Let's start by telling about the wedding...

No... not ours. ;.) This  is a picture of us, attending the wedding of two of our dearest friends, Cecilie and Gabriel, who said, "I do" on a beautiful, remote, island in Denmark called Strynø. This wedding was absolutely magical... a three day event, with a beautiful circus tent for the dinner reception and dancing until the sun came up. The entire island attended the wedding and we made a parade from the one church on the island, where the ceremony was held, to the beach where there was another beautiful ceremony by the ocean.

The day after the wedding we were sitting around sharing songs and stories with some of Gabe and Cecilie's friends and ended up meeting lots of their beautiful chosen family, and amongst them was Nikko Weidemann. Nikko handed me the guitar at one point in the evening and said "play something!" so I sang No One by Alicia Keys and later on Nikko said he was interested in helping me record something when we all got back to Berlin. I learned later that Nikko had composed the music for Babylon Berlin, a famous German TV series and had won awards for directing the music. This was August of 2022.

In February of 2023, I started recording with Nikko Weidemann and Simeon Cöster...

Nikko had graciously spent some time with me that fall listening to some of my songs and recordings and giving me feedback and in February, he introduced me to his colleague Simi, an audio engineer and drummer from the band, Isolation Berlin, who had a beautiful recording studio in Buch on the outskirts of Berlin. We spent the day recording three songs, very simply - just acoustic guitar, piano and vocals - and I was in heaven. It had been a couple of years since I had been in a recording studio and it was so much fun. To Be Heard was one of those songs, as well as The Bravest. Our hope was that with these three songs I could apply for a grant and earn some money to do a bigger recording project.

I applied for the grant and didn't end up receiving it, but it lit a fire inside of me to find a way to make the recording happen...

I kept writing songs, led another Spring Songwriting Challenge, and in the summer of 2023 started a Patreon. There is a lot more story behind the start of this beautiful community to tell - also that summer I tried to organize a strike against Spotify and was generally just frustrated by the way that Spotify treated independent artists, as well as the way we, as artists just put our music out on Spotify for free... and I knew that I needed to try to do something different in the hopes that a Patreon community would enable me to keep making music and ultimately keep chipping away at my dreams. Honestly, Nikko came into my life at just the right time... it's a funny thing, getting older... when you've been pursuing your dreams for a good number of years, even if you've had a bit of success along the way, sometimes I really wondered if I had something special to give. And asked if I was too old or if it was time to stop going for it. I think every artist dreams of being discovered by someone and having someone support their dreams and in many ways, Nikko has done that for me. He saw something special in me - that I was having trouble seeing for myself - and he has really mentored and encouraged me along the way. And opened a lot of doors. I am forever grateful to him for this. And it made me even more hungry to keep going.

HERE for the full video. Clicking here will open up a new tab in YOUTUBE but you can just return to the VIrtual Album Experience tab at the top of the page to continue your journey through the Director's Cut/Behind the Scenes Experience!

I wanted to start recording in the studio in September 2023, but everyone's schedule's and studio availability led us to really start recording in November.

We worked through the songs though ahead of time and knew exactly what we wanted to record by the time the studio came along. And I had been able to save enough money to pay for the studio and we booked three days in the studio in Buch for November. In this video, above the piano, you can see one of my notebooks. I have a diagram of all the songs that I wanted to record and already had in mind this idea of a concept from Carl Jung's 12 Feminine Archetypes. As I had applied for the grant that spring of '23, I was trying to figure out how I could create a concept album that would allow me to use all the different genres I loved to sing in. I was busking a lot - singing opera arias with my electric guitar, and starting to add classical elements to my folk- pop songs, as well as use my loop machine to make choirs with my voice. Using Carl Jung's 12 Feminine Archetypes as a concept for my album felt like the perfect solution! I could have one archetype for each song - one song called the Lover, one called the Mother, the Healer, the Maiden, the Diva, the Mystic, the Queen.... I could use all my different voices and put them together on one album! THIS album is still coming and these songs might be included in it because I first thought of them in these categories... but for now the concept is Courage to BE and the different ways that love can be expressed and BEING can be explored... but more on that later!

