We were lucky to catch up with Jenna/Michael English/Armstrong recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jenna/Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

Michael is best at answering this question. I (Jenna) have always worked in some capacity in music. We both still have “regular” part time jobs outside of our music even now, but there have been seasons of life when I have been full time music, and I began booking gigs as soon as I graduated high school at 17. Michael, however, went to school and got his medical degree and was a doctor. He stepped away from it for various reasons years ago and focused much more on music.
We have no regrets. We have both worked 9-5 desk jobs, and there’s nothing wrong with them. The world needs people who are great at that type of career. Sometimes I think we both wished our brains/souls worked that way, but I think we have both accepted that we are just built differently and don’t do well in too much routine and rote. Our worst days in doing what we love is still better than our best days in doing what we loathed. There’s difficulties and challenges in doing music as our main source of income, but we feel confident in it and know it’s what we are meant to do. No regrets.

Jenna/Michael, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We are an original indie-pop folk duo named Roxie & The Moon King.
Our main love is writing/performing our originals, but we will also perform covers for various venues, restaurants, breweries, etc.
Our goals are multi-fold. Mainly, we love to share our originals with people. Performing originals is like reading your journal entries to strangers. When you’re that vulnerable with a crowd, it usually inspires them to be the same. It’s this intimate space where we both understand what it means to be human, with all of our shared complexities. We love to connect with people in those vulnerable spaces. Our goal is to create more of those safe spaces for people to be creative and open, and to encourage more original music in the areas we frequent.
When hired by venues to also play covers, our goal is to help that business in whatever meets their needs. Sometimes that looks like entertaining a crowd when it’s insanely busy and they might be waiting longer for their coffee, food, etc. It might be keeping the morale up for staff on a tough day. It might be bringing in more business via our followers.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think the most important thing we have learned in our journey is to utilize the resources you have. I think for a long time we limited ourselves by saying, “Oh we don’t have this equipment, or funds for this or that. So I guess we can’t do anything.” And that’s where it ended. It’s a lot like looking at a handful of seeds and saying, “This is useless. I need trees, not seeds.” And throwing away what you have.
For example, we didn’t have $500+ to put towards buying shirts for our merch at the beginning of this year. Instead of just throwing in the towel there, we determined that we DID have 30 bucks to buy a resin kit and I could make ear rings for people to buy. And we have another $30 to make some stickers. So we started with that. And when we made enough money off of that, we moved into shirts. And we will grow from there.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When Michael and I first met, we both had a dream of going to a songwriting retreat by a songwriter named Andrea Stolpe. She holds retreats all around the world and you have to be accepted to attend. We had just met in April and she was having a songwriting retreat in Nashville in mid-August. We both decided we were just going to go for it and apply and we were both accepted. Except then, we had to figure out how to pay for it (a pretty penny). We were very determined to go so we started booking gigs together all over the place and putting half of our earnings towards the retreat. That was the beginning of us realizing that we had something special musically going on. We ended up gathering enough money for both of us to go and that retreat was life changing for us. The connections we made and the knowledge we gained were invaluable. We are going on tour next week through Texas and some of those venues were booked through people we met at that retreat. It has been a huge part of our journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://roxieandthemoonking.godaddysites.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roxieandthemoonking?igsh=MTBrNHdreTQ1enc5NQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EcBcQnB7t/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@roxieandthemoonking?si=baaSJUaA-EDF2n_x

Image Credits

Zen Lens Photomedia
Henry (Heno) Head