Overcoming Imposter Syndrome with Danielle Allard

[00:00:00] Danielle Allard: Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for having me today.

[00:00:03] Rosalyn: Thank you so much for being here. So for anybody. Just listening in, I just wanna describe to you quickly where Danielle's calling in from, cuz I can see your beautiful studio behind you. I kind of had a feeling that . Somebody who's streaming this much would be really set up there.

But you got the twinkly lights, you got the, the mood lighting, all the things. is this your studio that you do your, you're streaming.

[00:00:26] Danielle Allard: Oh yes, absolutely. Uh, welcome to my basement. And yeah, I think twinkle lights are an absolute must, but we also have the multi-cam setup, so sometimes you can see me from the back of the room, and I think it's a little easier to see the enormous amount of instruments, and I think that maybe many of us suffer from this is just.

The absolutely insane instrument collection that just grows over time. And sometimes it's even people saying, Hey, I found this in an attic here, . I dunno what to do with it. And you end up with a band guitar. But yeah, this is where I'm always streaming from.

[00:01:00] Rosalyn: I heard that you take requests to play on 30 different instruments. Is that right?

[00:01:06] Danielle Allard: True. Sometimes we do, I mean a variety of different kinds of streams, but the most popular in the Twitch space is certainly request streams. People enjoying the opportunity to request their favorite songs, sometimes request that you live, learn their favorite songs as well. It's just something. A very strange concept to me when I started streaming.

Like, you want to see me struggle through something I've never heard or played before. Why? But yeah, people love the request there and it's kind of given me this space to really practice the multi instrumentation that I was trying to do before, but I was always so nervous on a stage and giving me this space.

Could kind of very safely fail while trying to learn new instruments. So there are many here with me now,

[00:01:51] Rosalyn: That's so neat. And at Folk Music Ontario, we had the pleasure of hosting you for one of our webinars, like pretty early on in the pandemic. And we'll link to it in the show notes. But it was a pretty eye-opening webinar for a lot of people where you kind of got into some of the.

The nitty gritty details about your kind of career on Twitch, and the way that you've been able to make this like a big part of your income stream now, and especially during the pandemic. Do you wanna just speak a little bit too? You know, to, to that shift to online and then maybe how you're coming out of it now.

Cause I know now you're getting back to live performances and performing for a I R L audience.

[00:02:31] Danielle Allard: Well, I think, I mean, we were all kind of faced with some big decisions in 2020 in this industry, in in every industry, and I was really highly motivated to actually do my first stream for my students. So by day, I do teach here in Ottawa in a music industry, arts and performing, arts and public relations program.

And so just kind of experiencing the pain of everything that we were all experiencing through their eyes as well. They were having their charity events that they'd worked so hard on being canceled. They were losing their studio time. They were having huge productions that they'd spent two months rehearsing, just being canceled everything in front of all of us.

So when we were about to do that kind of charity event campaign, I didn't want them to be alone for that evening. So we decided, well, let's just play music anyways. It was supposed to be just a fun, open mic night for all of the students. I would be performing for them as well for a charity, and I decided to press this scary button that said Go live on Facebook and Instagram.

I'd never done anything like that before, and it was just one device, my phone for Instagram, and then I had my laptop for Facebook. And through all of that, I had found this lovely way of connecting with my family and friends and being with them in a time when we couldn't leave. Right. So that was huge for me.

It was really important for my mental health and it kind of gave me some structure in a time when we were all kind of clamoring around really struggling, not having any structure in our lives. So moving over to Twitch was kind of part of an experiment in developing curriculum because I'd found this lovely thing that had given me motivation.

I had a place to be certain days of the week at a certain time, and without that, maybe I wouldn't have been playing so much music or I wouldn't have been practicing something new. I wouldn't been interacting with my family and friends on these. Platforms. So I decided to build that into one of my courses, which had this stage performance component.

And I felt a little bit like a fraud walking in and teaching a class like one day when we're on a stage again, , this is what it's gonna be like. And in theory I think that the practice is really an important part of learning. So we shifted that spring 2020 course straight into live streaming. So part of my kind of deep dive into Twitch was just for curriculum development, but that first stream, all of a sudden there were these strangers here.

