Ramblings

Here it is almost Thanksgiving, and I haven’t blogged since August.  I guess you could say I haven’t been inspired.  Or you could say I’ve been busy.  Both are true, though I’ve been inspired in other ways, just not necessarily the desire to blog way.  For a while I thought, “I’ll blog after I get that one song finished.” And then that song was finished.  And then I thought, “I’ll blog after I get that one song recorded.”  And since that’s still not done, I guess that could be my excuse.  But in reality, I just haven’t felt like it.

But here’s the thing…  I may not be the best writer in the world, but I do enjoy writing.  And I also think it’s important to flex those muscles, especially if one wants to continue writing in any form.  Whether I have to write for work (I really don’t do much of that), or for songs (I don’t have to, but sometimes I like to), or for some other unlisted reason, if I don’t practice, I don’t get better.  Or, I get worse!  And that’s just unnecessary.

So blogging it is.  Since it’s the season of gratitude, I did consider writing another gratitude-focused blog as I did last year.  But I don’t want to repeat myself.  So, in this case, I’m going to focus on music.  It is supposedly a songwriting blog, after all.  And by songwriting I mean music in general.  One must be liberal in their translations when it comes to artistic things, right?!  🙂

First I will mention that I have a song in the works.  That is, I have a lot of partial songs in the works, but I’m not being that proactive about them.  But this one is my personal favorite right now.  It’s a song that I find really entertaining.  As in, it makes me laugh.  Those who’ve heard me play around with it a little have for the most part given me the same feedback, so that makes me excited about it, as I know not everyone shares my sense of humor!  An acquaintance of mine who’s in a local band here in Seattle, The Local Strangers, has generously offered to help me record it.  And, he helped me with the final pieces, too.  As always, it’s much easier for me when there’s someone else to work with, and I’m really grateful when someone who knows what they’re doing is willing to work with me, who doesn’t have that same knowledge!  Unfortunately, we haven’t recorded it yet as both of our schedules have been crazy busy.  But, hopefully after the New Year, and then there will definitely be a blog post!  Watch out, world!  I have a song to take you by storm!

OK, not really…

So that’s the news on the songwriting front.  In other music fronts, it occurs to me that it’s time to update the list of super-awesome music out there.  I don’t do that too often—I’m not a reviewer, after all—but I was just making some mixes for a friend who wanted new music and it occurred to me that I have a ton of music that I’ve been introduced to over the last few years.  So many new artists!  Some new to me, and some new to the scene, and yes, some of it is definitely Seattle-centric.  But either way, it’s a great reminder that creativity is ever-occurring, and inspiration is truly unending.  Hopefully some of these artists will inspire you, if you’re feeling that creative lull:

The Civil Wars

Allen Stone

The Local Strangers

Hot Bodies In Motion (I’m pretty sure that’s ironic!  But their music is great, regardless)

The Head and the Heart (yes, they’ve been mentioned on here before)

Edie Carey

The Swell Season (not that new anymore, but still worth checking out this duo from the movie “Once”)

Stacey Kent

Kevin Long

Ivan & Alyosha

Sam and Ruby

Alice Smith

Melissa McClelland (on Sarah McLachlan’s tour last year—saw the show twice and she’s excellent)

Quiet Company

Javier Colon (ok, so he was the winner of “The Voice,” and I’m not ashamed to admit is version of “Fix You” by Coldplay totally made me cry)

Duffy

A Fine Frenzy

St. Paul de Vence

Tara Kelly Kearns (OK, so that’s my sister, but she’s amazing and should she record anything beyond the song we wrote together, “Frayed,” I promise you would agree!  And if that happens, there will be an immediate blog post.)

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New Song! New Song!

My sister and I have a song for your downloading pleasure! But more on that later…

Lots has been happening around here and in my life, and it’s taken me away from blogging. No surprise there! But, after quite a few months away from not producing any new songs, I am happy to say that they are coming again. Now that’s a reason to blog. Woohoo!

Unfortunately, I haven’t suddenly developed instrumental skills despite my lack of practice. But I have felt more motivated to get things going again. I was missing the creative side of my life, and thanks in part to the need to write a wedding song for early April, I was pushed forward. I also give credit to time spent with Kelly Ash, my former voice teacher, at the end of December in Seattle, and also in NYC over my school’s February break. She helped open up some dams that were blocking me, and it propelled me forward to finish the wedding song. As well, she connected me with a songwriting coach who works out of NYC, and provides fantastic feedback on whatever song I’m currently working (and gives me a reason to keep creating so I have something to submit).

As I’ve mentioned before, having a community of artists is extremely helpful and beneficial to one when pursuing anything artistic. Now, I don’t really run in an artistic crowd (and I like the balance of what I have!), but I do have the privilege of knowing and/or working with a few who are doing something creative for a living. And of course I have my family, or, more specifically, my sister, Tara Kelly Kearns. She is a singer and songwriter in her own right (and a former amazing karaoke host—seriously!), and it seems we’ve found a little bit of a groove in creating together. That is, we’re very sporadic with how often we work together, but when we do we seem to complement each other fairly well. What a nice realization!

So Tara and I wrote a song called “Frayed.” I started it with lyrics and a melody, Tara came in and changed the sound from jazzy to folky/bluegrassy (sort of), and added a few more lyrics and the bridge melody. Justin Froese, one of Tara’s good friends and an amazing musician and producer, helped arrange and produce it with Tara, as well as played all the instruments on the recording. Voila! We have a song!

For those of you who know I have a lot of sad-ish songs, please note that I was not actually sad when writing this. But it’s sad. Oh, yes, it’s definitely sad.

Please go to the musican-friendly website, Bandcamp, to download at a “pay what you want” rate. You can listen to the song directly from the website, but it would be awesome if you would download it as well. It’s free! And then you’ll “get” to listen to it over and over and over and over… OK, or just download it because it’s fun for us to see how many people have downloaded our song. 🙂 It’s all very exciting!

And hopefully just the beginning.

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