States. I got to work a lot within the LDS community, quite a lot. I worked with Jenny Oaks Baker, and I’ve done quite a lot of concerts with her. I worked with Kurt Bester, and he does his Christmas show. I’ve worked with you, Jason. We performed on your album. We’ve done a concert together.

Jason: We did some awesome concerts together. My favorite of all time.

Alex: Yeah. It opened doors working stateside that never would have happened for me in that regard. I’ve gotten back to doing some musical theater, some opportunities here, which I love, which is my first love because I love the whole experience of being involved in the story when it’s a musical theater piece because it’s a play with music. I love just that whole journey. It actually makes my job as an actress, artist or singer easier because I feel like I’m already… You have that progression of the emotional journey of a piece. I’m less focused on myself vocally.

My focus is on telling the story a bit more and connecting with what’s gone on before with the scene or what the next scene is, what I’m leading or bringing the audience to in the next scene. I’ve got a chance to do that more, which I’ve really enjoyed. Was that again on tour Christmas time with Jenny, so that was wonderful.

Before all of that, we had COVID. We’d like two years of no performing opportunities being available, so I had this space built just to teach just before it, just in February.

We had the lockdown, so I couldn’t have any kids in to teach. I ended up turning this space into more like a TV studio because I ended up doing a lot of virtual concerts online.

That started out Christmas, with personally knowing some families who weren’t able to be together. That’s one of my favorite times to perform during Christmas. I just had an idea of how I could bring these families together and make it a personal experience for them because they weren’t able to be together. I gave them a list of Christmas songs that they could pick from so they could pick, maybe all the different people in the family would pick a song, whichever one meant something significant to them. They put together their own Christmas concert. We would talk in between, and they would share why the song meant something to them. It was a really lovely experience. I had learned a lot. I had to learn a lot on the job of how do I even use a mixing disc, how do I link that into my laptop, into Zoom so that they actually have a proper sound?

I did all of that like most other artists during that time, we had to teach ourselves, and just enough to get by. Thank goodness we don’t have to rely on our own DIY skills. Yeah. So still performing, still recording for different writers. During the lockdown, I wrote or formed quite a lot for an incredibly talented young woman in London who’s written about eight musicals. She’s only 22 and she’s going to be huge. I had an opportunity to record some of her stuff. So still doing stuff and still performing whenever somebody wants me to.

Jason: I think one of the things you said earlier about bringing the story into your music, and I think as I… I had the opportunity to spend several weeks with you recording on some projects with my music but what I always found interesting is you didn’t ever get frazzled about the music part of it. When you talk about the story, that actually makes a lot of sense. When we were in the studio, we were working on Evermore Park, the Theme Park soundtrack. I think one of the things that was really fun to watch is Chuck would come to… We’d be planning on maybe doing one song, and all of a sudden, he’d have a squirrel that we’d chase, “Hey, let’s sing this werewolf lullaby, or let’s sing this manchy thing, or all these different locations.

What was interesting is you and your team that you brought with you from Ireland for that project were able to just immerse yourself in the story. I think as you’re explaining that in that way, that makes way more sense how that soundtrack of Evermore Park came together. Then I knew there were opportunities… You didn’t even mention stories of Hogwarts, the Harry Potter soundtrack.

When we were working on that, Evermore Park, that was the beginning of Chuck working on the Warner Brothers project for Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Legacy, which was… How cool is that?

Alex: I know. Well, it’s funny because at that time, I don’t think we were really sure where anything was going to go with it. It felt like it was just a bit of an experiment in a way.

Jason:  It really was. It was five, six years ago. The idea was, hey, this video game is going to happen. You can’t talk to anybody about it. You can’t say anything. But here’s an idea that may or may not ever happen. What if you had a troll coming here? What was neat, I thought about it, was the magical part of it where you guys have the cool Irish accents, that made it all the easier to make sound real. It really was. We were throwing ourselves into this story that hadn’t been written yet.

Alex: Yeah. It was like improv.

Jason: It really was.

Alex: It was literally like improv. I think the thing is Chuck knew what he was hearing. He knew what he was hearing in his head. He knew what his idea was and where he wanted to go with it. I guess trying to communicate that to all of us. It was just like, it was scary because it was just like, yeah, definitely challenging, but he was great that way. He was able to steer things. Once he started to… His ear was picking up on what he was hearing, he would hone-in on that and go, yeah, that’s it. More of this and let’s go. Then he would start to explain things technically, musically and I’m like, I think out of the three of us, Lynn was certainly the one who had all of that theory and I was just like, it’s going over my head. It’s going over my head. Just give me the emotion, give me the story. Where do you want me to go with that? I’ll just feel it and hopefully I’ll pick up, learn from the other girls where they’re going because they understand what you’re talking about.

Jason: We call it techno babble when people get all excited and everybody else’s eyes glaze over.

 Alex: There’s a lot of those moments where my eyes glaze over for sure.

Jason: The one thing, and I think this is a good tip for musicians is when you get thrown into these maybe scary situations like you talked about, it was out of your comfort zone. I think a lot of times people that are performers or singers, you have this imposter syndrome that I think sometimes plague you. I’m sure there were many times where you’d be up on that big stage and you think, well, why am I here? I’m not as good as this person. How do you feel?