That were so happy to see someone new and find this independent musician in Canada, and they were people from around the world and that wasn't anything that I had experienced on other platforms, right? We all struggled to have our content seen, even by the people who opt in to see our content. It's so, so hard to get any kind of organic reach in, in any kind of social media space.

So for these new people to be finding me, I thought, well, maybe there's something. Uh, And that was the beginning of a complete change of pretty much every aspect of my life, uh, and I'm so, so grateful for it. I wish that we didn't all have to go through what we've been through in these last few years, but I don't think without this major world shift, I would be doing what I do right now.

So for that, it's a big silver lining.

[00:05:49] Rosalyn: So you mentioned the word the scary button of going live. And that, you know, when you, when you first pressed it, you were thinking of, you know, family and friends seeing this, you know, or your students seeing this. And now when you press that go live button, you're being seen by people all over the world.

How does that feel for you now? When you are kind of going live? Is it easier almost if it's strangers or is it harder? How does that affect you?

[00:06:14] Danielle Allard: These are all super good questions. Because in my community what we've all kind of done is try to lift up new streamers and help people who are kind of going through what we've all been through in making this shift to a virtual environment. And so we all call it going and doing the scary thing, . I don't think that the scary part ever goes away, just like, uh, when we think about getting up on any stage, when I hit that button, I never know what's going to happen, but I do have to say that.

When you spend this amount of time with all of these people who are joining you from around the world many of them have become very good friends. So it still feels like friends, even if they're in Europe or South America or Australia. We spend usually a minimum of three days a week on my stream.

We're in other friends streams and we're spending an enormous amount of time on disc. We have weekly events, games, movies, so you get to know everybody pretty well. And it's just a really, really lovely space, full of really talented, incredible people. So I think that helps take the scary away a little bit because when I hit that button, I know there's going to be usually The kind of core members of the community that are there for every stream. But it does really open you up to a whole new world and stream to stream. You don't know if you're going to have a couple dozen and a couple hundred, maybe a couple of thousand people all of a sudden who are there. So it does keep you on your toes.

And I think that I appreciate the fact that not every stream is the same.

[00:07:46] Rosalyn: do you ever get any negativity or negative reactions when you're online, the, you know, it's one funny comparison is that, if you're, you know, sitting in the audience at a concert and you're like I'm not so into this, you're probably not gonna boo their performer.

Like, it would take a lot , to do that in real life. But, you know, as we know it's a lot easier to. write some sort of negative comments or get some of that more negative feedback online. Have you ever dealt with that? And, And when you have, like how do you get through it and how do you come out to the other side?

[00:08:15] Danielle Allard: Oh, uh, it happens in every online space. I'm really happy that we're actually talking about this because sometimes I feel this pressure to continue to create a positive space. So you just kind of don't acknowledge any of that negativity that's happening. But I also feel this pressure to also deal with that and address it sometimes because I know that has a ripple effect for friends who have smaller communities or less of a moderation team.

And so this is an only like a live streaming thing and I think that, so. Some musicians hold themselves back because they're really frightened of this. What I do love about Twitch is the moderation capabilities. So you don't actually usually need to see a lot of that stuff when you're performing, cuz you can assign moderators, so people who are spending time with you in the channel.

They're able to delete comments, time out people, ban people. But fortunately, I mean, apart from very huge kind of front page feature streams where you have thousands of people coming through your stream, even in those situations, we haven't had an enormous amount of negativity. In the music section, there's a lot of love and there are a lot of kind of core members.

Each community that are core members of the Twitch music community at large, so they know all the musicians. And I mean, it gets to a point where we all know each other too because um, you spend a lot of time in other people's, channels, learning from them supporting them as they've supported you.

It's a really lovely space. So don't avoid streaming because you think there's going to be an enormous amount of negativity, is something that I would encourage everybody to look into. Because you will find that everywhere on the internet, right? When we think about the fear of putting up YouTube videos, somebody goes and they put a negative comment and that kind of lives there.

