This was so much fun to work on! All the stop motion work, puppets and sets were hand-created by Sabrael & Meg in St. Louis, aka Dork & Damsel Productions. 🙂 Spread it around! Enjoy it! We hope it makes you smile.
Sooj
I had the good fortune to be interviewed for Radio KoL this week, and our host PVA has posted the (delightful and LONG) interview on his YouTube channel. 🙂 Check it out here! We had a blast, so I hope you enjoy listening to it! It’s rare that I get to geek out at length with a radio host about community, music genres, all kinds of music that we both love (including metal, surprise surprise), costuming, and inspiring others. We also managed to talk about Stolen Season a fair bit, so feel free to share the link around as a way to help me boost the new album. 🙂 Bonus: you can hear PVA’s birds talking and singing behind us. 😀
I’ve got my first concert of the month tomorrow evening in Lawton, Oklahoma! We will most likely have seats available at the door, but if you want to play it safe, you can grab tickets online until the early morning hours tomorrow – get tickets to the Lawton show here.
If you’re looking for a way to balance out a h8-allowing pizza joint in Indiana having raised over $500,000, I invite you to support Conway Pagan Pride Day 2015. They’re asking for a comparatively measly $3,000 to cover venue rental for this year, since the city passed an ordinance that makes grassroots events in city parks nigh impossible. SURELY, with our powers combined, we can raise this amount! I performed at their inaugural event last October, and I found the group organized, efficient and kind, the audience receptive, engaged and welcoming. Personally, I’d very much like to see the event continue, and not just because it’s the equivalent of a hometown concert for me. The good news is that their 3K goal is reasonable and easy for us all to achieve together. Donate via their website, or via their GoFundMe, whichever you prefer. (I’m gonna be done with GoFundMe after this, but I feel that Conway Pagan Pride Day deserves my support.)
The Locals, my favorite local performance venue and arts bazaar, closed its doors in December, but the brilliant hearts and minds behind it haven’t stopped working to feed and delight their community!
TODAY, through Arkansasgives.com, throw them a donation and you’ll help them “qualify to win up to $5000 in bonus dollars”, which will then go toward their mission to create and maintain mobile farmers markets this spring and summer, and also help them continue “hosting an Arkansas GardenCorps service member at the Urban Farm Project. Our service member is able to increase our outreach into the community, offer educational programming and donate more food to our local food pantry.”
The Locals care about food, people, art, music and getting them all together in the most beneficial ways possible for the central Arkansas area. I care about their mission, so I’m sharing it with you! Please donate to their cause today if you can, between 8am and 8pm CST, and help them score some matching funds as well.
The Locals!
I’m part of a group this year whose members have accepted a challenge to write a brand new song every week. My #songwriting prompt for the #Soulwriters2 group last week was “Jokers Wild”. This is what I ended up writing. Normally I wouldn’t share my rough tracks, but it’s April Fool’s Day. 🙂 I have several layers of emotional attachment to April 1st, thanks to a spiritual teacher of mine who’s passed away. So this is a bit of a tribute to her, as well as a legit prayer to various Trickster god forms.
Read on for the lyrics.
First thing: today is Transgender Day of Visibility. I celebrate you and I see you! 🙂
My next two weekends are gonna be pretty epic. 🙂
I get to perform in Oklahoma for the first time in far too long (get tickets), and I get to reunite with one of my heart’s favorite musical projects for the first time since 2011.
….and yeah, sorry not sorry about the “Frozen” earworm there, but it’s true. 😀 We’ve shared plenty of stages together between the three of us since our last actual Fates tour, but thanks to Big Bad Gina and Renée Janski, we get to bring the Triple Goddess action back in full force on April 10! And have you SEEN the REST of the lineup for the Amazon Music Fest?? This is not amazon dot com we’re talking about. This is Amazon Warrior Princess Music Maker Extravaganza we’re talking about! Grab your tickets and get more info!
Thanks to Bekah for the graphic. Thanks to Bekah and Ginger for being my bandmates and heart-sisters for life. This? This is gonna rock so hard, it will change lives.
We’re ready. Are you ready? 🙂
Note: This post has been edited to include the reviewer’s preferred personal pronouns. Viva gender expansion!
Rev. Dr. P. Sufenas Virius Lupus (and yes, e has worked for both of those titles!) just posted a lovely, toothsome ramble of a review for Stolen Season on eirs blog!
The highlights for me:
-e declares “Little Bird” a song worthy of Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, which just makes my little Muppet heart fly through the roof!
-e faithfully shares how the title track affected em emotionally, calls it an understated epic, and says it is “the emotional heart of the work, singing and drinking deeply of a well of lost love, of unexpected adventures and outcomes, of worlds that cannot be integrated easily (or often at all). As much as it is in the long line of mythic compositions on such similar themes, there’s also something about it that I suspect will resonate with many devotional polytheists quite impactfully.”
Holy crap. 🙂 Color me grateful and humbled.
Read the review and check out eirs stunning, articulate blog here!
I had a pretty exciting day yesterday, and it wasn’t the kind of excitement I voluntarily seek.