HERE for the full video. Clicking here will open up a new tab in YOUTUBE but you can just return to the VIrtual Album Experience tab at the top of the page to continue your journey through the Director's Cut/Behind the Scenes Experience!

The first three days in the studio were so exciting!

And what made it even better was that Drew (my husband) was also involved in the process and played guitar and mandolin and a little bass and was with us in the studio. That was so much fun to have him be part of the project. At one point in the video you can also see a huge hallway where I recorded some "ooohs" as well as Drew and Nikko playing guitars, some rehearsal time singing through SURROUNDED, and a sweet clip of our dear friend Babbs who came with her husband Jörg to take some pictures of us in the studio. Those pictures I will put below here in a little gallery section. Also, there is a nice little interview in this video of Nikko and Simi and I ask them some questions about how they feel about the project. As we were recording these songs these three days in November, Nikko said, "I want to send these tracks to my friend Matt. He plays drums for Maroon 5. I think he would like them." I remember feeling that feeling one gets when you sort of raise an eyebrow and I remember thinking... "huh, okay. Well, that would be cool but I'm not gonna get excited about anything yet because people drop names sometimes and you just never know if they are really gonna do what they say they're gonna do"... well... it wasn't a week later that Nikko called and said, "Hey! I sent the tracks to Matt and he loves them! He wants to play on them!" To be continued...

HERE for the full video. Clicking here will open up a new tab in YOUTUBE but you can just return to the VIrtual Album Experience tab at the top of the page to continue your journey through the Director's Cut/Behind the Scenes Experience!

So... you're saying Matt Flynn, the drummer from Maroon 5 wants to play on MY SONGS?!...

I was kind of flabbergasted. It kind of just came out of left field...

Of course, if this were to happen, it would happen remotely. I mean, he lives in LA and we were in Berlin. But I had already been planning to do a little West Coast Tour with my husband, Drew and our friend Makayla, in January, and Nikko had said that Matt was originally from San Francisco and we were playing a show in San Fran!

Maybe he would want to come to the show?! It would be so great to get to meet him in person! Well... longer story short, Nikko also wanted to come to our show in San Francisco!... so he did! And then Matt ended up not being able to come to San Fran but we adjusted our tour schedule and decided to head south to LA. And that's when things started to get REALLY exciting! But first... some road trip pics with Drew and Nikko. ;.)

Nikko and Matt used to be in a band when they lived in New York City & played music together with another guy named Pete Min...

And Pete ended up starting a very famous recording studio in LA called Lucy's Meat Market. Pete was one of the audio engineers on Feist's Grammy Nominated Album, Multitudes, has worked with artists like Andrew Bird, Sean Mendes, Volfpeck and many others..... anyhoo! ;.)... Nikko organized that we would rent Pete's studio for the day and work with him! And have Matt lay down the percussion tracks there. It was very exciting! We arrived early that morning and Pete showed us around. I have never seen such an incredible studio with so many amazing instruments - all ready and tuned up -just waiting for you to play them! While we were waiting for Matt to arrive, I played around a little bit on the piano, recording a slower version of Eternal and then a version of The Bravest on the Tom Thumb piano (a special petite piano that Pete had there). I tried not to let it be too obvious that I was a little nervous but Pete was also so cool and welcoming that I also felt really comfortable and taken care of. He was also INCREDIBLY fast. It was definitely pretty amazing working with someone who is such an expert. That version of Eternal ended up not being the final one that we used, but The Bravest was recorded in one take with the Tom Thumb piano and then some bass notes of the grand piano under it. HERE for the full video.

Recording The Bravest on the Tom Thumb piano

More videos and story coming soon!

This is just the beginning!