The nice thing about streaming is you might not even see that. Your moderator might even delete that right before you have the chance to even experience that. And you'll have some people there who will immediately try to like fill the chat with love in response to any kind of that hate. So it's a really beautiful, experience.

Moderation's really important. So I would encourage you, if you're gonna get started, just find a friend who's gonna be on streams with you. You just give them a little mod sword and they can be there deleting any of that stuff. But honestly the percentage of that is quite small in comparison with the people who are just there to support independent musicians.

[00:10:38] Rosalyn: Wait, do you get an actual sword ? Do you, Do you just set the moderation sword?

[00:10:43] Danielle Allard: Yeah, you get a little sword badge next to your name. I don't know, maybe I should get them real swords.

[00:10:49] Rosalyn: No, I think uh, you know, probably online swords are better. But I'm still so into that's what they get. You know,

[00:10:56] Danielle Allard: We also joke that they're pool noodle swords, so, knows. Still safe

[00:11:01] Rosalyn: you get like a clipboard or you get like a magnifying glass, you get a sword. I like that. that's such a cool idea to have like, somebody being your champion, you know, and looking out for you in that space, I. I don't know of any other places where like online that, that you can do that, you know?

[00:11:19] Danielle Allard: it's really important. And I mean, you can also assign managers in, in, in spaces like YouTube and things like that of people who can just help you continue to make art, especially if you're finding like it's really impacting your mental health and things like that. You can always find ways to have team members in, places of people who just kind of wanna shield you from some of that.

But Twitch music just as a huge community is super kind and that's why I always Occasionally , draw attention to some of the people because I know that if I don't acknowledge that or if I let them behave that way in my space, that has a ripple effect on other communities because they're going to go and visit all of my friends as well and likely do that same thing.

So sometimes I feel like I do have to address it and just say, I mean, there's, uh, this vast amount of things you could be doing with your time and this vast amount. Content you can be looking at on the internet. Why are you ruining your day by hanging out with me and listening to something that you don't wanna listen to?

That doesn't sound fun. Like, I, I wish you a good day and I hope that you find this thing that brings you joy. But you really don't usually have to acknowledge a lot of that. You've got people in your corner pretty much from stream one in that space who are just really happy to see somebody trying something.

[00:12:29] Rosalyn: That's amazing that you are at least like taking that on to hold people accountable, so hopefully they don't go off and ruin someone else's day as well. That's that's brave. I think, you know.

[00:12:41] Danielle Allard: Yeah, that's always the hope. But I mean, this might happen once a week, once a month. It's not something that you normally just experience as soon as you press that button. It's just kind of a wall of hate. And I have uh, spoken with some friends who are scared to get started cuz they're scared that's what they're gonna be up against.

But fortunately not in this.

[00:13:00] Rosalyn: you mentioned earlier how doing the live learning Taught you to maybe like confront a fear of failure. Can you speak to that a little more? I found that really interesting when you said

[00:13:12] Danielle Allard: I, I think that's why I, I wanted to, to keep going on Twitch is I was doing things that had been on my bucket list as a musician for years that I'd never made time or space for. And if I was ever trying to do them on my own, I would get so frustrated with myself that I would. So a big goal of mine for so long was live looping, and that's something that I do a lot of on stream now.

And the first time I did it on stream was July, 2020. I mean, my camera was still, my cell phone . My setup was just not there yet. But there were a good 15 people that would come to streams. And sometimes I would get too scared to even put some of those practice dreams in the music category, so I would just put them in just chatting so hopefully nobody finds this, and if the 15 of you are here to watch me fail at this for three solid hours, it was nice that they were there to hold me accountable that I couldn't just do that for 45 minutes and then quit again, which I'd done so many times in the past.

That every time I pressed a wrong button or something horribly awry, went on, somebody would be there in the chat being like, yay, a super hype wrong button. You pressed it, . And I'm like, why are you celebrating this? And there are people there donating for new gear and donating for stream upgrades because they're.

That you're there, you're on time, you're spending time with them, and you're working really hard to kind of get to this next level. And so I think that people saw that with my cell phone and a Pringles can set up and my loop pedal that I couldn't make work for the life of me and they knew that I was trying.

