I recently told the full story of how I chose the name for my music project – “Web Hollow”

It is all to do with this place right here: the Black River in South Carolina.

I spent the first chapter of my professional life on the waterways of coastal South Carolina, learning the flora and fauna and connecting with the environment we all depend on, whether we know it or not. Though it didn’t feel this way at the time, looking back I see that I was strong; I was brave; I was confident in my skills and I beamed with passion as I shared the tiny sliver I knew of nature’s ever-spinning web of life. 

After a deep personal loss left me heartbroken and unable to put on a show for visitors and tourists, I was grateful to find a job clearing trash from the Black River in Kingstree, SC. I spent all day practically alone, doing my part to rid the long and slow-moving water of man-made obstructions, which replenished themselves overnight.

As someone with such love and appreciation for all fellow members of the natural world, from slithering snakes to scurrying rodents, I had one weakness – a fear of spiders I’d developed in childhood. Believe me when I say, this job required that fear be faced. As twilight fell on our little boat each evening, the trash pile began to crawl. A flash of light revealed hundreds of tiny eyes reflecting back at me. Spiders’ eyes. 

After weeks of this, it became clear that the spiders were not my enemy. Many of them had no venom, and even if they did they avoided me like *I* was the scary monster. In fact, the real threat was the colony of fire ants that had made a large chunk of styrofoam their temporary home after a flood left them stranded in the water. Or perhaps a wasp nest that we thought had gone dormant, but unexpectedly began to buzz and hiss just above my head. 

By the end of the experience, the tiny spider eyes brought me comfort. We sat together, listening to the owls and watching the moonrise as the crepuscular life of the forest took over from the day shift. 

Not long after, the search began for a name that was both meaningful to me and could be imbued with new meaning by the art and community I sought to build. I was inspired by this change in mindset as a metaphor for the way that time, place, and new experiences shape and reshape our relationships with everything around us. 

“Web Hollow”, yielding very little existing lore on internet searches, came to represent the part of me that is open to being wrong, open to releasing fears and forging new bonds, to being scared and pushing forward anyway, and to taking comfort in who-or-whatever happens to be sharing my boat as we slowly – hopefully very slowly – float towards our own endpoint, from which the river continues to flow away from, and back to, in an endless exchange of energy.

Web Hollow, to me, means that that we are never alone, even in our darkest and most uncertain moments; and – in those moments – we form unlikely connections that create the foundation on which we find the support to grow. 

Love ya,

Web