Since moving from her Los Angeles hometown to New York, Spear has been a tireless performer, and won an ASCAP songwriting award. Though she’s played plenty of shows in traditional venues, she is fond of presenting her music in unconventional spaces, where she can forge more powerful connections with listeners than the dichotomy of artist and audience allows. In 2020, when pandemic restrictions made old-fashioned concerts impossible, she went on tour across the backyards of America, giving socially distanced shows for small groups in the outdoor spaces of their homes. She expected to be on the road for two weeks, but word started to spread: one backyard show led to another, and she ended up touring all summer.
Sometimes, she’ll set up a door frame on the sidewalk of her Brooklyn neighborhood and invite passersby to step through and “become the protagonist,” turning the conceptual heart of her work into a literal journey through space. The Protagonist Project, conceived by Spear, encourages curiosity in the lost art of live music discovery by inviting lucky New York passersby into venues for intimate three-minute private concerts.
Such adventures, one gets the sense, are borne of the same inspiration that leads Spear to write songs in the first place: to meet people where they are, and enrich their lives by sharing a piece of her own.