So they were there to kind of support. To that next stage. And if you see where the stream has gone since 2020 to now, like it's a completely different experience. And it wouldn't have been that way had I not had that schedule, had those people holding me accountable and kind of celebrated the fact that you can't learn something new and you can't get better at something.

Like you're gonna start and be terrible at it. That's just how it works. You have to fail a whole bunch before you're gonna get to that next step. So what a beautiful experience is it. It is that people would celebrate that. So that was something that had such a big impact on me that I've really tried to do that for our community through things like we have a community stream festival called Dinosaur Stream Fest, bringing together 30 members of the community, some brand new streamers, some super seasoned streamers, but it's just this chance.

Everybody has a super safe space, a super safe audience. If they wanna try something new, we're here for it. If it breaks the entire stream and the stream goes offline, we're here for it. It's been a really life-changing thing for me. I've become, A better musician. I, I feel like a better, more hopeful human

And I can't recommend just even if the only thing that you want to do with your music right now is get better at an in, at an instrument. Having a stream schedule, having people there that are expecting you live at that time like so powerful for you to get out of bed and go and do that thing that's been on your list for so many.

[00:16:25] Rosalyn: I love it. I, when I first heard about the, I mean, and I think it might have actually been from you in that, first webinar we did about people, logging on to watch somebody learn something and to practice and it, it struck me as odd when I first heard it, like, you know, like voyeuristic, like watching someone eat a sandwich or something.

Like, why would you want to, why would you want to do that? And then the more that. I looked into it, it's it dawned on me like it's brilliant. Like, it's actually such a neat concept because as you said, it holds the musician accountable. So you're trying out new things, you're like, you're practicing but for the audience member it gives you such a cool glimpse into the creative process. and you know, ultimately we kind of, we love failure in that way. Like as a, as an audience person, when you see someone do something perfectly, you're like, oh, okay. I guess they're just perfect and that's great and they're gonna do it perfectly all the rest of the time. So why would I go and see them perform a bunch of, but you think about like jam bands and, and you know, the people that, fans really engage with and will follow around and engage within kind of a more intense way.

And it's because they're gonna do something different every time. They might fail. They might not nail that, solo. are they gonna make it this time? I don't know. I better tune in, you know?

[00:17:38] Danielle Allard: Well, exactly. There's that and I think the fact that an enormous amount of why the audience is so positive too is cuz it's fellow creatives. A lot of the people in that space are fellow musicians and makers and artists. On Sundays we have art prompt. So we put up a new prompt every week, and we usually have upwards of 30 people making live art just based around that.

I've been featuring artists from our community in our Sunday streams, so they'll do live art while I'm making music, but it's also this kind of human element of these people who you admire seeing them fail and making it feel like. Now it's okay that I'm failing. So there's a little bit of that I think too, that I love watching it when my new friends are trying new things and failing.

Cause you're like, okay, well I just failed yesterday on stream and you're failing now, so let's all fail together because if we never did it then. You could say you had a perfect track record. You've never failed at that thing, but you also never did that thing. So, I think that a lot of us are kind of attracted to this, this messy part of art because we know exactly what that is.

I was never a fan. Even doing concerts before my favorite were house concerts. It was never going and seeing that same show, everything's pre-programmed. There was no stories, there's no human element to the artist that you're seeing. And it's just like a very Incredible 30 minute set, but if you were to follow them around, as you're saying, you're gonna see the same thing over and over again.

And I loved the human element of house concerts, being there and celebrating things with people. People ask me questions in between songs. I was never. A kind of musician that wanted people to be in awe of me because I've never, I mean something, we're talking about when we get into imposter syndrome.

I've never considered myself to be an extraordinary musician. But do I think that the creation of anything is so important for every single human and their mental health? Yes. That's been my whole thing. My whole life is bringing free craft supplies to shows, trying to make space for anybody who wants to play a singer songwriter showcase for the first time at an ice cream shop.

