Even after coming to faith in my late thirties, it would have been hard to imagine recording a worship album.
When I opened the Bible, I felt ambivalent. The words I found there didn't seem to correspond to the image of the loving Savior my pastor had revealed to me. I knew the Spirit, and I knew a lot of the stories, but the Father was inviting me to come closer.
Through halting conversation in church gymnasiums and on Zoom, passionate and knowledgeable women led me into a rich relationship with Biblical text that became a bedrock of my faith. It also opened access to a deep creative well.
After being a songwriter, touring artist, wife, protester, foster mom and biological mom, in 2021, I became a worship leader at the church where I had come to faith 7 years before.
In that context, I was inspired to gather with other members of the community and compose worship songs unique to our present moment. I learned so much about congregational worship, and the process of contemplating Scripture in community. This Fall, I will record some of the songs that continue to flow out of this experience at a sacred space in the woods, with the help of a talented engineer and a tape machine.
Having lived through the isolation of the pandemic as a mother, my spiritual journey the last 4 years has further impressed on me the importance of Christ’s call on his people to be a body.
Praying together, reading Scripture together, singing together, being present to eachother in joy and pain, in abundance and scarcity — this is, to a great extent, how we know and understand the Father.
I am grateful for the opportunity to invite you to support the recording of these songs (many of which were born in the body) to be sung by the body, in gratitude for and awe of The Great I Am.
My husband and longtime collaborator Sebastian Rogers has helped me shape the vision for the album. The idea is to record simple songs simply.
We want people to feel encouraged to play and sing the songs at home on their own instruments with their family and friends.
Sebastian is producing the album. We have made six studio albums together, released projects through major labels in the US and the UK, had music synched in film and TV (most recently in Bojack Horseman), and had the pleasure of sharing our music via shows with Wilco, The Indigo Girls, John Prine and Suzanne Vega.
Another longtime associate, Ian Watts, will engineer the recording. He ran a studio for many years in Portland, and we are catching him right before he heads off to graduate school. Ian is experienced, calm, kind and creative -- exactly the person you want behind the controls.
We are recording at Cooper Mountain Sound, a studio well known in the Portland-area as the creative birthplace of Other Lives' 2020 album "For Their Love."
The structure that houses the studio was built as a labor of love, and the light that floods in through the floor to ceiling windows as it filters through the surrounding PNW forest gives the space a holy air.
There are many singers and instrumentalists in our community that we look forward to being able to bless through this creative process. We have also figured money into the budget to mix and promote it -- when we reach our goal we will have the funds we need to complete and share this music near and far. As a funder, you will receive a copy of the album and the responsibility of sharing it with others if it moves you : ) Thank you for listening/reading.