(traffic rumbling) (coffee gushing) (coffee machine clicking) (coffee beans clattering) (steam hissing) (coffee machine clicking) (cord clicking) (door lock clicking) (door squeaking) (bell jingling) - Honestly, this job's made me a much better musician.

Interacting with people, and you're interacting with regulars every single day, but everyone's having a different day.

So you have to play off that, and it's different energies coming in.

And then interacting with people you've never met in your entire life.

You need to have conversations, talk about their lives, talk about music.

It's really, really cool to be able to go back and forth between those two things.

I love working here, I love our regulars, and I love our new faces that we see here all the time.

I feel deeply connected to the city that I'm from.

I love being from Portsmouth and being known as a Portsmouthian.

I'm still here and I love being here.

And I love being in this community and being a part of this community.

And I try to be a champion for it 'cause it has a lot to offer.

From a young age all the way to 21, I played hockey pretty seriously and competitively.

As with all highly competitive sports, your kind of threshold to leaving the sport happens very quickly.

And right around 21, which was a decade ago, when I was aging out, I decided, "You know what?

I'm gonna take all this effort and energy, and I'm gonna learn to play guitar."

And that was very arrogant of me.

♪ Champagne and chamomile ♪ ♪ I heard you say my name ♪ ♪ Standing on the corner of the boulevard and main ♪ ("Car" by Allen Hudson) Right when I realized, "I'm not that great of a hockey player.

Let me switch over and do something different and something that I can still focus and dedicate time to."

I was so used to waking up every day and working towards something.

Another cool thing 'cause music can't really be mastered.

You can only just get better at it.

♪ When we were young ♪ I think the big draw from music that took me away from hockey, honestly, was that I've been a huge music fan my entire life.

I've always been obsessive about it.

Even before I played music, my father and I would ride down the road, and he would do the College of Rock and Roll Knowledge, and he'd be asking me, "Who's the drummer on this?

And what band is this?"

And all that type of stuff.

And my mom was the same way.

My mom was a singing waitress in the Spirit of Norfolk.

So my entire life, I was totally surrounded by music.

And I just assumed that was everyone's life.

♪ Standing on the corner of the boulevard and main ♪ In 2022, I brought the idea of Acoustic Carnival to The Coffee Shoppe, and we were able to, very quickly with heavily interest from our local singer songwriters, put together our first season.

We did February through October, and it was a success.

And our first night, I wanna say in here, we had close to 75, 80 people.

♪ I wouldn't change ♪ I would love to say it wasn't shocking, but I was a little bit shocked at first with how much the community came out supported us.

And they continue to do that every show, and I love it.

♪ I'm finding ways ♪ So many new faces just come through these doors in here.

And I get to talk to 'em and chat them up.

And honestly, it's hard for me to meet a stranger that I don't wanna talk to.

Everyone's interesting.

Everyone has a story.

And then with having Carnival here, it's so easy to say, "Hey, do you like live music?"

And 10 times out of 10, the person's answer is, "Yeah, of course."

And you say, "Hey, all you have to do is come back to the spot you're already at one Thursday per month, and we're gonna take all these tables and chairs outta here.

We're gonna put cocktail tables in.

We're gonna have a party."

Most people like music and most people like partying, so.

♪ I think we got it all ♪ ♪ They're part of dreaming of me ♪ ♪ Just go with disregard ♪ ♪ Let's go on honeymoon now ♪ ♪ I'll go, I'm ready ♪ - So Acoustic Carnival is a concert series at The Coffee Shoppe that I host and curate that celebrates singer songwriters from the area because we have such a great local music scene.

Typically, a musician with an acoustic guitar or maybe a piano, and they're in a more stripped-down, intimate setting, and you really get to see the raw talent in the small things that they do that set them aside and make them so great.

I want you to be just feet away from some of Virginia's best songwriters.

And I want them to be able to play off the energy of this room.

It's amazing 'cause it went so long without having live music here.

And then as soon as we started doing this, it has this really cool energy.

It's magical energy.

People get in here and kinda cut up, cut loose, and I love it.

We've been really fortunate in The Coffee Shoppe.

Tiffany and Lamar are owners to where we've been able to have every single show be a free show.

We want you to come in and feel comfortable, and be able to grab a coffee or grab a beer, and enjoy yourselves.

Every single Acoustic Carnival is free and every single Acoustic Carnival is all ages.

As long as I'm involved with the project, any project I'm doing, every show is all ages.

'Cause I've been a 16-year-old who wanted to go see a show at some point in time.

And if that kid doesn't get to go see how doable it is to grab a guitar, and write a song, and play for people, then you don't have your next generation of musicians, and then you've really done a disservice to your community.

I think music is a universal language.

I think that it's a language that we all speak.

It all resonates with every person.

I've always just been attached to music.

It's been the most important thing in my life.

And I think for a lot of people, it is.

And it's been great to see how interested and how involved our community is with not just Acoustic Carnival, but just music in general.

I think we got a really cool musical community here in Hampton Roads.

Especially tied into the fact that I'm very rooted here.

I don't wanna go tour the world.

I have a great wife and kids, and a great family around here, and a great community around me.

I want to provide an opportunity for my peers, who I admire so much, and the next generation of musician.

I want it to be easier for them than it was for me.

And people did the same thing for me.

All my heroes locally that I've met have exceeded expectations.

And I feel obligated to do that for the next generation.

(soft rock music) (soft rock music continues) (soft rock music continues)