That's much more what I wanna spend my life minutes doing. So streaming. Was the virtual version of a house concert where people could come and hang out and we could talk about things, answer questions, and then it turned into this thing where I'm learning new instruments and learning new songs.

that was also, I think at first I was like, I don't know why people would do that, but since we were doing all these request streams and now it's hundreds of streams a year that I'm doing, I was like, well, I bet, I guess we better add some new songs to the song list . So I think we should probably learn some songs and then we'll record them live.

We'll send that over to YouTube going and, and needing to write new. Sometimes we'll close down the queue and I'll just spend the whole stream trying to write a new song. Will we use it? Maybe, Maybe not, but sometimes it's just kind of like instrumental improv, so don't always feel pressure as well when you're doing this to only do what the audience wants.

Because sometimes the audience doesn't know what they want cuz you haven't shown them something that you want to do. And they're gonna be probably just as into that too. They just don't know it yet. So I like to use this space to also make content for other areas because, Unfortunately, that's what we are now as musicians, right?

If we really wanna make a go of it, then we're content creators. So how can we use this time that we're alive? I use it to do tons of recording on Sunday. I used it to do a collab with a friend. I used it to uh, record something for someone's stream. How can you make use of that? Sometimes I treat it like office hours, right?

We have so many things to do. So sometimes people are really that process too, and celebrating when you get something done, maybe they're co-working with you, with the stream up on one of the monitors and they're getting something done at the same time. So there's a lot of reasons why people are there.

[00:21:36] Rosalyn: You mentioned the word imposter syndrome, and I wanna get into that for a minute because I feel like in, Many professional spaces, especially for women. This can be something that holds folks back from being, you know, kind of getting to the next level or from putting themselves out there, or, you know, whether it's for a position or getting up on stage.

Can you tell me about, where you felt that in, in your life, in your.

[00:22:02] Danielle Allard: Oh, certainly. And as soon as Z mentioned Rosalyn, just like the specific issues that women face in our industry, like you saw my face, I'm like, oh, we could have a whole, many day conversation about this. I spoke at a, an Ottawa music industry coalition panel recently, and all of a sudden the the q and A period just turned into things that some of young.

Female musicians are facing in the industry, especially around building online communities. So that ended up being a pretty major part of the q and a session. We face so much doesn't matter which kind of space within the industry uh, we're getting into, we face an enormous amount. And so when it comes to imposter syndrome, I don't think that it ever fully goes.

at least in my experience. But what I try to do as much as possible is treat myself as gently as I would treat another up and coming musician, another independent musician. And I think that's also what has attracted me to this space so much is the fact that it, is celebrated when you are failing as opposed to this expectation of perfection.

That you can go and lift each other up and you don't need to be in direct competition. That is a really big thing for me in these last couple of years. And I think it's actually features of the platform that have helped do that. So for anybody listening who hasn't kind of experienced Twitch, when I'm talking about our community festival, it's called a raid train.

And so what you have is this raid button on Twitch where as soon as you finish up your stream, you press a button, it says Raid, and you bring that entire audience with you and you drop them in another. So what a hugely incredible tool for community building, right? Just because I have this many viewers doesn't mean I'm not gonna share those viewers with someone else at the end of this stream.

And that's a beautiful thing. Sometimes midstream, we actually go on field trips, so I'll pull up other people's streams who are alive and we'll go and we. Support that artist for a little bit. What a, what an incredible space to not be held in direct competition with fellow artists, which is something that we experience all the time in our industry as well.

Awards, festivals, showcases, grants, it's. All this massive competition all of the time. So I think we can probably all do a little bit better, and myself included, at just kind of continuing to make spaces where it's a celebration of community and not necessarily something that is just kind of pitting artists against each other just to be able to survive just to be able to have some level of income to maintain their career, but from the imposter syndrome.

Area. I mean, I started doing all kinds of art and music when I was just a baby. My first performances, I was nine. I went to Canterbury High School for vocal performance, and I started songwriting and playing multiple instruments at 14. I've been doing it my whole life and I. Still tell myself regularly, oh maybe, maybe you're not good enough for this.

