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"Fear or Love" single release October 21! 

Hello everyone,
I am over the moon excited to share my new song "Fear or Love" with you October 21 @ 

Elsom Cellars in SoDo.

 Eric Eagle and I are steadily honing it in over at Skoor Sound,and it's really cooking!
When I started writing "Fear or Love" a year ago, I knew I had a different beast on my hands. From the tempo to the lyrics that came to me on a walk with my sweet pup Barney, this song is different from anything I have written to date. Around the time it came to me, I had been thinking a lot about my fears and which ones make me want to get my boxing gloves on the most. For a performer and artist that continually throws themselves and their work out there, I can say that I have my share of "fears". But how to get through them without such a fight?  The answer of course, is always, alway, with love.  Love for yourself and love for others. So for me it might be flying and sometimes a little social phobia, and few others peppered in, but as I wrote the lyrics...... "fear or love..." the song slowly began to take on a life of it's own. The  choice all of us have every single day when faced with a difficult situation, is to either be afraid or to love. To love one another, tolerate and celebrate our differences. To let go in love and move through fear. The consequence of fear and letting it debilitate and separate, has never been in the history of time- anything but trouble. Now, down off my pedestal - the song is actually really, really fun and I can easily say it has been a crowd favorite at many shows recently. So stayed tuned........and remember
"Fear or Love- you build your house around the thoughts you're thinking of".
Peace.

Greenwood Fundraiser Performance! April 30th, 2016 

Greenwood Businesses still in need.
It was just a little over a month ago at around 1:40am, that I was woken out of a dead sleep by the craziest sound. An explosion? A massive crash of sorts? "What was that?!!!" Way too big to be a transformer. A very disorienting thing as now it was completely silent. Did I imagine that? So I got up like so many others that night. Checked the house. The front. The back…..and then waited. I waited for the sirens.  And then they came and didn't stop for 15 minutes or so. Something serious was up. I have a love-hate relationship with social media, but I knew that night that Twitter would have the news first. I was right- within a few more minutes twitter on the street had it for me…. a gas explosion had leveled buildings and blown out whole blocks of windows. I prayed that no one had been inside. Since the explosion happened in the wee hours of the morning, it meant that most people had cleared the restaurants there. Thank goodness. The strangest thing is that I live a neighborhood away from Greenwood, but something about my location almost a mile away from the blast, sent the sound to my bedroom window very clearly.
In the days after, the facts of what had occurred became clear. Most importantly and miraculously no one was hurt. However, over 3million dollars in damage and three small businesses were destroyed by a natural gas explosion.
I automatically thought about lost dreams. My husband and I both run our own businesses, and though super rewarding, also challenging. I thought about these strangers that did not have a place to work the next day. Everything that had been accomplished physically and tangibly in their businesses- gone. 

All this said, I was so excited to be asked to play my songs at a fundraising performance at The Stage Door Cafe a half a block from where the blast had happened. I am so happy to be a part of the evening. Join us April 30 from 5-7pm
Here is the event link. https://www.facebook.com/events/1587372554816804/

Donations will be accepted and there will be a raffle for some Taproot loot!

Exciting partnerships! 

I am so happy to announce some great developments on the business side of my career. I have been steadily writing and releasing music for  a few years now and in my mind I picture that I am building the foundation of a structure or home, that is my art. Maybe being married to a contractor has influenced my thinking, but I like this image, because it is an image of a tangible thing, in a business that can seem abstract and progress can seem hard to track.
Recently I wrote in my song "Fear or Love" - "you build your house around the thoughts you're thinking of". Yep. That's what I believe.
So all that construction work said, I am so pleased to announce that Fervor Records, a prominent music label and licensing company located in Phoenix AZ, selected songs from my  recently released Christmas album "Snow Globe" to represent in seeking Film and TV placement opportunities. Fervor Records regularly places music in programs such as The Blacklist, Chicago Fire,Transparent and so many more. 

Also, in a separate partnership, the publishing of my album "Everything Woman" produced by Eric Eagle of Skoor Sound, and all of my original Christmas songs will be represented by  Red Queen Music Publishing, a division of Harry Warren Entertainment , ("At Last" "The Lullaby of Broadway"), to continue to develop new media placement and publishing opportunities.  

Here's to building foundations and beyond!

I've Got Sunshine on my mind 

February, and unlike much of the country, Seattle is warm, wet and blooming. I am noticing every bud and ray of sunlight this year, as I am emerging from my Snow Globe writing cacoon. I can definitely say that I am ready for Summer and longer days. Writing and recording a Christmas Album for an entire year was equal parts challenging, and fun, don't get me wrong, but it did keep me holed up during what was the longest and warmest Summers Seattle has had in a long time. Needless to say, as we took the lights down and packed up the  Christmas decorations this year, I began to feel an overwhelming urge to write songs for a long Summer road trip! I'm ready for baseball, long sunsets, swimming and whole days outside. Let's cross our fingers that Seattle dries up a bit soon. Stay tuned for the new tunes!

