Nightingale Begins at Crooked Crow

I wrote "Nightingale" during the Crooked Crow Songwriting Retreat at Chinati Springs — inspired by The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, a story about two sisters and their very different acts of resistance during the Nazi occupation of France.

For one of the retreat exercises, we each wrote a list song — a form that repeats a phrase or word as an anchor — and that structure became the spine of this piece. It started as a meditation on survival and became a prayer for the world we live in now: how do we reunite, recover, and dance again after the damage is done?

On the final day, two fellow Crows, Charlie Craichey and Nina Marie Fernando, joined me to sing it in the old tile bathhouse. It was the first time the song had ever been sung all 3 of us together — a demo, full of echoes, and feels.

Deep gratitude to Johann Wagner for creating such a curious, playful, and deeply human space for these songs to come through.

This retreat ROCKS!