I am playing a stripped-down set in Los Angeles next month, and I have been lying awake at night trying to decide which version of myself to bring. Without the production, without the tracks, without the layered vocals and the reverb that turns my voice into something larger than it really is, I am left with just my hands on the guitar and whatever truth I can still access when the lights come up. That is the bargain of an acoustic night. You trade every sonic shield for the chance to be heard exactly as you are. And I am terrified. And I cannot wait.

Choosing the setlist for this show has been the most emotionally revealing work I have done since writing the songs themselves. Every time I sit with the list, I am forced to ask: which of these stories am I still living inside? Which ones have I outgrown? Which ones can I still sing with conviction, and which ones have become costumes I wear because the audience expects them? An acoustic set does not let you hide behind arrangement. If the lyric is not true, the room will feel it within the first verse. If the emotion is performed rather than inhabited, the silence between chords will expose you. I have been testing each song alone in my living room, lights off, playing through the set in real time, and more than once I have had to stop because the memory attached to a bridge was still too fresh to navigate in front of strangers.

There is a particular intimacy that happens in small rooms that arenas and streaming platforms simply cannot replicate. I have played both. I have felt the rush of thousands of voices singing my chorus back to me, and it is a high unlike anything else. But the small room is different. In a small room, I can see the expression on the face of the person in the third row. I can hear someone exhale during a quiet verse. I can watch a couple lean into each other during a song about forgiveness. The feedback loop is immediate and human. I am not performing at them. I am sharing something with them, and their presence shapes what the performance becomes. No two acoustic nights are ever the same because no two audiences carry the same unspoken weight into the room.

I have been thinking about why we gather for live music at all, especially now, when every song ever recorded is available in our pockets within seconds. There must be something we need from the physical experience that the digital one cannot give us. I think it is presence. In a world where most of our interactions are mediated through screens, where our attention is constantly fractured between notifications and feeds and the endless scroll, the live room demands something ancient. It demands that you be here, now, with your body and your breath and your undefended attention. You cannot skip the slow song. You cannot rewind the moment that moved you. You cannot multitask your way through a revelation. You have to sit in it. And that sitting, that willingness to be present for someone else's vulnerability, is what makes the live room sacred.

The songs I am bringing to LA are not my biggest hits or my most streaming-friendly tracks. They are the ones that still wake me up at night. The ones I wrote in hours so dark I barely remember the morning after. The ones that still carry questions I have not answered. I am bringing the songs that need the room, that need the breath and the bodies and the shared silence to become what they were meant to be. Some of them have never been played live before. Some of them I have avoided for years because the emotion they hold felt too dangerous to touch in public. But an acoustic night, at its best, is an act of collective courage. I stand on stage and risk being seen, and the audience sits in the dark and risks being moved. We are both undefended, and that is the only place where real art happens.

Rehearsing for this show has been its own kind of therapy. Stripped down, every flaw in my guitar playing is audible. Every waver in my voice is present. Every lyric that once felt clever now either lands as true or falls flat, with no production to dress it up. I have had to become a better musician in the past month than I was in the past year, because there is nowhere to hide. I have also had to become a more honest storyteller. I have rewritten verses, changed keys, slowed tempos, all in service of one question: does this still hurt in the way that heals? If the answer is no, the song does not make the set. If the answer is yes, I have to ask whether I am brave enough to stand in that hurt for five minutes while strangers watch. Some nights the answer is yes. Some nights I am still deciding.

I want to say something to the people who will be in that room, whether you are coming because you know my music or because someone you trust dragged you out on a Wednesday night. I want you to know that I am not bringing my best self. I am not bringing the curated version you see online. I am bringing the version who still gets nervous before the first note. The version who sometimes forgets a lyric and has to find her way back. The version who cries during the bridge of the third song because the memory attached to it arrived unannounced. I am bringing the work in progress, and I am trusting that the room is generous enough to hold her. That is the unspoken contract of an acoustic night. The performer agrees to be human. The audience agrees to witness it without judgment. And somewhere in that exchange, something true gets born.

After the show, if you see me at the merch table or by the exit, come say hello. I might be exhausted. I might be floating on adrenaline. I might be both at once, which is its own strange weather system. But I want to meet the people who sat in that dark room with me. I want to hear which song landed for you and why. I want to know what you brought into the room that night, what you were hoping to leave behind, what you found instead. Because live music is not a broadcast. It is a conversation. And I have been rehearsing my half of it for weeks. I am ready to hear yours.

Tickets go on sale soon. I will share the link when they drop. Until then, I am here in my living room, playing these songs to an audience of houseplants and late-night shadows, getting ready to share them with you. Stripped down. Wide open. Exactly as they are. And exactly as I am, which is the hardest and most honest thing I know how to be.