Kyle Pruzina
Stories (1/0)
7 Reasons Why Musicians Should Drive Rideshare
1. Make New Friends (And Fans, And Industry Contacts, Etc.) I got to meet Elizabeth while driving for Lyft one afternoon heading towards the downtown Nashville area. My phone lit up bright pink with a ride request from a nearby hotel, so I pulled off the highway and picked up one local and her two visitors, all bound for Broadway honkey tonks and hot chicken. After asking my usual questions such as “Y’all from around here” (in my best hybrid Wisconsin-Tennessee accent), and “First time in Nashville?” I discovered that Elizabeth, having moved to the city a year prior, started attending the same downtown church as my wife, Marci, and I do, and immediately we all felt like a car-full of friends. Having read my short bio I keep posted on my passenger-side dashboard, my new friends quickly learned a little about me (songwriter, producer, lived in four states, former dog person now cat-obsessed), and also about my duo folk/pop project, Suitcase Souls. As we sped down Church street dodging scooter riders and swarms of bachelorette parties, we cranked a new single that Marci and I had recently released, and of course at a red light had the idea of taking a quick selfie, the one you see at the top of this post. Not only did I get a few follows on the band’s Instagram account, but I got to hear a bit Elizabeth’s story, how she moved here for grad school and quickly felt right at home. All the while, her mother in the back seat tried to contain her excitement not only that Liz had met a couple of new church friends but also that they’d encountered a real-life Nashville starving-artist type about whom they could perhaps someday proudly say “I knew them when...!” Upon opening the doors of my tiny Toyota Corolla and exposing us to the sound of ten cover bands playing different eighties rock and country songs at the same time, over the noise Liz’s mother made a point to tell me how glad she was that we all got to meet and that she would be watching Suitcase Souls closely. She handed me a generous tip and the three drifted into a sea of tipsy tourists and boot-brandishing brides-to-be.
By Kyle Pruzina5 years ago in Wheel