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Sometimes you get lots of good reviews when you release a new project and watch it fly away.

Sometimes you get very little feedback.  Sometimes you get crummy feedback.

And sometimes, the very golden ticket of sometimeses, the true and soulful mentor of your heart and your craft writes the very first review you see, of this thing that you’ve poured all of your oomph into and are at last holding in your arms.

Here is what my beloved friend and teacher Ginger Doss sent to me after listening to the Stolen Season record for the first time.  I share it with you, not just because her high regard is something I treasure, but because her description is so visual and so rich that I must offer you a bite.

“I am supposed to be listening to your latest release with a critical ear, but I can’t.  The music and your voice rule my experience.  And that is my highest compliment.  Both in arrangement and mixing …I hear nothing I would change, nothing that could be better. I am just taken away by the music.

“This is the experience of listening to Stolen Season…

“You’ve just had the most awesome heart pounding, heart opening sex with someone you love more than life. You drift into sleep tangled in each other as a cool touch of air caresses the thin sweet sweat on your skin… and you dream… and in your dream you walk out onto a faded Southern porch with a big white rocking chair.  Pulsing through the landscape in front of you is a thick brown river heavy with rain from a recent storm. Moss hangs from ancient spreading oaks and honeysuckle scents the air.  You know someone special is there… and if you wait she will appear. You slide into the rocker and sip a sweet liqueur on ice that appears in you hand. A breeze takes you over and reminds you of someone, of someplace you ache to go. Shadows dance in the woods and tempt you to follow, but the gentle sway of the rocker lulls you into reluctance and a smile.  Eyes close as your soul fills with the satisfaction that can only come when its most distant waves have finally found the shore.”

 

The unmastered digital versions of all of the songs on the new Stolen Season album (aka my jazzy snazzy love child aka that thing that’s eaten my brain and my life for the past umpteen months) are now available.  🙂  I will be getting together my promo efforts over the next couple of weeks, working with my album design team and my mastering engineer for the actual CD release of this thing, and filming a release concert for you and for YouTube.   For now, here’s the basic, luscious, lovely audio, laid bare for your listening pleasure.  (That sounded a little naughty because it was.)

I hope you like what I’ve made. 😀

Happy:  There’s a new Tricky Pixie concert on my schedule, for February 7th!

Get tickets here. 🙂

Wonders song art by Chaz for “Song of the Witches”

Less happy:  one of my best friends passed away on New Year’s Day.  His name was Stephen Jacob Bell.  I’ve known him half my life, and his widow, Anna, has been my friend for over ten years.  If you knew him as well, and this is the first time you’re getting the news of his passing, I am so very sorry.

Stephen was the spirit of kindness, in spite of his own physical and mental difficulties.  We met in college, and I have never known a soul so determined to stay sweet, regardless of what life threw at him.  He worked with a team who helped identify those who perished in New York City on September 11, 2001.  He worked to become a nondenominational minister and an advocate for alternative lifestyle people of all faiths.  He had a million inventions in his head that he wanted to get out into the world, and he had a million miles of love for everyone he called a friend.

There is a memorial fund going right now which you may contribute to, if you wish.

Are you breathing today?  Are you centered and okay?

Loving Prana like you wanna, it’s the natural way.

Sister, look at your curves.

Never let me hear you say

“how I wish this ugly piece of me would melt away.”

We are down with the booty,

down with the breasts,

but we’re hatin’ on the belly and we never let it rest.

I fight it too, every day I forget to breathe,

turn away from the mirror and the strength I see,

but I come back around like a pop song.

I see the whole picture, and ain’t nothin’ wrong.

There is more than one healthy shape in this world.

If you’re good to yourself, it’s all good, girl.

-WIP, “Full, Loved, Enough” by Renée & Sooj, aka Zeze Oiseau

This is gonna sound incredibly sappy and saccharine, but it’s true.

I’ve had female friends (cis, trans, fluid, and more) of all sizes and shapes and sorts, all my life.  I’m fortunate to be someone who has a very hard time seeing ‘ugly’.  I don’t feel the need to judge.  I don’t make “beauty ideal” comparisons, not of people I care about.

That includes a whole lot of fans and a whole lot of friends. 🙂

It’s difficult for me to explain: not really seeing something that I just don’t see.

Read more…

The Stolen Season album has taken me much longer to complete than I ever imagined it would, but my own preliminary mixes for the album are finished! I completed them on December 23rd. I’m waiting on feedback from a few trusted fellow engineers before I contact my mastering engineer and replication company.

I’m considering a soft digital release as soon as possible after I get feedback from my colleagues. Hopefully, that means I can have all of my final, FINAL mixes completed by New Year’s. When I do make that goal, I will post the unmastered version of the album and make it available for immediate download and purchase.

In the meantime, my photographers, visual artists, and layout artist are working with me on the design of the physical CD. If we bust our booties, and if my mastering engineer and replication company have room for my project in their work schedule, we’ll have the physical version of the album available by my birthday at the end of February.

Whew.

I hope you’ve had a Happy Holy Holly Day!  I have.

My mother’s cats are every bit as sweet as my cats are. 🙂