On The 12th Day of Snow Globe- A beautiful Release Party at The Royal Room 

And so it's finally here- Christmastime. I should say "finally" for everyone else. For me, it has been Christmas since March! I have to say it's nice to have everyone join in the XMAS fun with me. I have really enjoyed getting the CD's and Song Books out to everyone and I have to thank those of you that have shouted out to me with your kind words about Snow Globe. All of your support in the way of downloads, streams, likes, tweets, follows, and of course, coming out to the release show are so appreciated. That support encourages me to keep writing and sharing my love of music.
Last week we celebrated the Snow Globe release with a full band playing the tunes to a packed house at Seattle's lovely Royal Room. The Columbia City venue is such a cozy spot, perfect to release my Christmas tunes into the world!  We played many of the tunes from the album, and some favorite standards. The spirit was definitely merry and bright.
Here are some photos from the night.
Merry Christmas Everyone!

On The 11th Day of Snow Globe Recording- CD Arrive! 

There is nothing like the day when the physical copies of the album come in the mail!  So much time and effort in the form of sessions, and meetings stacked on top of one another, and slowly over time you begin to see that you have an album. But until it is in your hand with the artwork and printing done, it is still to me just an idea. It may seem antiquated, but this is one of the reasons I will always want some sort of physical product to show for my albums, and not just real ease on line. Today three boxes of Snow Globe  arrived  to my porch ,and the feeling of accomplishment mixed with excitement arrived with them.  The artwork is clear and we are ready to get selling! There have been many people that took part  in the pre sale opportunity and I can't wait to get your copy off to you. Thank you to all of you for your support! 

On the 10th Day of Snow Globe Recording- Illustrated Piano Songbooks  

Growing up Christmas was always a pretty traditional affair in our house. The house decked out, Christmas tree lit, plenty of cookies and goodies around and presents, presents. presents!  The music and caroling was of course a huge part of our celebrations as well. As Snow Globe started to come together musically, I remembered a couple of piano/caroling books that were unpacked by Mom every year, and set out with all of the other decorations. They are really sweetly illustrated and they remind me of my East Coast Grandparents, which is where the books came from originally. I think it was when we added the song Silent Night   to the album, that I started to toy with the idea of creating a Song book to go with Snow Globe, with illustrations by Marie Skoor. With the music leaning on the classic Christmas side, (not synthesized, or too poppy), and the Cover art already vintage in nature, beginning to work on the Songbook turned out to be a natural extension of the album. The actual music that will go with each illustration will be simply charted so easy to play!
Here are some of the illustrations Marie has expertly done. 

On the 9th day of Christmas Album Recording- A Title & Artwork 

Titling an album is always such a daunting task for me, and this project was no exception. I wanted this title in particular, to really reflect the type of Christmas songs that listeners would be experiencing. The music is warm and  is perfect for lighting your Christmas tree, and in a time where so much of the popular music is layered with synthesized sounds, all of the music on this record features real  musicians playing real instruments. 
This gives the songs a classic sound. In working with artist  Marie Skoor on our concept for artwork for both the cover and accompanying songbook, our ideas kept shifting to classic and slightly retro images. In looking at many of these images the title came to me, but of course not while trying to come up with it, but of course once I let it go, and in the middle of the night. "Snow Globe"  was definitely to be the title. Here is the Cover art by Marie. This would be the recurring theme through out the songbook as well. Each songs illustration would go inside the Snow Globe. Ahhhhh! Happy with title and artwork.

On the 8th day of Christmas Album Recording- Viola! 

From the early stages of writing two of my originals "Home" and "Frozen Heart" I knew that both would definitely call for strings. It's so exciting to be at the point in the process where we are doing that. Today we are recording The Seattle Symphony's Wes Dyring on viola. Wes is not only a great player and composer, he is also an artist that is really interested in getting the parts right for the sake of the song. We met a couple of weeks ago where Wes wanted to know more about the lyrics, my writing process on the songs and the direction I thought the string parts should go. After that he got to work composing some very lovely parts! Here's a photo of Wes tuning up at Skoor Sound.

On the 7th day of Christmas Album Recording- Bag Pipes! 


This is Christian Skoorsmith and Eric prepping the very sensitive bag pipes! They are extraordinarily hard to tune,  so this took a while. This is just one of the pipes he is playing on Auld Lang Syne. For me the sound of this instrument is so nostalgic.  Christian's playing gave me the chills! Stay tuned for Auld Lang Syne.

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