9 years ago I sat on a bar stool downtown Nashville with a tip jar and a book of cover songs.
When I started GOING live on Facebook, I had already been playing for tips in Nashville, so I had the idea to put up a virtual tip jar and do my singing online. I was the first artist to have a virtual tip jar as far as I know, and back 9 years ago, artists weren’t using the social platforms as virtual venues, so it was all new.
So new that Facebook reached out to me, had me come meet with them at the headquarters, and invited me to share my story.
The virtual tip jar is part of my story. No matter where my music takes me—even when I’m playing in small theatres and filling them up—you’ll still find a tip jar somewhere nearby. Because I’m committed to staying independent, and that means we do it all ourselves. Just me and my wife.
I do all the music making and performing, but that’s not all that comes with being independent.
This isn’t just writing and singing for me—this is keeping it all close to home and not letting anyone come in offering me something shiny if I just change my music, change my clothes, put on cowboy boots, take off the hat.
Everything that goes into my music, I am there for and part of. That’s something I don’t want to let go of. I don’t want to ever have to compromise the music and the heart in it to fit a mold.
That’s where this jar comes in. It’s been with me all the way from the beginning of this journey of paving my own way using the tools offered to me with the online platforms.
It’s a way for you guys to let me know that what I’m doing—and how I’m doing it—is working. You are feeling and connecting with the music I make.
So, even as I grow, and even as we start to fill more small theatres and intimate venues, you’ll always see this tip jar—or a tip jar—in the room beside me.
It’s what once just kept me fed and gave me heat in my little shack outside of Nashville. It’s what once filled my gas tank.
And now, it’s still a big part of what fuels the music, the growth, my ability to get out to more hearts.
Thank you for hitting my jar and keeping me doing what I love the way I love to do it.
— Dawn