Alex: You know what, though? The funny thing is that it didn’t hit me until much later in life. I think when you’re younger, you don’t know any difference, so you just have pure instinct. You don’t have anything to compare yourself to. You don’t have a past of yourself to compare yourself to and you haven’t been out in the industry long enough to really be influenced or affected or compare yourself to anybody else. For me, when I was younger, it was a lot more… I was less worried, but I’m going to come back to what you’re saying, but here’s something that I did learn over the years. I was great on stage. I could deliver on stage, but in the rehearsal process, I was very inhibited because I was very… It wasn’t an imposter system that I had, but I was really worried about what my peers would think. That shy girl would come back to the rehearsal space, and I think it was not helpful to a director and my fellow actors on stage because my performance might quadruple when it came to actually performing because that was my safe space when it came to actually having an audience in front of me.

However, in rehearsal, then they were like, whoa, they had to react to this other performance I was giving on when it was a live performance and that would be difficult for a director as well because it would inform how the scene would play out. As I got older, I did learn to trust that it’s a lot more helpful to myself and everybody else where I just throw myself in the rehearsal space, even if I get something wrong or it’s ridiculous or whatever. It’s just to trust that it’s more helpful and it’s actually harder on yourself if you don’t just go for it. That part of that did actually help in that process when we were working with Chuck on a lot of that, Ever More and the Harry Potter, the Hogwarts music. It was just to just trust it and just go with the flow.

A challenge for me was the songwriting because I’d never written anything before, and I never even attempted to because I thought that’s not my strength. My strength is my performance and I know that I can sing a bit. I know that that’s my thing. So having to do that, that’s not something that comes naturally to me. I found that extremely challenging for the Evermore project and it was a much lengthier process for me than I think it was for the other girls, but it was a really good thing to push myself to do. There are a lot of really good challenges as part of that whole experience in lots of ways, lots of other stuff.

Jason: I think it is really awesome and probably one of the main reasons you’re successful is you haven’t been afraid to dive in to learn something new or try something. I think there’s some people that just think, oh, I can’t do that, and so they don’t ever even try. I remember watching you write some songs. I think some of the best songs that were written probably as part of those projects, I think a lot of them came from you. Well, I think of the Celtic Dreaming Project, and we had that Christmas album that you’d done. I think it’s Shooting Star.  I think that was you that wrote that tune, wasn’t it? Yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Jason: That one’s still a hit. Somebody’s going to find that someday in the future on some TV show. That song is awesome.

Alex: That would be a miracle upon a miracle if that happened, but you know what, though? I think I have just so much… I still don’t think it’s a talent of mine to be a songwriter.  I think because I had spent so many years being around and being in that environment of learning and recognizing in myself when something is working or when you’re hitting the zone, you know what I mean? I think the years of performing helped me in that process of writing and feeling it in my body. If the next part of the verse was the right place to go, or if this was the right place or musically, whatever, because I have no music theory either. I barely read. So literally me doing those songs was literally me just singing into my phone because I couldn’t even play any.

Jason: I remember you used to call them… You’re the first person that I think you called them the dots.

Alex: Oh, the dots. Yeah. The dots. The music, right? I think it’s an Irish English thing. Yeah, the dots, the music. I mean, I can follow them, but I can’t really play so I was grateful that I had the years of experience when I was thrown into a position like that to have to do it because I had to call on other skills where I was falling short in other ways to be able to do it. It’s still not something I sit down and try and do, though, because it’s not something that comes naturally. It’s too hard work for me to do that.

Jason: We were talking earlier about your big dream, and it would be to be able to go and just perform and go around that hotel. You should share a little bit about that.

Alex: I know because it’s so unambitious, but I think it’s a sign of age.  A dream job now to me would just to be singing in a beautiful hotel on the beach, just a nice piano bar where people are just eating their food in the restaurant and I’m just background music and I just go and do a couple of hours and then I spend the rest of the day on the beach or exploring. I’d love that. That would be lovely. I would quite happily spend a month in one hotel in one country and then just travel on and just be, yeah, just the background noise. That would be lovely. I could sing all the songs that are just not self-indulgent, but just the guilty pleasure songs that you don’t necessarily always get to sing or cruise ships. I’m hoping to go to the cruise ships so then I can combine my traveling.

Jason: You can do the traveling and you can be the singing travel guide or the tour guide, right?

Alex: I know, but I’m getting old as well. So, look, I need an easy gig.

 Jason: Well, I’ve got an easy gig for you down in Costa Rica with my team. Anytime you want to bring a group down there, you can.

 Alex: We can make it happen. What am I going to do? Just get a bunch of people to come hang out with me.

Jason: We’ll do a girl’s trip for you. You can come down. We’ll bring a girl’s trip. I don’t know, 10 to 20 people. I’ve got friends down there. They take care of everything. You can go sit in the hot springs at the volcano and finish the tour down on the beach with massages, I guess.

Alex: There’s the invitation to all of those moms and daughters who want to go on a… Have you met my mom?

