We were lucky to catch up with Kimi Tortuga recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kimi, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?
This is a great question! Self-care is a priority. Currently, I make sure I run somewhere between 6 and 10 miles a week. Admittedly, when I’m performing live 5 or times a week, my poor little feet cry for mercy and running isn’t an option.
On those weeks, I make sure I’m doing at least 100 reps of unweighted squats and sit ups each. That way I remain active without hurting myself. Making the commitment to exercise has made it so that I must make other healthy choices, such as getting enough sleep, for a decent performance during the run. Having this kind of discipline keeps me healthy and gives me the endurance to conquer each week!
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m Kimi Tortuga, a singer-songwriter and Tampa native. I’m also a performing and recording artist, working the live music scenes between Ft. Myers, FL and Savannah, GA. Travel is a treasured part of my work, and I always look forward to seeing new places.
I love having the opportunity to sing in beautiful spaces and set the mood, or to entertain an audience of joyful people surrounded by delicious food and friendship. Whether I’m playing my own compositions or cover songs, I always have a great time!
My music is very much a kaleidoscope of instrumental traditions. My sound can be described as indie-pop/soul-rock with Americana folk influences throughout in a solo-acoustic setting with voice, acoustic guitar, and piano. Having come from classical music, rock music felt very honest and without pretense, which I found fascinating! So, I made the transition to songwriting after graduating high school.
In a supremely satisfying moment on April 13th of this year, my all-original, sophomore album Cage the Sparrow was released globally and has been the soundtrack to my life lately – there is truly no shortage of adventure in musicianship! The record is available for infinite spins on all streaming platforms, and is perfect for the self-determinant spirit.
In the present and future, I intend to continue availing myself of all opportunities that perpetuate my happiness. This will be my mantra! Some creative challenges I’ve been wanting to take on include collaborating with other songwriters in the Tampa Bay and Gainesville, FL areas and pursuing cinematic music placement. Professionally, I am undergoing the admissions process to further my education (that’s tragically all I can say at the moment), and I’m sensing an epic brand glow up in the very near future.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three most significant attributes in my arsenal were 1) getting comfortable with being authentic and alone, 2) having already spent my entire life listening, studying, and playing classical music, and 3) being tenacious without being competitive or aggressive.
Granted, I struggled socially early in my career because I could not for the life of me get past the idea that my expectations of the world were irrelevant. In expecting people to be generous or kind, many times I was met with the opposite. There were also many times where my expectations were not only met, but exceeded. It made operating on a one-size-fits-all scale unsustainable. The ending result was me committing to seeing the depth in others more readily, whether it’s alluring or not.
I had to learn how to meet others where they happened to exist in the moment and to really accept them. Sometimes that meant not going out much because I felt misunderstood, or maybe it even meant feeling depressed about the resulting loneliness. Especially after the pandemic, it would sometimes feel enormously heavy.
Yet, there is so much we can do in this downtime to better prepare us for our destinies, like instilling discipline by invoking a daily routine. If you’re a musician, downtime can be practice time or creative experimentation hour, or maybe even a time dedicated to supporting your mental health. This really helped me focus on myself and filter out the external noise.
In short, one must have foresight, taking into consideration the communal and social nature of music, and how working with and living among others requires acceptance and good will. Just remember: don’t start none, won’t be none, and you have to stay ready so you don’t have to get ready. Those last minute gigs have a way of making one wish they had practiced the day before!
Minding one’s own business and practicing is the key to living decently as a working musician. I personally claim nothing more as my responsibility save that which is the responsibility of each of us unto each other.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
The book that helped me on my way was gifted to my by an elder musician in St. Pete, Charley Groth in 2014 after a break up with a mutual friend. He offered me the text and said it would help me make sense of the world and its chaos. He was right, and it began a journey on which I continue today!
The book was The Tao of Inner Peace by Dianne Dreher. It gave me the perspective to grasp my reality from a macro perspective. In realizing my own insignificance, I ultimately found purpose beyond that which was prescribed to me.
Taoism explains how it is possible that the universe and its contents remain self-contained, and yet how it is simultaneously intangible. In not so many words, it posits that we are the universe and thus we are both tangible in a physical sense and intangible in the context of consciousness. Ironically, the yin-yang of it all blew the roof off of my black-and-white thinking.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kimitortuga.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com:kimitortuga
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kimitortugamusic
Image Credits
Kimi Tortuga
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