Beginning Sept. 21, renowned local musician Natalie Spears will be hosting a nine-week beginner jamming and songwriting workshop for women and femme-identifying musicians of all levels, aged 16-plus, to come and find community, connection, style and to build their skill set.
Spears, a lifelong musician and frequent collaborator with other talents in the state, said she felt called to create this space after spending parts of her career playing and jamming in male-dominated spaces. While Spears expressed gratitude for these experiences, she noted a difference in her music when she has collaborated with fellow women and femme-presenting artists, which she hopes to share with attendees.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life playing music with a lot of men, which I have really loved and has fed me, but then I’ve also had these wonderful duo relationships with women, like Lizzie Plotkin and Ellie Barber, and I’ve mostly existed in female duos for a long time,” Spears said. “There’s just something different about the way women show up when it’s a women’s experience or femme-identifying experience. There’s something so nourishing about being in a creative relationship with somebody else in that way, from a harmonic standpoint, singing, and from a sensitivity to one another.”
Spears also shared that the wheels of this particular workshop were set in motion when a few of her privately-
taught students expressed a desire to push beyond the fear of performing in front of others. Through this, Spears started inviting her students to a song-sharing circle. One of the last sessions was attended by all women, and the feedback from this encouraged Spears to deepen that experience for others.
“We started with just a jam song together, and people really loved getting to experience playing together,” Spears said. “And all of these women were sort of expressing how much they loved having it be just women, too. It has felt like there’s been a long-standing demand from our community for offerings that help people connect and play music, and I wanted to fill that niche a bit by offering this workshop series.”
Attendees can anticipate a relaxed, pressure-free start. Since Spears is welcoming women and femme-identifying people of all skill levels, there is space in this workshop for everyone.
“A lot of people start out by saying, ‘I’m not musical,’ or ‘I’m not good enough,’ and I really wanted to do this workshop to dissolve those expectations that someone has to be a certain ability level to join a jam,” she said. “If someone can play one chord in time, even if they’re not playing all the chords in the song, it’s still a real service to the rest of us.”
Spears said her main goal of the workshop is to help her attendees deepen their relationship to music and the act of creation. Through her experience, Spears has noticed the trend that performers fear they are not enough, a common worry that arises when performing for an audience. She hopes to guide players toward the joy of playing through her workshop.
“I really want to support people in feeling confident that they can reach out to somebody else and ask if they want to play — and that they can,” she said. “I want to support people in leaning into their own creativity, art and expression in the world. If that’s through music, and there’s a way I can support that for somebody, I’m here for it.”
To register or for information on upcoming learning opportunities, visit nataliespears.com/#home-section