04/05/2024
Hi all, a very moving update from one of our recent interview guests on the Inspiration Hour Show. If you can spare a few minutes, it's well worth reading Stefano Virgili Music's post in full as it's an inspiring tale of the power of love, caring for others, determination and self-belief when life throws challenge after challenge at us. If you haven't heard it already, you can still hear my interview with Ste on my MixCloud page at https://www.mixcloud.com/DB_Xtreme/the-inspiration-hour-show-ep-209-13-apr-2024/
Cheers !
Davy 😀
[Long post incoming]
Almost 10 years ago, I left my hometown in Italy with nothing but a dream.
I had to live for months in a cheap hostel to save money to be able to afford a flat where I could bring my wife and daughter. During that time, my food was stolen, I had to fight with drunk people to be able to get some sleep and have the energy to go to the call centre job I had found, I did not even have a cushion (I used a rolled sweatshirt for that), and the bed I used to sleep on was smelly and often disgusting (one day I even found in it a pair of dirty used pants).
Eventually, I saved enough money to move into a flat with a former colleague. For almost a year, my 9-month-old daughter, my wife, and I lived together in one bedroom.
We then kept working and improving eventually managed to save enough money to buy our first house. We never stopped working hard, endless nights, trying to get better and better.
After 5 years, we moved to the lovely town of Dunoon in beautiful Argyll (Scotland). The house we bought was a fixer-upper, so we rolled up our sleeves and slowly renovated the entire place from top to bottom. We're still finishing it, but we're finally seeing the end of the tunnel.
Because of the renovations, I didn't have a studio for almost a decade. Can you imagine?
Almost a decade without being able to play and record some music. If you're a musician you know what I am talking about.
My music equipment was boxed up at my parents' house, waiting for the day we could be reunited.
Less than two years ago, after fixing the roof and no longer needing to use bowls to catch rainwater leaking into the room that would become my studio, I had my music equipment shipped over.
I reassembled my home studio and, about 15 months ago, started working on "The Ballad of the Expat," my upcoming album that tells our story as expats or, as I friendly call it "TBOTE"!
When I wrote the 4 songs that make TBOTE, I wanted to capture the joys and pains of leaving our hometown and searching for a place we could call home again—a place where we could hope for a better future, not just for ourselves, but for our two kids.
This is the idea behind "The Ballad of the Expat.", my debut solo project as a "Scottish" independent artist.
Now, let's get to the point because life is indeed short.
When the album was ready and the first single, "Free Fall," was released, I never imagined that in just 18 days, the track would reach an incredible 10,000 streams on Spotify, over 100 streams on YouTube Music, over 500 streams on Apple Music, and a few more on other services like Deezer and iHeartRadio.
I spent the last months working every night after my full-time job, after renovation work, and after my dad duties, aiming to promote "Free Fall" and the album that will be out next Friday, May 10th.
I did everything I could to be as sleep deprived as it was humanly possible and, despite starting to feel a bit tired, I am glad I did it!
My goal was to make my music heard by as many people as possible, and I'm truly grateful for the incredibly positive response.
10K streams, for an independent artist, with no one behind is not a joke and I am honestly speechless.
I can only say that I can't wait for the full album to be out in the world, to hear your thoughts, and hopefully, to move you.
But let's be honest, did I make it all by myself?
No way! It'd be naïve to even think that.
No man is an island and this applies to any possible context.
Over the past months, I've received incredible support from many people: my wife, who tolerated my late nights at the computer and gave me extremely helpful feedback; my dearest friends all over the world, who listened to the album during its beta stages and provided valuable feedback; my friend Danilo who helped me getting the most of out TBOTE by taking care of the whole mastering, Massimo who is probably the kindest and sweetest person I have met in my life and, last but not least, my best friend, Gianma, who spent countless nights with me on Zoom, helping create the album cover and helped me keep up the morale when I was starting to feel a bit underwhelmed by all the things that life throws at us every day.
Without them, Free Fall might not even be out today so thank you so so so much folks. I love y'all!
And last but not least, I also want to publicly thanks the amazing people I met while promoting the album, DJ DB Xtreme, Victor, Louise! People who gave me opportunities to share my story and introduce the album, other than putting "Free Fall" out in the air more times than I would have ever imagined.
I wrote to so many radios, and blogs and journalist and radio presenters, but none of them responded.
As an independent artist this is normal and expected but not them. They welcomed me and gave me a space to share my music and my story and I have no words to fully express my gratitude.
So, once again, thank you all who are streaming "Free Fall" and made this 10K streams a reality. I am deeply humbled by this and I hope, next Friday, you'll find some time to dance with me, on the notes of "The ballad of the expat". The journey of a lifetime.
From the bottom of my heart— Thank you.
See you next Friday! ;-)
Ad majora,
Ste
