Nashville has the tendency to feel like a small town sometimes. I frequently run into Belmont classmates, or other people that I’ve worked with while out and about. Often times, these aren’t people I know incredibly well, so one of us will inevitably give “The Nashville Hello.”

“Hey man, good to see you. What have you been up to?”

This seemingly nice question immediately turns any conversation into a competition of whose music career is currently the more successful.

Perhaps I’m the only person prideful enough to see it this way, but we’re all musicians. I imagine we struggle with a lot of similar insecurities.

The main thing that bothers me about these exchanges is that it puts all of the emphasis on what people do instead of who they are or what they are experiencing. I always enjoy a conversation so much more when someone asks me “How are you doing?” instead of “What are you up to?”

Even if we’re not close enough for me to drop truth bombs on the difficulty of my life, or at least go into great detail, I still feel more valued than if someone wants to know how my career is going.

So I issue a challenge to Nashville musicians. If you’re going to have a 30 second conversation with someone you run into at Baja Burrito, ask them how they’re doing instead of skipping straight to business. If they choose to go there on their own, so be it, but at least you tried to show someone that you care instead of slipping into one-upmanship.

There is a myth in music that the most talented people work alone, and for the longest time, I bought into it. I would hear John Mayer talk about sitting down and writing one of his biggest hits in an hour. I would read liner notes of artists playing almost every instrument on a record, and I thought that was the pinnacle of success in artistry.

For me, that was a really discouraging way of thinking. I’ve wasted so many hours sitting in my room by myself trying to write a great song or produce an amazing track. While I can create things on my own, I do it better with other people involved, and it’s more fun. Still, I thought going it alone was the way it was supposed to be.

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