On August 25, 2012, I will be performing an acoustic set at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia as an opener for Wino & Conny Ochs.

I am really fucking nervous. If we disregard the fact that it’s my first show playing new (as-yet-unwritten) material, we come to the fact that this kind of thing leaves the performer far more exposed than the traditional band arrangement. When I’m playing black metal, I succeed or fail with my friends. If I fuck up, we fuck up; if someone else fucks up, we fuck up. Everything I say is hidden behind a wall of amps, a wave of cymbals, cloaked by a furious snarl and on face and a vocal delivery that reduces my lyrics to a fragments flying through the storm. I take pride in the honesty behind Woe’s lyrics and image, but no matter how hard I try to strip it down to its core, there will always be a divide between the performer and the audience.

This material will be different. Me, an acoustic guitar, and a microphone. Everything I say will be audible, every lyric I forget (cause that does happen) will be noticeable, every missed note and sloppy chord change will be clear as day. After a lifetime of playing aggressive rock music, this all feels very frightening.

I’ll have a demo up soon. There are a few songs I’ve been working on for a while that I’m going to finish up and use for this. One was originally a Woe song but the requisite clean vocals were just too much to attach to that project; another was far too wimpy to ever even consider; another was planned for Woe but, again, a little too wimpy so I wanted a better outlet for it anyway. Having only about a month to prepare is OK. If I had two months, it would have been one full month of procrastinating and nervousness followed by 10 days of frantic writing and then another 15-or-so days of frantic rehearsing, all leading up to 6 minutes of awkward between-song banter, 5 minutes of a cover, and 21 minutes of actual performing. The way I look at it, the deadline requires me to sort of cut the fat.

And that’s that. For now, onward to failure!