From the 90s to Now: Reflections on Being in the Studio

Honestly, these may be two of the most beautiful tracks I've worked on. It is mesmerizing to me how after 25 years of doing this, I'm even more blown away by these recording sessions. I'm deeply centered, open hearted, present and filled with a courage and autonomy I only felt was a dream when I started on this path.

For me, these sessions at Cedar Creek with Noelle Hampton producing and Andre Moran engineering were filled with pure pleasure and delight. We selected two deep groove songs and gathered the right-fit players for the sessions and the rest was just magic.

Which is a far cry from where I started in this biz.

When I was nineteen, my music partner at the time, Hannah and I were signed to a label. We had been perfecting the art of performing our originals and favorite covers as an acoustic duo and the highlight of our career was opening for Jeff Buckley in the spring of '97 at a small festival in Arkansas. Pretty rad for a couple of hippie chicks with a punk rock attitude.

We had only once played with a band. We were very comfortable with our acoustic sound and we tracked the basic tracks (drums bass, acoustic) with friends but then it started to get murky. The creative control slipped out of our hands into the hands of our producers who were experimenting with the sounds of the songs in ways our imaginations hadn't even conceived and it was terrifying. They used terms like "just for grins" when asking us to try out new vibes and we were just so freaked out.

To be really honest, we both had a hard time recognizing ourselves in the recordings. That was freaky and sad and maybe a little tragic. And it was nobody's fault, really, we just had no idea how to speak up or share a vision or what we wanted.