Fym Summer X SXSW & CMW 2018

I'm so excited to be announcing I will be performing at the South By Southwest Music Festival 2018 held in Austin, Texas on March 9-18, 2018 and also at the Canadian Music Week 2018 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on May 7-13, 2018.

But over the past few months from Jan - Feb I've been so caught up with rehearsals and planning and crowdfunding and busking and singing and performing. It seems that all of the sudden my life knows where it is going to take me, but my mind and body still have got no idea. I'm overwhelmed and have times when I really sat alone at home and cried and thought "Why me?" and had quarrels with my good friends who performed music with me. It makes me reflect why I am still making music after a decade and why I want to perform my own songs with my friends whom I trust... because that's all how it started for me. And songwriting is still the most challenging and intimate way of expression for my innermost feelings. Without it, I probably wouldn't be alive or happy today.

The news of me performing in SXSW broke in December 2017 and for CMW in Feb 2018. Initially I didn't think it was a HUGE thing to perform overseas in these renowned music festivals, so I nearly brushed the notification emails off as spams. Luckily, I didn't and posted the email online to ask my musician friends - which in the end they verified for me that THE SHIT IS REAL.

It's really shit because big opportunities also come big sacrifices. I've already made countless sacrifices over the decade of music making journey and it was at this juncture this news came when I felt like giving up. So, I took it as another challenge for myself to push through another leap and put my 101% in this.

I feel like I suddenly have alot of benefactors to thank - Bas Linders from singaporegigs.com thank you so much for hosting my SXSW fundraising show. You and your wife Lynelle are so, so kind. Thank you! I also want to thank Leonard Soosay from Snakeweed Studios for recommending George Wong, the guitarist and also a brilliant sounds assistant working for him, and for helping me out so unconditionally and passionately with my sounds during my fundraising show and offering all the tours and music festival advices. Thank you so much Saiful from The Great Spy Experiment for donating to my fundraiser. And everyone who believe in me and my music. Thank you and thank YOU.

Very thankful to Kyla T (Tiffany) and George Wong who's been performing and rehearsing so FUCKING hard with me and going through my songs like they are jigsaw puzzles. Thank you to the adorable Rachel Leto who's helped us so much and singing with me! Really love all of their musicality and personality and apart from bringing value to my music, these three certainly have lots to bring to the table in terms of quality music. Sometimes I feel like they do not understand their exact true worth yet. But I do. 

Thank you to my sister, Yxyvonne, for helping me do last-minute touch up and design for my marketing promotional music materials - be it for CDs, merchandise, EPs, posters, artcards for sale etc. Big love to you, my blood sister. 

Thank you to Kenny, Faizal who used to write and record all my songs with me, and thank you to Jian Ming from Aeonix Productions who always showed so much patience and insights to get my songs properly recorded. 

Thank you to Raye who's with me through thick and thin for almost 5 or 6 years already. Please don't give a fuck about what other people say anymore. I still can't believe we've kinda seen each other grown so much over the years and I am so proud of us :) Thank you for always pointing the video camera lens at me and portraying my true self in your magical videography hands.

And finally, thank you so much to Sean Joseph Tan, my one and only partner and valentine, who's seen my tears more than my joy, who's made me want to be a better and stronger and braver woman. I don't know what I'll do without you. Thank you for challenging me and loving me so hard all the same and all the time. I love you and I appreciate all that you've done for me so much even though you always fart so loudly at random timings. Thank you, to the most handsome and beautiful man, you.

Some pictures to sum up all my performances and rehearsals (the rest can be found on my music Facebook - fb.com/fymsummermusic.)

(Kenny Ng & I playing for Doctors Without Borders, a NGO)

(In this picture, Sean Joseph Tan, Debra Khng, Nick Chim, George Wong, Leonard Soosay, Kyla T, and Beng)

(Busking on the streets to fundraise with George Wong)

(In this picture, Seth from Cadence band and I performing at a Valentine's themed music night titled "Rock And Rollmance" for City65 Music Festival.

(At my music show at one of the largest carnivals @ Marina Bay Singapore, so fun!)

(My +1, Sean Joseph Tan & I attending music awards night by COMPASS)

(Rehearsal sessions...)

(Dressing room before show...)

https://schedule.sxsw.com/2018/artists/18227

https://cmw.net/music/artists/fym-summer/

If you will like to contribute to my music trips fundraiser, kindly head to: https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/sxsw-music-fest-2018-trip-fundraiser

Silly

I sang my song "Silly" seven years ago for one of my exes. And now I proudly sing this song for my current boyfriend in one of the recent music shows with new found love and without shame. It's like an affirmation showing how time can make memories fade, no matter how deeply you think they're going to be etched on your mind.

