Singer-songwriter Fym Summer scores gigs in Texas, Toronto

SINGAPORE — A relative unknown in the local indie music scene, singer-songwriter Foo Yumin thought she had been scammed when she received word last December that she’d been accepted to perform at a well-known music festival in the US.

“Did anyone else get this? Is this legit”, asked the 26-year-old acoustic folk artist, posting on Facebook a screenshot of the acceptance email she received to perform in March at South By Southwest (SXSW), where more than 28,000 are expected to congregate.

Previous representatives from Singapore at the massive annual music festival in Texas included well-known names like the Sam Willows, Inch Chua, and The Great Spy Experiment. Indie electronic singer-songwriter Linying, 24, best known for her debut single Sticky Leaves, which went viral on Spotify’s global charts, was the Republic’s representative last year.

In comparison, Ms Foo, who goes by her stage name Fym Summer, had been performing for free or for token S$10 meal vouchers for a few years just to gain greater “exposure”.

With two self-recorded EPs, Heart (2015) and Luna (2017), her biggest local gig to date was being featured in Noise Singapore 2015. Hence, when she received the SXSW invite, and a second acceptance email to perform at Canada’s Music Week in Toronto in May, she was over the moon.

Having dreamed of becoming a singer-songwriter since she picked up the guitar for her co-curricular activity in school as a shy 11-year-old, she hoped that with the exposure from these two international gigs, she could follow in the footsteps of her idols Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Laura Marling.

So, the Singapore Institute of Management business degree graduate quit her day job as a marketing coordinator in a law firm to put her music centrestage. She told TODAY: “I want to see how far I can go with it.”

But first, she must raise at least US$16,000 (S$21,000) to cover the cost of the flights, accommodation, equipment rentals and transportation arrangements for her and her crew members – guitarist George Wong and keyboardist Tiffany Tan (who goes by stage name Kyla T), both 22, a tour manager and a videographer – to get to SXSW.

And she would need at least S$7,000 to get to Toronto in May as there is no remuneration for performing at either gigs, and performers have to pay for their own transport, food and board.

With only S$1,300 raised so far, Fym is banking her hopes on crowdfunding site Generosity.com, busking with George at Orchard Road and Esplanade MRT, and performing at gigs, which could include singing at weddings or graduation shows, to raise enough to get to Texas and Toronto.

On Generosity.com, she wrote: “I hope I’ve made the Singapore music scene proud and with your help, I am going to make all of you prouder!”

In the meantime, to prepare for the gigs, Fym has been rehearsing up to five hours a day, from 7pm to close to midnight with George and Kyla T.

But she is not complaining, saying this is a phase that her predecessors had gone through as well.

In fact, she told TODAY her songs speak of her personal struggles as an artist. For example, the song Me cries for her peers to stop “finding comfort in the same” or “work a job you don’t like but pays”.

At her breakout show in SXSW, Fym will be performing a 30-minute showcase of up to seven songs, including the two songs she got picked for – This Girl and Here Comes The Train – to a crowd of 200 to 400 people in downtown Austin’s CU29 Cocktail Bar on March 14.

Fym said This Girl was written to help her move on from a time when she felt “manipulated, cheated and used”, while Here Comes The Train was based on the story of a close friend who attempted to commit suicide with his lover at a railway track, on the assumption that to love is to die together.

Though admittedly “rueful”, Fym – who tunes in to everything from Korean pop to heavy metal music – said many of her songs do eventually end with hope.

Taking a line from the lyrics of Me, she said: “in the end, I still found myself doing what I love.”

She said: "Just like me, in the end, I still found myself doing what I love.”