I’ve got a guest blog post over at Creative Spotlights, about the ways I deal with stage fright. Give it a look, and hopefully you’ll find something you can use!
Sooj’s Top 5 Stage Fright Killers
I’m off to play the Beltania festival with Betsy this weekend! See you on the flip side!
My peeps in the PNW, Summer Osborne and Sarah McCracken, with whom I got to do a fantastic house concert last month, are bringing their spring tour to Port Townsend, Vancouver, Tacoma, and Folklife! I was proud to share a stage with them, and I encourage you to go and listen to what they do. Acoustic activism at its most pure, love and compassion at their most sincere. See their full tour schedule at Summer’s website. Get in on the Love Revolution.
FRIDAY May 15, 7:30pm
PT Friends Meetinghouse
1841 Sheridan
Port Townsend, WA
$10 for adults, $5 for 18 and under.
Saturday, May 16
Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Merge
NE Corner of Powell & Clark
Sunday, May 17
Vancouver, B.C. Canada
The Fairview
898 W Broadway BC V52 1K1
Saturday, May 23
Tacoma, WA
Open House Concert
3134 E Valley View Terrace 98404
7p
Monday, May 25
Seattle, WA
Busking @ Northwest Folklife Festival
305 Harrison St 98109
ALL DAY
I’ve been posting a whole heap of photos over at my Instagram account, including the ones in this post. If you’d like to follow me there, come on over.
Here are the flower photos I posted on Mother’s Day, just in case some of you amazing Mothers/Warriors/Dream-makers missed them and need a lift today. All the blossoms presented here are currently doing their thing in either my Mom’s yard, or on the family land at Camp Timberlake. I hope you enjoy!
MeMe’s Irises are so fancy after the rain.
As are her roses.
Mom’s roses don’t apologize for their sprawling loveliness, so why should we?
My friend Lupa is in the process of creating a new divination tool: The Tarot of Bones. If those very words pique your interest, click the link and check it out. One of the reasons I love and respect Lupa is because of her own love and respect for the natural world. This new tarot comes straight from that place of love and respect. I’m proud to lend it my support and to share it with you. 🙂
MORE good news: my hometown Pagan Pride Day group, Conway (Arkansas) Pagan Pride, has confirmed their date and location for 2015! The 2nd ever Conway Pagan Pride Day will be at Laurel Park on October 24 2015, from 2-8pm. With the support of Conway’s mayor, who’s been an advocate for the group from the start, the facilitators have landed a more affordable location in town than the local expo center they thought would be their only option! As a result, they’ve revamped their online fundraiser and stated a super achievable goal for it – $500. Please join me in supporting Conway Pagan Pride Day 2015! It’s a free event, and everyone is welcome. I’ll be performing, of course, and so will my long-time friend Sede! He and I haven’t gotten the chance to share a concert in years! It’s high time.
“Conway Pagan Pride Day would like to ask for donations, as well as your support of our vendors, in order to make this and future years a truly memorable experience for the community. Our goal is to raise money to purchase tents, tables, and chairs for the event to be used year after year, as well as to make sure that Conway Pagan Pride is on the way to being self-sustainable in future years. Any donation is appreciated, and we thank you so much for your continued love and support!”
Music blogger OceanicBlue in the UK has nothing but sweet things to say about Stolen Season, and I’m so grateful to him for posting his review!
He calls my lyrics “pure gold”, my songs “exquisite” and “works of art”, and my voice “mesmerizing”. This kind of review is the stuff of dreams!
Read his full post here and while you’re at it, connect with him on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks so much, OB!
I took an unintentional blog hiaitus, and I apologize for that to anyone who might have missed me. All’s well, I just let the days tumble over on me and I lost track. I’m getting it all back together now so that I can catch you up on my recent adventures, as well as reviews and upcoming shows and stuff. Read on for more stories and photos.
I got to return to the Cerren Ered, Avalon and Dragonshire campgrounds in east Tennessee last week, which is a beautiful part of the world to visit in early spring. The Appalachians and the Smokies are currently overflowing with rampant green, flowers, and songbirds. The aforementioned Mitch and Amber made the journey with Ryan and me, and we took a few days to go hunting for gemstones, cook dinner together, and wander around in the mountains.
Violets happily growing in the middle of an old mine road in North Carolina
Our cabin in Franklin, NC had a lovely view.
Crabtree Emerald Mine is a spooky and lovely place, especially if you like being miles from anywhere or anyone.
Lost Boys at the mine: Ryan and Mitch
Lost Girls at the mine: Amber and me
Cerren Ered and Dragonshire then hosted their May Moon Magick festival, where we vended our music and shiny things, and where I got to give a concert for that incredibly welcoming, relaxed community. I also got to catch up with the truly wonderful and generous Oberon Zell-Ravenheart for the first time in over a year, which was grand. I love that man to pieces, and I’m so grateful when our festival appearances intersect! All my thanks for that lovely weekend go to Oberon, Mitch and Amber and Ryan, Lady Jewels, Solitaire, Dawn Raven, DJ & the kitchen crew, the Hoopeses and the pirates, Ember and Rowena and Mystic and the band, and most especially Thorne!
