After years of playing in a band with my twin sister, I’d never made anything on my own before. But the past year or so has been schooling me on how to stand on my own two feet, how to create, how to be devoted to beauty, compassion, and the creation of it through music. This album felt like the final, burning hoop to jump through before I could claim the title, “solo artist”.

Last year, I left my life as I knew it behind, leaving a marriage and moving to Portland, OR. These songs poured out of me like breath. I don’t feel like I had a real choice in writing them. As soon as my life fell apart, the songs showed up to catch me. David Whyte says that any true vocation will call you out beyond yourself and break your heart open in the process. Consider my heart broken wideeeeeee open.

With the help and encouragement of kind spirits and divine meetings at the right time, right place, my first solo record came to be in a way I never could have imagined for myself.

We recorded this album over the spring solstice, as watery Pisces crossed into fiery Aries. The first week of recording was dreamy and magical. Songs fell into place easily and we got keeper takes in just a few tries. The second week was exhausting. Chasing down rabbit holes, running into dead ends, getting lost in exhaustion. Forgetting to breathe.

Making music is emotional alchemy, and it’s real, hard work bringing the ephemeral into the physical. Israel Nebeker, my producer extraordinaire and song confidante, kept me going. He gave me all the space and help I needed to sing these songs with full integrity.

Here’s fragments of journal entries over the course of the recording process:

March 21st. It’s suddenly spring and all of me is blossoming open. This record is coming together so wonderfully, so gently. We’re halfway through with five songs done. We still have a good ways to go, but it’s coming along more beautifully than I could have dreamed of. I feel held and supported by Israel and Tobias, Luke, and Adam. I’m so grateful.

March 22nd. A harder recording day. I felt deeply in the flow of things up until now. I feel a restless, stuck energy that needs a nice long run, listening to a good album in the sunlight. We stopped recording early to honor the slower energy of the day.

March 24th. My body is full of tension in my wrists and sides and back, deeply tired. We are deep in the woods of recording, not much time left, now that we’re a little more than halfway through. I know we’ll get the album done, but there’s still so much to do. I will have to muster all the energy I can to get over the line.

March 25th. Beautiful billowing white clouds gliding in the clean blue air over the river, the long red cargo ships, the pastel yellow town. I feel at peace again. The power of a good, long break can’t be underestimated.

March 26th. Singing “Chest to Chest” today was difficult. I cried thinking of the hurt I caused. How earnest I was in my expression of true love in those early days. With Israel’s encouragement and guidance, I got the song done. Recording 11 songs in 11 days has been emotionally intense. Despite the tax on my energy, I feel so, so lucky to record this way, to bring this album to life with so much work and devotion from Israel. Soon I’ll reminisce on this time we had together. Soon the songs will no longer be my own, but humming in someone else’s heart.

March 27th. I’ll remember this time by the light through the warbly windows, the beauty of Israel’s home with all of its comforts, my sweet boys supporting me in this record with their own talents, and the great wide roaring blue Columbia River I had not truly seen before recording. I’ve been shocked at the beauty of it, the great red ships wading by. I’ll be forever grateful to have a living time capsule of a record to listen back to, again and again, to remember this time in my life, solitary and unmarried but more in love with the mystery than ever, young yet wiser than I’ve been before, hoping, dreaming, imagining a new future full of music and color.

more soon xx

-sophie

⚘⚘⚘

upcoming shows:

April 24 – Portland, OR @ Bird House Show w/ Okay, Alright & Zoe Lemon

May 14 – Seattle, WA @ Flower House w/ Nat Meek

May 15 – Carnation, WA @ Millers Carnations w/ Kate Dinsmore

Subscribe now