I don't know if we'll actually apply to that thing cuz I'm not really there yet. They're not even gonna consider me. And that's a huge time investment. And and it's true for many things like you. Can kind of listen to this podcast and we're hanging out and we're talking about this, but I'm still not somebody who would be considered for a ton of festivals.

I'm still not somebody who has received a music grant. So I can continue to tell myself, well, I should probably quit. You know, I've been doing this for 15 years. Professionally, I've released four studio albums. But I still don't check off all of these other boxes that other. Do. So why would I continue?

Why should I keep doing that when all of these other people are doing all of those other things? So I'm sure every person that's listening to this is thinking about all those boxes that they also don't check off as a professional musician because there's just an enormous amount of gatekeeping and it's so, so hard to make any kind of living in our industry.

And I experienced that for many, many years And so what has changed so much in these last couple of years is not so much relying on those gates and reaching out and forming this online community, which has changed everything for me. Now I'm able to go to the studio once a month.

I'm able to write and produce more than I ever could before, and it's not through grants and it's not through official opportunities. Just kind of making a living through the people who are supporting you and your community. There's a lot of different ways to make it, and I think that's what we think is at one point in our lives, we're gonna make it.

we're gonna be there and we're gonna feel it. and I, I haven't felt that you introduced me ver in a very lovely way today. Like New York Times featured and we've had up to 19,000 concurrent viewers in one stream. Insane, absolutely insane in that moment when that thing is happening. I didn't feel like, wow, I made it.

This is. I am now an important musician and I deserve to be in all of the spaces of our industry. It doesn't go away, but I think acknowledging that you will have the biggest high ever in your career, and the next day it'll go right back down and you need to be okay with that. and that's okay. It's part of the journey.

None of this is linear. It doesn't just get bigger every single day. And especially if you look at streaming, there's a lot of numbers associated with it. Who's watching right now? How many followers you have? How many subscribers? What's on the leader boards? Everybody's looking to those numbers and it, it does, it leads to a lot of mental health issues and a lot of sadness because you're looking for just kind of forward momentum always.

And when you're seeing all these numbers, it's very easy to compare and look at yourself like, you don't belong in these spaces. If I don't have this many followers, if I don't have this many viewers, when you have every single right to be in those spaces, And the fact that you have created something is already huge because that's not something that everybody on this earth does.

The fact that you are going and making a space where maybe somebody else who had a bad day can now actually exist. , that's a huge thing that not everybody else in this world is doing. And so I see people just discounting what they've already provided to the world around them. So just the minutes that they took to make something, instead of going onto a stream and telling someone they're terrible, that's what they could have done with their time, and they didn't do that.

So, I want people to feel more confident walking into spaces and meeting new people. And feeling like they can be a part of and also create incredible communities. That's something that each and every one of us does. And as a creative, you bring something unique to the world that no one else can.

So how can we find ways? To share that whether it's through social media, whether it's through i r l events, but even if the imposter syndrome doesn't necessarily go away you just gotta, you just gotta push through it and acknowledge that if you feel like somebody else deserves to be in that space, you do too.

And if there's something like a gate in your. What can we do to help you get over that gate? What are the steps you can take to get through and be in that space? Uh, But until then, what I've just done is make my own space . If I can't get over that specific gate, maybe that's one of those check boxes that I have to get through.

In the meantime, I'll just exist in my own space and make, steps towards. I think we also look to people who are huge artists and then think, oh, I need to be there, but you just need to be better than you were yesterday. If you've got a hundred followers now, Maybe a thousand followers is a new goal.

What are steps you can do towards that rather than looking at the people with millions of YouTube views, hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers and everything like that. What can you do that's a little bit better than what you did yesterday? How can you be just a little bit further ahead than you were last week?

And then maybe that imposter syndrome will be less.

[00:30:06] Rosalyn: And you have made these. Really safe spaces for people to come and, and interact with you. And, you know, as part of this imposter syndrome, I feel like we need to know all the answers. You know, that sometimes we're afraid to ask questions because we're supposed to know being in whatever place we're in.

even just learning online and showing that vulnerability in the space that you've created, I'm sure is inspiring to a lot of folks. But do you have you know, some advice for people that are that are coming into this industry, whether they're artists or people working in music industry, just kind of starting out of, of, you know, places that are safe to ask questions and advice for how they can kind of.

