LOVE & TAXES // BORROWED PLACE // JF & GREG // BLOOD TEST THROWBACK
Between the anniversary of COVID and the flush of spring warmth we’re having here in the Northeast, there’s a lot of feelings happening. If you’re of the Midwestern or New England persuasion, you may want to read this newsletter in small doses.
LOVE & TAXES
On March 12 2020, I had a solo all-request show booked in Cambridge at Club Passim. As it turned out, of course, that was the day that everything started shutting down, and after spending all day in angsty waffling, the club and I made the last-minute decision to cancel. I offered to play from home — something I had zero experience with, but I scrambled around and figured out how to stream live to Facebook on my elderly phone, and the show, despite many glitches, went on.
What I remember is how rattled and freaked out we all were - me, the audience, everyone - and how much it helped to convene, even in that foreign and awkward way. There’s always a service component of being a performer, but that night it felt like the whole job description. The show had nothing to do with me or my artistic ego. It was an emotional hearth that we all needed to gather around, myself included, and by the end I felt a little more grounded, a little more calm. Thus began this surreal year.
We’ve been doing our taxes this week, which has involved a lot less tallying of travel expenses than usual, a lot more sifting through PayPal and Venmo statements. I’ve found myself tearing up repeatedly — maybe not the first time taxes have made me weep, although it’s usually from different emotions. Of course I knew that you all have supported our two-songwriter household through the pandemic financially, which is already a straight-up miracle; but as I re-read all the notes attached to the payments I saw the full scope of the ways you’ve kept us afloat. Every message letting us know our music was helping to process or soothe, distract or connect, made it feel like we had something useful to offer. And having a purpose, however modest, has been the antidote to despair.
Despite my best intentions I haven’t managed to write back to everyone individually, so let me take this moment to say, from the absolute bottom of my heart, THANKYOU to all of you who have carried us along with your tips, purchases, streams, shares, tweets, posts, emails, Venmo notes, and actual letters. It’s been a real lifeline throughout this whole chapter and we know how lucky we are.
BORROWED PLACE
This week we released another song from the LIGHT BREAKS THROUGH EP on Bandcamp. “Borrowed Place” was in fact written in a borrowed place, a tiny cabin tucked on the shore of a lake in New Hampshire. I had come for an annual songwriting retreat with friends - one of my favorite things in the world - but I arrived that year with a heavy heart. A girl in my town, a bright creative only child much like my own, had recently died from injuries she suffered in an accident. Although I only knew her in passing, the whole thing was very close to home in many senses and I couldn’t shake the cloud of sadness I was carrying around.
That first day on the lake, I sat on the shore with a guitar and let this song arrive and wash over me. On the surface I was doing the work of writing it, but beneath that it felt like the song was already on its way and all I needed to do was encourage it. The first time I sang it all the way through, a song sparrow landed in a tree above me and started singing fluid little phrases in the spaces between the lines. The answering vocals on this studio version hearken back to this surprise musical guest.
It’s hard to talk about this kind of moment without sounding overly mystical, but my experience of writing this song was that I needed help and asked for it, and help arrived. I saw that Ursula’s thirteen years were made of love. She spent them pouring light into the world around her. Her death felt unfair, seemed way too early; still, ultimately, I found some peace in the idea that any number of years can add up to a life fully and beautifully lived.
Ursula’s mom, whose grace and strength has been amazing to witness, gave her blessing for me to share this story. “Borrowed Place” is not “about” Ursula in the literal sense, but I do see it as a reverberation of her spirit, and I offer it now in honor of her sweet, strong, vibrant life.
If you’ve already preordered the Light Breaks Through EP, you can stream/download “Borrowed Place” now; if not, head on over to Bandcamp to check it out. Proceeds from this song will go to the Ursula Marie Snow Fund at the Art Garden, our community art studio in Shelburne Falls, MA.
FRIENDS & RELATIONS - On March 14, Esteemed Spouse Jeffrey Foucault will be online at 7pm (pre-Grammys!) via Signature Sounds interviewing the one and only Greg Brown, a songwriter whose work I can’t imagine my life without. Our usual system is for whichever parent is not playing the livestream to have a movie night with the kid, but for this one I’ll breaking that contract to watch these two consummate midwesterners kick around the topics. I can’t recommend enough that you do the same.
BLOOD TEST THROWBACK SHOW - Here’s an early heads-up that I’ll be revisiting the entire 2014 album Blood Test on April 8 - just shy of that album’s fifth birthday. They grow up so fast! On my Facebook and YouTube, like we do it now.
Yours in all the feelings, *kd