My new album, “The Gospel of Getting Free,” has been like a ship on which I can finally sail home. I see only now that my three albums are primers that guide me out of my own complex trauma to become my true self. Every day I realize more deeply that I am a middle-aged woman who embodies joy and truth, love, hope, beauty, spirituality and most of all, freedom. I make music so other people can believe that they too can find their own paths to refuge and their own freedom.

When I sat down to begin writing these songs last summer, I considered the two years that had passed since I released “Ol’ Kentucky Light.” I saw a reckoning and a host of lessons.  Reckonings are always dangerous and appropriately mine was with rats in my home. It was more than one rat that would catch my attention over the period of a year. There were so many that their overwhelming presence, for which I am now grateful, made me look inwards to find the lessons they brought.

Rats are revered in Asian symbology as being clever and wise. They root out the dark corners and show where light is needed. The resounding message for me was to get the rats out of my life. In my song “Love is the Rule” I sing “Hide in the corner, under the dormer, where rats used to live.” The line I wrote tells me that I have begun to inhabit the places where I once allowed the scoundrels to live. I have begun to place myself in the center of my life and have gained enough discernment to recognize the people who don’t want me to be at my center.  

Looking at the rats as my friends rather than as a menacing presence, made me realize that I wanted nursery rhymes to inspire the songwriting. I thought of the whimsical stories of Grimm’s Fairytales that I have always had a fascination with, where animals are personified and act magically as angels or devils. I immediately turned to Lord Invader, who made calypso music for children (and adults). Calypso music was the inspiration for the song “Sugar,” a song about addiction. I liked using calypso’s signature characteristic that is happy and upbeat on the surface, only to draw the listener in to a dark message. In the same way, the rats showed me how to shine light on the darkness within myself, except in the opposite way. They were reviling and disgusting at first but they became my way-showers.

The same ideas that drove me to write the songs for “The Gospel of Getting Free” also helped me come up with the songs for the first two albums. What distinguishes this album from the last two are two things. First, I feel more mentally healthy than I ever have. Last summer I began working with somatic therapy for trauma and it changed my life quickly. I immediately wanted more hope in the music as expressed in the songs “The Reason I Was Born” and “Sing Your Song.” Even the songs that are about dark matters like addiction (“Sugar”) and heartbreak (“The Odyssey,”) carry a sense of humor and an inner hope instead of despair. There is a foreboding, dangerous feel to more psychological songs like “The Siren” and “So Not Me” that set the tone for the album. Although these are more melancholy, these songs show more fortitude to look more deeply inward. I am able to tell my story more powerfully because I am no longer drowning in it.

The second thing that makes this album different from the first two, is that while I continue writing songs inspired by ancient ballads from Appalachia and Britain, I have become curious about how lyrics can be very simple. I have found that the simplicity can reach farther into a listeners heart. Working closely with three different songwriters on this album, Askold Buk, Teddy Kumpel and Walter Parks, I was able to create songs that feel more standard, a little less quirky but more generous for the listener. My main objective in writing songs is always to deliver the story as fully as I can.

While I have never been an artist who discusses politics through my music, the way the world shifted in the fall of 2023 inspired me to write the songs “Home at Last” and the title track “The Gospel of Getting Free.” “Home at Last” is inspired by a personal family story of immigrants at the mercy of good and evil forces in the world over which they have no power. “The Gospel of Getting Free” is the story of a magical boy who is entrapped by evil forces. The “gray men” use him for their evil objectives to find the Holy Grail chalice. When the boy (who has become a man) finds it he reports back to them that there is no holy cup, but that the vessel is within every human being if they want to find it. The spiritual message is not the one the evil men want to hear. Certain that he is mocking them, they kill him. While tragic, the happy ending of the story is that evil could not possess his spirit and that the Grail is always there for anyone who so desires to find it. “The gospel is in you and me, it’s what the boy could always see, the meaning of humanity, is the gospel of getting free.”

On a personal level, freedom has always been my north star, pulling me through storms and chaos. Slowly through the years, most certainly through making music, I am arriving at my true self, less encumbered by trauma and darkness, able to become a part of something larger than myself. To me that is freedom.

I hope listeners enjoy this album. I could not have done it without a team of great-hearted, award winning, caring over-achievers: Steven Williams, producer and drummer, Paul Frazier on bass, Etienne Lytle on keys, Walter Parks co-writer and guitars, Askold Buk, co-writer and guitars, Teddy Kumpel, co-writer, guitars and editor, Eber Pinheiro, mixing and mastering and Merle Chornuk sound engineer and owner of Atomic Sound Recording Studios in Brooklyn, NY. I also thank Ron Browning, my vocal coach, who shows me the way to spirit. You have all been an invaluable support for me and my mission.

Last but not least, I want to thank the creative home of my heart, New York City.