Have you ever seen a rock as big as your fist flying toward your face at top speed? Thankfully, my truck’s windshield took the hit. I am fine, and my truck is at a repair shop in Little Rock for the weekend. We’ve been together for more than a decade, she and I- the least I owe her is a little vacation and some time at the spa. 🙂
Let me repeat: I am okay. But this was pretty scary.
I was on a rural 2-lane highway, headed south to visit my mother for her birthday. I’m sitting here with her right now, and while I’ve always been grateful when she and I can get together, the sun is that much brighter today. If things had been ever so slightly different, if that rock had flown even slightly harder, or any number of other tiny details, I might not be sitting here.
My family is amazing. It turned out that I was less than half an hour away from my uncle’s favorite repair shop. He called them for me, I made sure everything was drivable (including me), I met him at the shop, I made sure the repair crew and I were on the same page, and then my aunt and uncle let me ride south with them to Mom’s birthday dinner. Mom brought me home last night, and here we sit.
My fans are also amazing. Within seconds of my mentioning what had happened (and my saying that I was okay) online, I got flooded with comments, asking if I needed help with anything, thanking goodness and goddess and gods and my windshield that I’m okay, even offering to pitch in for the repair. Thank you all- we’ve got it covered, so please don’t worry. I appreciate you so much!
Here are some happier thoughts from my day at home with Mom. Mostly her flowers and her sweet, goofy dogs. Read more…
Birthdays and Other Sweet Celebrations:
Today is my song-sister Jessica Star’s birthday! Check out her music here!
It’s also my mother’s birthday, and I’ll be spending the weekend with her. 🙂
This weekend my first album and my newest album get to stand side by side. On this date in 2004, I released my first CD, Haphazard. 
It’s been a vibrant few years since then, and Stolen Season is the newest jewel in the timeline. 
I couldn’t be more pleased! Listen to both albums free on my downloads page.
Worldwide <3:
Since my CD release announcement last weekend, I’ve heard from fans in 30 of the 50 US states, and in five different countries! I love hearing from all of you; thank you for reaching out!
Making Tracks:
I got to perform at Oak Spirit Sanctuary‘s Ostara Festival near Boonville, Missouri last Saturday, and it was lovely. Special thanks to Kerry Lynn, Taz, Gaia Rain, Jess, Xander, Don, LB, and the rest of the Oak Spirit family for welcoming me, and thanks to my phamily at Spiralfae Accents for going above and beyond! I look forward to celebrating with you all again.
Shake your tail; spread your wings:
Before I left Missouri, I got to take part in filming some of the planned music video for my song “Little Bird“! I met my video directors, Sab and Meg, in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, on Monday afternoon. The weather obliged us by being lovely and sunny, if a little brisk. Sab and Meg, with the help of my partner Ryan and my good friend Anna, took video and stop motion footage of me performing the song (wearing layers of pixie floof, with an audience of tolerant waterfowl), and then we worked together on some of the scripted stop-motion shots they had planned, involving stop-motion puppets and sets of their own making! It’s gonna be such a cute video. I can’t wait to see and share the finished product! Subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to know right away when we post it there!
More Missouri Goodness:
Fans in Missouri will be glad to know that I’ll be back to perform two St. Louis area concerts: one on June 5 at the Focal Point, and one on June 6 in the aforementioned Tower Grove Park, at St. Louis Pagan Picnic 2015! Pagan Picnic was where I first met Scott Helland of Frenchy & the Punk, years ago, and I’m thrilled to be performing for that event again, this time with Tuatha Dea, Boo Greenway, Rhythm Village participants, Summer Osborne, and Raw Earth! Pagan Picnic is a free, all ages event, and everyone, regardless of age, race, creed or lifestyle, is welcome.
By the way Pagan Picnic is raffling a copy of Stolen Season- one of the first fifty copies out of the box! If you’d like to support this lovely witchy event, and further the cause of new music at the same time, participate here.
The Stolen Season Roadshow Starts Next Weekend in Oklahoma!
Next Saturday, April 4, I have my first #StolenSeasonRoadShow concert! I’ll be performing live at the U. U. Church of Lawton, Oklahoma! Grab your tickets here!
Imminent interview:
Tune in to 99.3 The Eagle (streaming here) this Sunday night for Michael Cree’s Deep Tracks radio program! I spoke with Mr. Cree face to face today (he’s really had an impressive life in local radio) and he gushed about Stolen Season, promising to play as much of it as he could on his program from 7-10pm CST! He’s also looking into the possibility of bringing me in for an interview, which I told him I’d love to do.
Tune in to Chris Orapello‘s Down at the Crossroads podcast on April 8 to catch our discussion and interview! Chris will be spinning tracks from Stolen Season, and we’ll make it a night to remember. Chris recently had Sharon Knight as a guest on his podcast to discuss her lovely Portals project, which I get to be part of! Support that project by clicking below!
I hope you all enjoy the album! Feel free to share this around.
I continue to be a bit excited. 😀 I’m announcing the release March 23rd. THAT’S TOMORROW!
For a while, you’ll still only be able to get it directly from me: here on the site, on my download site, or at concerts. Meanwhile, I’ll be working with CDBaby over the next few weeks to get it listed on iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify, and everywhere.