Jason: I’ve talked to her. I went over Zoom a long time ago. You can bring your mom with you, right? I was going to say, Could you?

Alex: I could barely imagine bringing my mom down there.

Jason: We got the sloths and the monkeys. We go to the one place, you just gotta make sure you have the windows closed because the monkeys will come steal your eggs and your bananas.

Alex: Well, I don’t mind the monkeys coming and stealing the eggs and the bananas. It’s the spiders and the snakes and it’s all those big things that I would freak out about.

Jason: I’ve only seen two snakes in about 12 trips down there and we were actually looking for them. So that was why we found them.

Alex: I attract the things I’m scared of. It’s true. Every time I’ve gone somewhere in the States where there might be bears around, everybody goes, oh, we never see bears here. We never see bears. On my first camping trip in Lake Tahoe, a bear was circling our tent at nighttime because the people beside us, the people who were camping beside us, left dog food out in the dog bowl for their dog. The bear was circling. Then two of the trips after that, a bear went past me and my son at a restaurant. I had to take him down because he was a lot younger so we needed to have a bit of a chat because he was misbehaving, and a bear just went past us, and I couldn’t see them because it was twilight. I thought it was a big poodle. I thought it was a giant poodle and it literally ran past me and my son. We both just went silent. At the same time, we literally said, that was a bear. I think there are things that I’m scared of, where people say I’m never going to meet.

Jason: Well, if you do want to be a tour guide, don’t sell it by telling people about snakes or bears or other things. We’ll talk about sloths and cuddly monkeys.

Alex:  We’ll definitely do the sloth because I identify as a sloth. I don’t identify but if I was an animal, I’d be a sloth. That’s for sure.

Jason: Last question for you. If you were in front of a group of college kids and you had a couple of minutes of advice to give to somebody who’s thinking, do I want to go into music as a career or not? Or just advice in general, what would you tell those kids?

Alex: There’s a lot. But first of all, you’re going to be told “NO” a lot. You’re going to receive more no’s than yeses. That’s part of the industry. It really is. But things that happen, happen generally because they’re the right things to happen and the things that you get a no to generally because there’s a good reason and not to take those rejections as… don’t take them personally in the regard that you’re not good enough or that what you have to offer isn’t enough because there’s generally other reasons that have nothing to do with your talent.

There are other things that really have nothing to do with it. Like I say, sometimes those things don’t happen because other things are, dare I say, planned for you to happen. Those other things that happen lead to meeting somebody else that leads to another wonderful opportunity. Try not to be discouraged by the nose. Trust that you have the talent and really believe in yourself in that regard. Also, if I would say again to myself, I would tell myself not to be so scared in the rehearsal space or whatever and to just really trust my instincts and not be so afraid in that regard, to really trust your instinct and try not to compare yourself to other people because, yeah, maybe somebody else can sing higher, maybe somebody else can do something vocally or they can do something else.

 I think it’s really important to recognize early what is unique about you and to embrace that and to know that you bring that and nobody else can bring that to a performance or to whatever it is. It’s really recognizing and embracing what’s different and individual about you and that’s something that’s really special that nobody else will have. It doesn’t mean that you don’t ignore the things you might need to strengthen and just be aware of what needs to be worked on, where your weaknesses are, because we can always be doing better in those things.

Also, to try and not take it too seriously, have fun. Try not to take yourself too serious and really enjoy it and enjoy people and enjoy what you learn and really have fun and enjoy the process, enjoy the journey of it and don’t take any of it for granted. You really don’t know when those opportunities, particularly in this industry, are going to come again. 

One little thing I will say, if they don’t come, there’s more than just one thing that you’re good at. There are other skills and there’s other talent that you can develop if those opportunities don’t happen. I think that was very clear during the lockdowns. It’s like all these artists go, oh, I can’t do anything else. Well, actually, you’ve just never had to find out what else you could be good at. But we all had to really look underneath the bonnet, or you call it, what do you call it? The hood?

Jason: The hood.

Alex: We all have to look underneath our personal hoods and go, okay, well, what else is in this tool bag of what I’m made of, maybe there’s something else I can develop?  I think that’s important that we don’t just limit ourselves to just thinking that’s the only thing we can do, but to develop as much as we can in ourselves, I guess.

Jason: Awesome. A lot of value bombs right there you just dropped. Hopefully people were listening and go back and listen to that again because I just want to tell you, I appreciate all of the friendship and just all of the fun things we’ve been able to experience together. It’s been really fun to see your success as well.

Alex: I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunities and thank you for believing in me and giving me those opportunities too.

Jason: I think there’s lots of bright things in your future. If you ever got to Utah…

Alex: I don’t know about that.

Jason: You got an invitation to come. We’ll do a house concert here anytime you want. We’ll come to a dinner house concert and hopefully we’ll sell it out for you.

Alex: Okay. Well, I’m due to be back out there again in November, December. That’s a bit of a crazy concert or crazy tour, but I have my work visa, so I’m able to come there any time again.

Jason:  When you’re ready to get out of Ireland, I know it’s a good place for the next few months, but when you’re ready to have a change of scenery, give me a call.

Alex: Will do. All right. Yeah, no problem. Thank you.

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