Shaky Hands and the Anxiety Sh*ts

I want to this blog post to hopefully help other anxious people feel that they are able to join a band and play gigs, because it is possible, and playing a gig is the most cathartic and rewarding experience you will ever get as a musician.

My aunty taught me that if you aren't nervous before a gig, then you don't care enough, which is so true. It's not a bad thing to want the gig to go well, to play your best, to win over any members of the audience that are being introduced to your music for the first time. It's important to want those things.

However, that doesn't make the nerves any easier to deal with.

Shaky/sweaty hands, foggy brain, tummy ache, the anxiety sh*ts, feeling like you can't breathe.

One of the things I get that I find particularly amusing (afterwards, not during) is when I am onstage and Issy (wych elm's drummer) is counting us into a song and I have four beats before I have to start playing and my brain is going "your hands don't work, you can't play this song, your hands aren't going to move." I'm stood there, waiting to play, just frozen, panicking that my hands won't work. Very odd. There hasn't been a time yet (touch wood) that my hands have, in fact, stopped working, so I think I should be fine...

It's these irrational thoughts, and skewed thought processes, that spiral us into this oblivion of pre-gig anxiety. You might have one thought that is "what if I trip over my lead whilst playing" and then that thought will snowball into "oh my gosh, I might trip over my lead, pull it out of the amp, blow up the amp, cause a fire, ruin the venue, have to pay lots of money." When in reality, if you trip over your lead, the worst that is going to happen is a bruised knee, and a hurt ego.

Now, the anxiety sh*ts is a whole other story, because, although caused by your brain, it is a physical thing. The amount of times before going onstage I have said to my band "will you kick me out of wych elm if I poo myself onstage" is endless. The only thing here that will help you deal with it is pooping as much as you can pre-gig and then just trusting yourself and your body. Although it's a physical thing, you know that as soon as you're onstage and the first song is over, you're going to be FINE, the nerves will disperse, and you'll start having fun - no poo-related accidents on my watch, no sir.

I think the most important thing that needs to be addressed when attempting to combat pre-gig nerves is being open with your bandmates. Talking about things with each other is SO IMPORTANT! You're all in the same boat, you're all on this journey together - talk, listen and help one another through the stress, through the nerves. No topics off-limits, we will talk about poo, we will talk about periods, we will talk about E V E R Y T H I N G.

Whether you play to three people, 300 people, 3,000 people or 3million people, your songs are the same, you are the same person, you are going to play the same as you have been playing - there are just a few more people watching. It's fine.

At the end of the day, playing a gig should be fun, so have fun, do it, you're allowed. Addressing and acknowledging the nerves is healthy, but then you have the power to tell them to f*ck off, because you are going to enjoy every second of playing your songs to a room full of people, who, don't even know that you pooped 6 times that day.