I’ve been performing at Abbey Road on the River for thirteen years now, and I’ll be honest – for the first several years, I played it safe. Same songs, same stories, same energy every time I took the stage. It worked, the crowds seemed happy, and nobody complained. But something always felt like it was missing.
Over the last seven years, I’ve made it my mission to bring something completely different to each set at the festival. Not just different songs, but different pieces of myself. This year, that approach led me to one of the most unexpectedly emotional moments I’ve ever had on stage.
Four Days, Four Sides of the Story
Thursday kicked things off with a trip down memory lane – I played hits from all the headlining acts who’ve graced Abbey Road stages over the past few decades. It felt like flipping through a musical photo album, each song carrying the weight of festivals past and the artists who’ve shaped this event into what it is today.
Friday brought the medleys, my favorite kind of musical puzzle. I’d start with a Beatles song and flow it seamlessly into another popular song from that same era. There’s something magical about watching a crowd’s face light up when they realize where you’re taking them – that moment when “Strawberry Fields Forever” slides perfectly into “Space Oddity” and suddenly everyone’s singing along to both.
Saturday was pure Ziggy Stardust energy. Armed with my loop pedal, I layered drums, keys, and guitar to recreate that glam rock atmosphere all by myself. Bowie always understood that performance was as much about transformation as it was about music, and channeling that theatrical energy reminded me why I fell in love with performing in the first place.
But Sunday – Sunday was when things got real.
The Song That Changed Everything
Sunday’s set was supposed to be my most comfortable one: original songs, my own stories, the intimate connection I’ve spent years building with my audience. I’d planned out the stories behind each song, practiced the transitions, felt confident about sharing these personal pieces of my musical journey.
Then I got to “Feels Like Home.”
I started telling the story like I always do – about working at Ear-X-Tacy, the record store that had been like a second home to me for years before I ever worked there. How it shaped my musical taste, introduced me to artists I never would have discovered, and became the kind of place where music wasn’t just product on a shelf but a living, breathing part of the community.
As I talked about the day we closed the doors for the last time, something unexpected happened. My voice caught. The words got stuck somewhere between my heart and my throat, and suddenly I was choking up in front of the audience.
I could see it in their faces – that moment of recognition. These weren’t just polite festival-goers listening to another musician’s story. These were people who had been there. Who had flipped through vinyl in those same racks, discovered their own favorite albums in those same bins, felt that same sense of loss when we had to say goodbye.
The Real Value of a Song
After the set, people kept coming up to me. Not to tell me I played well or that they liked my voice – though a few did that too. They came to share their own Ear-X-Tacy stories. The first album they bought there. The in-store performance that changed their life. The employee who recommended just the right record at just the right time.
It reminded me of something I wrote about a while back – what exactly is the value of a song? The music industry has all kinds of ways to measure it: downloads, streams, dollar signs. But the real value isn’t in the numbers. It’s in the moments like Sunday afternoon, when a group of strangers suddenly became a group of people sharing the same memory, the same sense of loss, the same understanding that some places and some songs become part of who we are.
Coming Full Circle
There’s something fitting about having this realization at a festival dedicated to the Beatles. The first music that made me want to write songs, the first songs that made me pick up a guitar, came from four guys from Liverpool who understood that music’s power lies in its ability to connect us to each other.
Every year at Abbey Road, I feel that same spark that got me started – that reminder of why I began writing songs in the first place. But this year felt different. This year, I remembered that the best performances aren’t the ones where everything goes according to plan. They’re the ones where something real happens, where the wall between performer and audience disappears for just a moment.
The Risk of Being Real
I’ll admit, there’s a part of me that wonders if I should have kept it together up there. Stayed professional, stuck to the script, given the crowd the polished performance they came for. Playing it safe is easier, and it certainly doesn’t leave you feeling emotionally raw in front of a group of people.
But then I think about all those faces in the crowd, all those shared stories afterward, all those connections that happened because I let my guard down for just a minute. That’s when I remember why I started doing different sets each year in the first place.
Music isn’t just entertainment – it’s communication. And real communication requires vulnerability. It requires taking the risk that what you’re sharing might not land the way you hoped, that you might stumble over your words or get choked up at the worst possible moment.
What Abbey Road Teaches Us
As I packed up my gear on Sunday afternoon, I found myself thinking about all the performers I’d watched over the weekend. There’s so much talent at this festival, so many different approaches to connecting with an audience. Some bring high-energy party vibes, others offer quiet introspection. Some stick with tried-and-true crowd pleasers, others take creative risks.
All of those approaches are valid. All of them have their place. But for me, this year reinforced something I’ve been learning slowly over the past few years: the moments that matter most are often the ones we don’t see coming. The songs that connect deepest are usually the ones that cost us something to share.
Thirteen years into performing at Abbey Road on the River, I’m still learning what it means to truly show up on stage. Not just with my guitar and my voice, but with all the messy, imperfect, real parts of who I am. Sometimes that means choking up while telling a story about a record store. Sometimes it means taking creative risks that might not work.
But it always means remembering that at the end of the day, we’re all just people sharing songs, sharing stories, and hoping to connect with each other in a world that can feel pretty disconnected sometimes.
And maybe that’s the real value of a song after all – not what it costs or how many times it gets played, but how it brings us together, even if just for a weekend in Jeffersonville, Indiana, remembering the places and people and moments that shaped us into who we are today.
See you next year, Abbey Road. I’m already wondering what side of myself I’ll discover then.