I’m still participating in my song-a-week group, and the joy of it is still super solid! This week is week fourteen, and I’m still in love with the group, the prompts, and the process. Fans can definitely expect me to release a few of the new songs I’ve written so far, even the one I wrote by mistake last week. I didn’t read the email properly, and so I wrote a song about something that wasn’t actually the song prompt at all. Whoops!
I’ve got two big events in the coming weeks, and they’re both at the top of my list of favorite witchy festivals.
—May 14-17 I’ll be performing and celebrating at the Living Earth Colorado’s Beltania Festival! Betsy has her own concert there as well, and we will of course do our shared magic on stage together. Speaking of magic, I’ll be sharing booth space with my buddies at Odyssey Craftworks/Underhill Alchemy, creators of lovely witchy metalwork-and-gemstone pendants as well as delicious perfume blends. If you’re coming to Beltania please stop by our booth! Rubiee of Dryad Tea and Pandora Celtica will also be my special guest on stage during the weekend. The headlining band on Saturday is Lunar Fire! I’ve been at Faerieworlds with these music makers before, and I’m STOKED to see them again!
Joy Burton, the head mover and shaker for Beltania and Living Earth, is a great friend to me and a wonderful human being. She is a teacher, a mom, and an organizational badass, and she gives all that she has to her spiritual community in the Denver area. When you support Beltania, you support Joy and all of the dreams that she and her fellow Living Earth members are working to build. I encourage you to check this festival out, not just because of how supportive Joy and the gang are of musicians like me!
***Sunday May 17 at 7pm Mtn, Betsy and I will be interviewed live in Colorado Springs by Tim Board of Front Range Radio! Tune in to KCMJ 93.9 FM if you’re local, or listen online here.
***Monday May 18 at 1pm Pacific, I’ll be a guest on the Backstage Gourmet Radio Show with PJ Grimes! Listen online here. We’ll talk about tasty food and tasty music!
—May 21-25 I’ll be performing, teaching and celebrating at Heartland Pagan Festival just east of Kansas City. HPF was the first good-sized festival ever to hire me, and they were a big part of my first-ever concert tour back in the spring of 2004. This event will be like coming home for me, made more so because my beloved peeps Big Bad Gina and Ginger Doss & Lynda Millard will also be performing on the Heartland stage this year! Abney Park will be there with us as well, which is gonna be a trip and a half, I’m sure! Off stage, I’ll be vending once again with my buddies Mitch and Amber Shineman, the mask makers and jewelry crafters behind SpiralFae Accents! Stop by the booth and visit!
Camp Gaea, the land on which Heartland Pagan Festival is held, inspired my song “Hymn to Herne” and has been a very healing, transformative place for me. I’m very grateful to Selene and the rest of the HPF team for bringing me back again this year!
Check out my tour schedule page to find out where I’m headed in June! The big events include St. Louis Pagan Picnic, Circle Sanctuary’s Pagan Spirit Gathering, Free Spirit Gathering, and New York Faerie Fest! It’s shaping up to be a gorgeous season, indeed.
Y’all, I am over the moon right now!
Matheson Kamin has been covering what we might call less mainstream music for over a decade. Matheson took the time to give a good listen to all of Stolen Season, and has now published a gorgeous, pretty darn comprehensive, FIVE STAR review! You can read the whole shebang by clicking here. In particular, I love what Matheson has to say about “Believe in Lullabies”:
Tucker’s vocal delivery will remind many of jazz vocalists from days gone by. The clear, beautiful sound of Tucker’s voice is the focal point on this track. The lyrical content will also remind listeners of songs from yesterday as the track truly sounds like something that belongs in The Great American Songbook.
!!!!!
I’ll be over here, doing a little singer-songwriter Snoopy dance.
Or maybe I’ll just invoke the time that my friend Angelica turned me into a cartoon. 🙂
Reviews are rolling in for Stolen Season and for the “Little Bird” music video, making my day and my mood absolutely soar. The latest is from Stephen Vicino, founder of MusicExistence.com:
S. J. Tucker’s album “Stolen Season” is the perfect mixture of folk, blues, and jazz. Her current single from the album is “Little Bird,” which is an upbeat optimistic tune that will get you through the rough days with ease. When listening to this song, there is no way you cannot feel a little bit happier than you were before listening. “Little Bird” is the perfect song to turn on when you are having a bad day. Towards the end of the track, S. J. encourages you to “keep on swimming and chasing after you big dreams” on tough days. All of that being said, if you are going through a rough patch, just turn on “Little Bird” and let S. J. Tucker inspire you!
I love high praise like this, but I love it even more when my intent for a song and the song’s effect match up perfectly in people’s listening experience! My highest hope for “Little Bird” is that listening to the song and/or watching the video will give you a lift, a smile, or a better day in general. Thanks so much, Stephen, and thanks also to all those who’ve given me Your stories and Your take on what the songs on Stolen Season mean to YOU!