They have similarities. Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. They always told me the same thing "whatever makes you happy", and then got angry when I really did what made me happy. They always told me they're simple men, so are they expecting to hear "I'm a simple woman" back? When they told me they love me, I sometimes wonder, what their words mean... what they truly meant or not meant at all, especially when their actions spoke otherwise.

How silly... Now this song has more meanings as it ripens and ages.

"Femme Fatale" edition of acoustic music sessions...

 

After a massive one-month of losing my voice and coughing my lungs and blood out... I got my health and myself back together and managed to perform an hour long's of my songs for the "Femme fatale" edition of the acoustic music sessions titled "Living Room" sessions, organised by the man behind City 65 Music Festival - the musically hot blooded Mike Spinks, put together with the brilliant and beautiful musical artist Teashhur Dekan who first approached me to get our head and all of it in this together ever since we met up and discussed in January 2017, and after which we have another incredibly poignant singer-songwriter Adia Tay (Noise Singapore family!) in the loop, as well as violist Veronika Sakhno.

Also had such a palm- and feet-sweatingly blast cussing, bantering and performing the first time with one of the most patient and gifted music producers I've known and who's given me just the right amount of space and liberty to work and improve my own works instead of forcing ideas down my throat, Wong Jian Ming from Aeonix Studios who's produced most of my public musical recordings such as "Luna" EP, the song "Truth" etc... thank you and still thank you all so much!

Photos through the observant lens of Cees Van Toledo, promotion posters by Kevin Chem and live photos by my great friend Kenny Osbourne who's a genius with guitar, art, children, listening to my sorrows, and other essential nonsense in life. With a stroke of good luck and fate, I have also found myself my man, Sean Joseph Tan who's a loving mastermind and pours and oozes so much love and understanding. I'm so comforted and proud. This performance is dedicated to everyone and especially you for the songs have now grown, anew, holding different meanings with you...

 

"This Girl" at UN Women

I forgot to write in for awhile... but it's been such an honour to have performed some of my songs "This Girl" and "Truth" at the UN Women's campaign of 16 Days Of Activism to galvanise action to end violence against women during December 2016 last year, and I am hereby incredibly proud to announce that I have just released these songs at iTunes and my music website. You may check them out at my Bandcamp and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do composing, writing, singing and growing through my music! 

As many may have known and have been curious about the true story behind this song "This Girl" and my performance of the song at the UN Women's campaign during December 2016, I just want to take this opportunity to clarify that "This Girl" is not a song specially written for UN Women - the song has already been born around April 2016, written from my own painful and personal account while the chance to perform for UN Women's wonderful campaign of 16 Days of Activism to end violence against women only struck and came by around November 2016.

At that moment, I felt utterly compelled to perform this song at the UN Women's campaign. I guess it is because I believe that there is something in the message of the song that is so befitting to UN Women's values and what they have been putting up such a good fight for. Ever since, it has now become a cause that is so dear and near to my heart too that I pledge to do my best contributing in.

Through my music and performance of this song, I hope that I can empower women, who are often deemed as the weaker gender by the majority of the world compared to men, and make women from all over the world realize that they can stand for themselves to fight for what is right and not let their innocent voices be unheard or buried, even when the whole world tries or threatens to shut them up.

Don't get me wrong, being a feminist and an activist for UN Women is not about bringing men down; it is about becoming more aware of how men and women can empower each other better and working towards it. In other words, it is about being a humanist to achieve gender equality, ideally speaking.

I sincere hope that this song makes you feel something that I have once felt in my plight, and hope that it makes you choose love and forgiveness even when you could choose hatred and disdain.

I would also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everyone who's given me really positive and sincere feedback and critics for my music. Special thanks to Timbre, Wala Wala, Esplanade, Dalkomm Coffee and Starbucks, Noise Singapore of National Arts Council and more (sorry if I miss anyone out) for featuring my music. I appreciate all of it so much and I am more grateful than ever to be able to continue using my gift to create music and wonder every day. xx Love, Fym Summer

- .-. ..- - ....

Truth ( - .-. ..- - .... in Morse code) is one of my proudest musical work I have to say! I wrote this one around September 2016 based on my own experience of being silenced for speaking the facts to an arts institutio and I am incredibly excited to perform this one live.

London, United Kingdom

"London"

Japan

Fym Summer at Shibuya Crossing