That’s been a really exciting thing, because when I came up, it was still, you know, Brown Eyed Girl and Mustang Sally and going through the Top 40 hits. But what I've seen when I'm playing, is that the whole community’s kind of tired of all that. I assume that’s happening everywhere and it’s not just a Saginaw thing … but it is exciting that when I see live music, it tends to be people doing their take on a song, or introducing you to some band or some artists that you've never heard before. We definitely have talented, talented musicians here.
There are so many projects I would love to do. I get so many ideas about doing, you know, one-off albums, where I get all the musicians in Saginaw together, and we do like a Sly and the Family Stone album or something.
At the beginning of 2020, everyone was steaming forward, just trying to do whatever it is we needed to do to be successful and what we each thought was the best way forward.
And then when everything got unplugged, we thought, “OK, community is way more important. Family is way more important.”
If you're an entrepreneur, there's this idea that there’s no such thing as too much work.
But there is and you have to remember that and find that limit for yourself. 2020 has taught me how to reconnect with family and friends. There’s work time and you have to have time to be part of the community and you just have to find that balance.
Performing is a lot of fun. Playing with other people is a blast. I’ve missed it a lot with everything that's going on, because I decided to hunker down until things pass over. I'm not really gigging except for the stuff I do online.
You know, we're all going crazy. At the beginning of all this, I was talking with Bill Georgis, who owns Mike's Wrecker. He's so just incredibly generous and big hearted. We were having a conversation and he said, “We all give what we can.”
That really resonated with me. I decided to quit worrying and just start playing some music. I started doing a weekly live stream on Facebook. Every Tuesday at six o’clock. It's just an hour and I've been doing that since like March or April.
That's been really nice for the community and by that I mean the people who watch the live stream. We’re able to hang out and text each other in the chat. I’ll be playing and look down at the screen and I can see a friend come on, or someone's daughter who’s going off to school, and she popped in to watch the live stream or, you know, Dad will pop in ... There’s some great interaction. People miss a lot of the socializing and this is one way we can connect and remember we’re a community together in all this."
- Andrew Kitzman