Start to grow.

[00:30:46] Danielle Allard: Oh, well. I mean, if they were ever wanting to kind of do whatever I'm doing, they'd be most welcome on my discord to ask questions. We have tee time when I'm live as well, and I actually begin tee time by saying, if you've got a question, if I can help you with something, I would love to. I am by no means an expert, and that's just it, that pressure to have all of the answers.

When I was young, I always felt like you turned 18. and then all of a sudden you knew everything. and then I turned 18 and I was like, oh, none of you know what's going on either. So anybody who says they have all the answers, that's suspicious . So maybe that's when the imposter syndrome goes away, is when you feel like you have all the answers.

But then I wouldn't, I wouldn't look into that person for advice necessarily. I think knowing that. Don't know anything , we're just all doing our best and trying our best is the most important thing. I know that there's a lot of forums and things that you can kind of fall into Facebook groups that can also lead to kind of a lot of Toxic behavior and kind of, toxic advice.

So I, I don't usually go to those spaces for advice either. If you want, even if it's not specifically to stream. Honestly, the Twitch music community is so lovely and everybody's willing to answer all these questions. We've all even got like gear lists in our panel. Like if you're seeing I'm using something and you wanna see what that is, sometimes they're linked to the, to the place where you can get those things.

It's really a community about learning and helping people kind of fail upwards, fail forward. But I mean, going to open mics, when I first got started, those were huge coffee houses. Any kind of open jams and things. There's a lot of really great venues that are Ottawa based that if anybody wants to get at me, I could recommend to take a look at some of their open mics.

But just find nice, safe spaces and if in your gut you're not feeling safe in that space, immediately just go find other ones. There are hundreds, if not thousands of spaces, virtual or in person where you could grow as an artist, where you're not going to immediately be told to quit. Or not immediately told, well, that's not a real job.

You should go get yourself a real job, which I'm sure we've all experienced as well. Just if you need anything I'm, I'm more than happy to help.

[00:33:00] Rosalyn: so people can find you on Twitch. but you also have a Patreon. Can you explain a bit about how folks can interact with you there?

[00:33:08] Danielle Allard: For sure. And I mean that was something that grew out of Twitch as well. Uh, I started that last fall and it's been huge and so lovely. And everybody who's on my Patreon is just from Twitch as well. , they all came over and uh, over there I've, you can tell that I like it. Cause if you take a look at the page, there's I think over 170, if not over 180.

There now, like just over a year. But I include like weekly audio downloads. So when you see me upload something to YouTube, then the patrons get to kind of keep that as a download uh, on Patreon. There's things like behind the scenes art, cuz I've been getting more into visual art. . And I've also got kind of like events based things.

So song reveals will do on stream, but we'll have like a pre-party on, Patreon to kind of reveal that to everybody so they hear it first. They got song teasers and things like that. Uh, Monthly v i p parties. But I think the biggest reason why so many people are on Patreon is cuz I bring them to the studio with me.

So we do have once a month studio session. this is a special time because my project that I released last year is called Invader and we recorded it in a week. So I lived at the studio end of February, early March in 2022. And we're doing the same thing this year. And we're gonna be working on a few different projects, but studio Week is very exciting.

Yeah.

[00:34:30] Rosalyn: man. My next question was what's your new album Invader? how did you bring your Patreon followers into. Into that space. And how did you use Patreon to interact with, this new release?

[00:34:41] Danielle Allard: it's just crazy when I think about the trajectory of everything that's happened in the last two years. But part of how we were celebrating certain Twitch milestones was through a song release as if we can get to this milestone, then I'll release an unheard original song, and we'd been doing a little bit of songwriting on stream two, but I hadn't gotten to a point where I was writing lyrics live.

Still was something that would make me uncomfortable. And we're slowly getting there. But I had released this song called Invader and we were about to spend a week at the studio and all these things just started kind of falling into place, which is also another name of one of the songs on the album,

But it was just apparent to me, I'd always had this dream of writing a concept album. And I think we wrote a concept album. and it was magical having everybody involved because everybody had seen it being written on stream. They'd seen the big release on stream, which was for a charity stream, and then they lived with me essentially in the studio.

