I so adore the holiday season. I love the colors, and the lights, and the frenetic energy, and the peaceful moments in front of the fire. And I savor the opportunity to sing music that speaks my heart. The beauty of Thanksgiving and Christmas, in the sense of performing, is I make no apologies for singing about the most tender and meaningful things in my personal life. It’s basically what anyone would get at any of my performances any time of the year, since I hope the songs I write have integrity (though songs written for the country market are sometimes written from someone else’s perspective and I am singing with a good dose of empathy and not personal experience.)
January is always a mysterious month, because I am so tired and really enjoy taking the performing down a notch to a couple times a week instead of nightly. And I start up teaching my guitar classes, where the students make my heart happy. And I start preparing to teach songwriting workshops in March.
This January, however, I am trying to wring out of my weary self those old creative juices that have been sitting a little stagnant lately. I am just about to make a call to my old friend Mark Stephenson and set up recording sessions for a new album of… what words should I use to describe it … Lullabies and Love songs? Gentle tunes, with a little snap and kick here and there? Golly, I’m not even sure what songs will be on it. There are too many. And they don’t all necessarily fit in a category. But I do know that while I am still relatively young (I use that term loosely, obviously) I want to record songs for my grandchildren. And I want to record them when they actually want to listen to them. All of them have CD players or iPods in their rooms, and I get to lull them to sleep. But their parents are complaining that Christmas tunes in July is sort of a little too much. So whether or not anyone else want to hear them, I am going to write and record tunes that will comfort my own little ones. I’m blessed to be able to wake in the morning and ponder and play in that place where the creative juices start seeping out like sap in sunshine.
Here’s to juicy mornings and late night dates with the editor (that would be the part of me that critiques the work created in the morning.)
I’ll keep you posted.
