getting back on the horse
on making a new record in the depths of february
There was a point while I was making my last record where I thought to myself, “This is how long it takes me to do this,” in reference to the four year process of writing and arranging it. I thought perhaps every five years was the fastest I could possibly make and release something now; I thought the artists I knew who were releasing records every two years were superhuman at best or delusional at worst. I thought I was built different!
I realized that writing a record takes as long as it needs to when I started writing another one shortly after I released Cosmovisión. Not to be corny and use yet another horse metaphor, but sometimes you have to really gently coax a song to come toward you and sometimes it is thundering in your direction at a full gallop and you have to just jump on up. It’s felt like the latter, particularly in the last few weeks as some personal commitments have come off of my plate.
I spent a weekend earlier this month recording at Narwhal with Brian Deck, who I made Cosmovisión with. I like working with Brian; aside from being a veteran producer and engineer he is also a former band kid, a lifelong Illinoisan, and I feel like our brains pretty much work the same way. We worked on recording three songs—he played percussion, I played guitar, saxophone, and sang, and then we basically took turns playing bass and keyboards while Emma and Q attended to the desk. It was challenging and really fun, especially coming out of saxophone retirement.
We will keep moving along, doing more sessions and bringing more people into the small world of this. One day you might hear it! Such is the gentle promise of the beginning of an artistic process.
writing/recording a song every day in March
I have been and continue to be deeply inspired by hemlock, aka Caroline Chauffe, an artist who I would described as “road-based” but hails from Louisiana and has become a deeply important member of the Chicago music community. They have an ongoing practice of writing and recording a work every day for a month a couple of times a year, and then releasing a compilation of those songs on Bandcamp.
I have wanted to do something like this for a while but haven’t made a consistent amount of time to dedicate to it. This year, I am home for all of March, and so I am going to try it! I’ve done it a couple times already this month to make it as accessible as possible for myself. I think Nick Papaleo told me once that having studio conditions that are easeful and set up in advance make it so much easier to create more, especially stealing moments between my day job and chores/daily life activities. I’ll release whatever the result is some time in April.
show at Judson & Moore
Here’s a place where I will be revealing some of the fruits of my labor, at Judson & Moore on April 2 with Olivia Ellen Lloyd and her band who are making their way through the Midwest this spring. Tickets are here!
recent amusements
Menewood by Nicola Griffith. Oh my gosh, this book was good. I read its predecessor, Hild, over 10 years ago and think very fondly of it. It is a very readable imagining of the early life of Hilda of Whitby, an abbess from early 7th century England who was eventually canonized as a saint. Griffith mentions in the author’s note of this book that the few mentions of her in the surviving records of the time describe her as “deeply respected,” a huge rarity for women of that time. This work of historical fiction looks at what a proto-Christian England looked like, when other gods still held sway over culture, when life was smaller and more precarious. There’s sword fighting, revenge, schemes, queer romance, visions, community, and hope for the future. Even though it didn’t happen, it felt real to me.
1999 by Prince. This happened to be one of the last records I purchased in the iTunes store before Apple Music became a thing, and since I have quit streaming for the foreseeable, I have been digging through my library of digital media. This is such a joy to revisit. It’s cool, it’s hot, and it’s downright strange. I want to listen to more music that strikes a balance between sincere engagement with the present moment and Fun Imagination Land.
The Pitt. My show is on!!! Literally what I shout every Thursday. I think an explanation of the hype with this show is that we like watching people handle crisis after crisis without completely losing their minds because… that’s what we all have to do right now on a global scale.
Love and Fortune by Stella Donnelly. This record is such a beautiful examination of the end of a friendship. It feels like the result of a lot of patience, with the key message being “closure is a gift you give yourself.” It’s my favorite of the records she’s made so far, it feels extremely genuine.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind. I saw this exhibition at the MCA on the day it was closing, and I’m so glad I did. It is meaningful to witness art that is so influenced by war, and about the creation of an inner world that is so rich as a response to it—but the participatory nature of her work makes it so inviting and playful to be inside of it, to survive with her and imagine better futures.
take good care,
HG