I streamed every single day. Everything we were doing, pretty much, except for a few secrets that we were kind of keeping under lock and key, but we'd spend a good eight or nine hours some days. Having everybody hanging it with us in the studio, having meals together. Everyone was kind of giving feedback on certain things.

Sometimes we'd be working on like, how many bees per minute is this going to be? Um, I never thought that I would be just like, welcome everybody to this very intense process and it was so fun having them there. And my producer Dean Watson here in, in. It was all very new to him as well. I was like, Hey, by the way, I'm just gonna bring like 50 internet people to our streams with us.

Is that okay? They're just gonna be with us every day. And by day three he had just like completely embraced it. He was very excited when we were streaming and so we're gonna be doing that again. And it's it's nice cuz Patreon they get access to all of these extra things, but then you go on your stream and you say for $5 you can spend the week with me in the studio.

And wherever you are in the world we're gonna be streaming it so you can be there. So that, that coming up is really huge. And then we've got this core group of people who were with you every day, and some people took work off, which is crazy to me, to be with us every day. . They feel like they've made it with you and really they have made it with you.

They helped fund the project. They were with you every step of the way. So when it came down to the summer, we were recording six videos to release. We built a. Up in the woods cuz I'm a normal person.

[00:37:09] Rosalyn: Wow.

[00:37:11] Danielle Allard: And then everybody had been asking internationally for so long, for physical CDs and I mean, how do you even get into that?

Did so much research to find ways to order CDs, but like there's no companies that really do that anymore. Everything's digital. So I guess I have to mail out CDs. And so what I did was just do a pre-order. So that people could order all my past albums with this album and then do some like bonus things.

Like I play kazoo all the time on stream and people laugh so they could get their own kazoo in the package with some dinosaur stickers. And we also tore down the spaceship and turned it into small pieces so people could buy a piece of the spaceship with these pre-orders. So it was just, the whole thing was crazy.

Merch lines. I'm wearing, our invader merch right now, designed by one of our friends who lived with us in the studio for a week.

[00:37:59] Rosalyn: Beautiful.

[00:38:00] Danielle Allard: Yeah, it's just like the very cool things you can do when you just bring people along for the ride and I'm just really blessed to be with so many incredible artists who are just so happy to spend so much time,

[00:38:13] Rosalyn: that's such a neat concept to have people with you in the studio there. I feel like I would give them like little producer things to say, like, has everyone tuned their instruments, you know, like all their producers, me. Uh, you were a little pitchy on that last take. Let's see if we can,

[00:38:27] Danielle Allard: We do that, and then when we're recording, they all have to choose which film role they want to be. And sometimes somebody's assigned to craft services, someone has to yell. Action. Yeah. And so it is just, it's just a whole lot of laughs all the time.

[00:38:41] Rosalyn: Oh, that's so fun. So where you know, we talked about Twitch Patreon. you have the new. Album Invader. So Danielle, where can people go to find out more about you and everything? Danielle Allard.

[00:38:53] Danielle Allard: it's

Just lar.com, my name.com, and I've got a whole section on invader and links to the video series. If they wanted to see, it would mean the world if they wanted to watch, especially since we built a spaceship in the woods.

It's crazy. Then you can also find the shop and there's an events page, so. It's got my stream schedule there. And uh, link to our Discord for our weekly games and movies if anybody wants to do that. We have a Learn Squad, so we do Skillshare sessions for anybody this month we're learning Japanese.

But we have an introduction to songwriting session coming up very soon too. So it's always whoever wants to share with us uh, we have those once a month and there's contact there too. So if you wanted to get in touch and have any kind of questions about doing any of. , I'm more than happy to connect with you.

[00:39:39] Rosalyn: All right. Well, Danielle, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a, such a nice conversation. So nice to uh, catch up with you.

[00:39:45] Danielle Allard: It's really nice to have this one-on-one. So thank you so much for having me,