Blue Town

"Blue Town" is a song from my new disc COCKTAILS that I recorded live in my Irish studio 2 years ago. It is inspired by two completely different towns: BALLYCOTTON, IRELAND and CANTON, OHIO. It's about how time creeps up on you, taps you on the s houlder and points out that whether you like it or not...you have arrived. I always think I'm 'going somewhere', never committed to permanence, until one day I see a flash of reality and realize that I've been living in a place for YEARS. All of the sudden, I am home. The crashing of dreams and reality. That is what "Blue Town" is about. I think we all have those moments when we feel rusty and unfulfilled, thinking that everything would be fine if we could JUST get out of town and start over. The reality is that you will only wind up in ANOTHER blue town. Sometimes you just have to let your dreams go drifting by, gather your true friends and raise a glass to surrender. There is beauty to be found under the neon lights. It is in living in the moment. In this video, I had just finished writing "Blue Town" while I was wrapping up playing shows for my last CD, TWIST. I think it's the stepping stone song between the two records. You can hear it here (on this page) naked and freshly written if you click on the video above. OR..you can pick up a copy of COCKTAILS to hear the fully realized version with Marti Jones' lush vocals and guitars, Don Dixon's perfectly, haunting bass and Jim Brock's spinal percussion. Worth it, if only for Dixon's gorgeous string arrangement. Here's mud in your eye.

MIXING "COCKTAILS" FOR "3D"

What are you doing October 27th? I am heading for Nashville, Tennessee to join my pal Marti Jones Dixon, to celebrate both the release of my new CD, "Cocktails", and Marti's solo, painting exhibition, "3D: Drinki ng, Dining and Dancing". That shiny, Saturday evening we will hook up at LeQuire Gallery to attend the artist's reception for her show. There, we will be performing songs from "Cocktails", as well as favorites from our past albums. This special event seems an obvious chance for us to celebrate Marti's new paintings AND the release of my new record. Being longtime friends we've teamed up musically MANY times. Never truer for "Cocktails". We co-wrote a few of the songs, and of course, she sings on them all. It's true that in the past few years, Marti has been concentrating more on visual art than singing, loving them both, but always feeling that painting is her true passion. So when she DOES swap one of her paint brushes for a microphone, it is a RARE and CELEBRATORY sound that occurs. She is a songbird. No denying it. She describes her current 3D: Drinking, Dancing and Dining project as, "a collection of observations of the world that surround our attempts at recreation". I can dig that. Sounds like what I've been WRITING about! "Cocktails" has turned out to be about, both the joy AND the consequences of, the pursuit of pleasure. We think it makes perfect sense that both projects would reflect each other. Basically, the last few years we've spent traveling back and forth from our respective homes in Ohio and California, to my place in Cork, Ireland, recording and painting along the way. We're just two Irish American girls. We drink together, we eat together, and we've even been known to dance on occasion. Marti painted about it. I wrote about it. I recorded "Cocktails", once again, under the watchful and talented eye of Mr. Don Dixon, aided and abetted by the most excellent of percussionists, Jim Brock, (who will also be there to perform with us on the 27th). There are seven songs total, one for each day of the week, and I love them all. I hope you will too. So the key words here for this 2012, pre-Halloween weekend is: CELEBRATE. 3D. COCKTAILS. October 27th @ Le Quire Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee! Hope to see you there. http://www.lequiregallery.com/artists.html

"Cocktails"...new record coming in October!

If I’m not in my studio making some kind of noise...I am a fish out of water. I have been that way since I was a kid. Every once in awhile I have to force myself OUT of my little pond, and step back and observe whether I’ve managed to make any noise nice enough to play for someone other than myself. I don’t know about you, but the ‘noise and information’ level has been increasingly cranked-up to ELEVEN on my life’s amplifier. Everything seems to be competing for my attention. I’ve come to the conclusion that all I can do is focus on the things that really matter to me. Somehow it seems this OVERWHELMING world turns out to also be very FREEING. I am forced to simplify due to overload. Well, I’ve recently jumped out of my ‘pond’, and decided I have a pretty nice handful of songs to play. It’s a little batch I’m calling “COCKTAILS”. There are 7 songs, one for each day of the week, and I love them all. In December, I recorded basic tracks with my friends Don Dixon and Jim Brock, at Brock’s studio in North Carolina. And just this first week of May, I flew to Dixon’s studio in Ohio, where he recorded, live, a four piece string section of arrangements he had written for most of the ‘cocktails’. They are absolutely gorgeous. Dixon continues to blow my mind. He is KING! Both sessions were amazing. I try to soak in all that beautiful and professional musicianship. For me it is the BEST part about writing songs. Working with people I respect, and in this case, that I love. All around and in-between those two sessions over the last year, I, (and another musical cohort Marti Jones), have been writing and singing and recording vocals. Somehow, just typing this fact, makes it perfectly clear why I call it “Cocktails”. Well, that, and the subject matter of the songs. Also my friend Mick Hayes, an excellent musician living in Ireland, lent his jangle-jangle Banjo to one of the tunes. His musical touch, as well, encouraged me to pull my head out of the water, and see that there might be something sort of interesting about these 7 songs. It doesn’t matter how many there are...they just feel ‘done’ and somehow ‘connected’. So I just wanted to prime the pump for another inevitable round of tooting my own horn about how excited and proud I am of this batch of songs. I’ll be mixing Cocktails, (literally), this summer in Ireland, and plan to release a limited pressing of the disc on Saturday, October 27th in Nashville, TN @ The LeQuire Gallery. It will be in tandem with a solo show of paintings by Marti Jones Dixon called, “3-D: Diners, Drinkers and Dancers”. It happens to be the weekend before Halloween. Somehow appropriate. It will be a celebration, both visually and aurally. We’ll be doing a little live show there that night, with more dates to follow. More on that later….. “Cocktails” will be served this October. I am, once again, extremely psyched.