Postcards from the Studio: Floral Angst Abroad

A baby cried for the whole six hour flight it took to get here. I got one hour of sleep, but the flight was a good reminder than nothing has to be structured.

The air is so clean here; I can feel it in my lungs. There are seagulls squawking, which is kind of strange considering that we’re in the middle of a city. It’s a Sunday, so no cocktails before 12:30 because, you know, Church.

Any guesses as to where I am?

Dublin. Ireland.

We’re recording! Here! I know to some of you, it feels like ages since I started this third record. I guess you could say good things take time… And I promise this one is so worth the wait. I am so excited to share ‘The Ruiner’ with you all when the time is right.

Here’s the status report: Van and I flew to Ireland to record almost all of the instruments on 3/10 songs. I flew into Dublin with that familiar mix of nerves and hope rattling in my chest — the same feeling I get every time I step toward something that matters. Van and I spent most of the day wandering the city and taking in the sunshine, trying to come to the very real reality that we had the privilege and opportunity to travel together to a different country to record… Our original music. I don’t think I can even emphasize how mindboggling that is even today.

We met up with most of the band that we’d be with for my stuff that evening at a pub to see them play. About five minutes into their gig, Van looked at me and mouthed, “They’re perfect.” She couldn’t have been more correct. They were— are— perfect; the right amount of delicate, funky, sweet, and tangy, whack-a-doodle sublimity that I have found myself really leaning into with these songs.

The next morning, Van and I hiked over to a tube station and waited for Luke, one of the masterminds behind this recording session, to pick us up. It still felt surreal, even as we drove further from the city into the Irish countryside, even as we meandered down a one-way dirt road on the opposite side of the road, past a horse farm, sheep pastures, and green as far as you could see, even as we pulled into the driveway of a quaint countryside home with cows hanging out in the back. It was strange; it almost felt like I was right where I was supposed to be.

There was a group of musicians I’d never met — strangers with Irish accents — waiting to bring my Florida/Georgia-tape demos to life. The engineer pressed play, and the first notes of my songs filled the room, warm and wide and undeniably real. I didn’t expect it to hit me the way it did.

Van and I usually play a game when we’re together to see how many times she can make me cry. I barely talked the whole day because my brain couldn’t really wrap around the fact that we were here and these were my songs and there were nice, professional, funny, extremely talented strangers who were somehow reading my soul and bringing dreams to life. I could feel Van giving me ‘The Look’ from the chair next to me — the “I told you this trip was going to change you” look — while the band worked through the chords like they’d been playing them for years. Every take felt like peeling back another layer of whatever I’d been holding inside. Every harmony sharpened the ache and softened it at the same time.

I can’t believe I actually held myself together for as long as I did.

But then the brass section got there. I wish I could say it was the jet lag, but really, it was the years I’ve spent trying to explain myself to people who never really listened. Hearing my music brought to life by strangers felt like someone had finally handed me the missing piece.

I cried. Hard.

Not the polite welling-up kind — the fully embarrassing version where tears spill before you can pretend you’re fine. I wasn’t just hearing my songs — I was hearing them believed in. I was hearing dreams I’d carried quietly for years being held and honored by people who didn’t know me at all, yet somehow understood exactly what the music was trying to say. I was hearing them alive, interpreted, expanded, held by people who didn’t know me at all but somehow understood what I meant.

There was— is— something transcendent about that. It felt like watching a version of myself I’d been fighting for finally step into the light.

We tracked for hours. Van nudged me every time something magical happened — which was pretty much every twenty minutes.

That night, we met back up with Luke at a pub, ordered Guinness that tasted like honesty, and then topped it off with what is very easily the best Indian food I’ve ever had in my life. (Shoutout to The Pickle, I will dream about you at least once a month until the day I die).

By the time I flew home, my ankle was swollen (it’s a long story that’s somehow very on brand for me), my heart was steadier, and my songs had grown into something bigger than I could possibly ever have imagined.

And it’s all because of you all.

I went to Ireland to record an album, but I came home with something bigger: the knowledge that I’m not doing this alone. That a whole community pushed me across the sea, straight into the room where a lot changed…

I want to give a special thank you to:

The Yellow Boot Society-

My family, Nebraska, The Platings, The Palmquists, Heather Jameyson, Don Hulcher, John Mingus, Audie Wood, Tony Jackson, Matthew Barlow, Nubia Lorenzana, Gary Schulze, Jacob Krug, Simon Powell, Michelle Fraser, Rob Penn, Cecil Lopez, Trevor Foley, Bruce Burnett, Dexter Dippong, Jeremy Brown, Vanessa Shepard, Seth Masten, Megan MacGregor, Frank Volpe, David Thomas, Joe Wilkins, Paul Lloyd, Lorie Gebbie, Kim Rempel, Blake Gifford, Raquel Cabrera, Kathleen Bell, John Tucker, and Colton Caulfield.

The Red Moon Recordings Co-Conspirators-

Van Plating and the Hoff

The Ireland Session Camp-

Alex Borwick, Mark Dudley, Cian Hanley, Diarmund Lally, Yuzuha O’Halloran, Bill Blackmore, Paul Frost, and Luke Dunford.

None of this would be possible without you and your support, and I do not take that for granted. Thank you.

As Van would say, “to write an honest song is a gift,” and I am so incredibly lucky.

With love,