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Hi friends!

First of all thank you all so much from the bottom of our hearts for subscribing and for all of your amazing messages. You lift us up SO MUCH! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! We hope you all had a great holiday yesterday. :)

I’m writing to you from a very aquatic & autumnal Portland where daylight savings is hitting extra hard these days. It gets dark so very early but we’ve been filling our evenings with sessions in our home studio. We have new songs that we’re incredibly excited about. It’s been challenging to find time for new music amidst a lot of shifts and changes in our lives but things are flowing now and we’re feeling excited.

Dan has started to work more on composing projects, films, ads, video games etc. He’s scoring a short film right now, plus he’s been writing new PBC songs with me so he’s been super busy! I’m still trying to coax him on here… sometimes I think of him like a leopard…a bit shy, mysterious and impossible to spot when you’re actually looking for him…but he is definitely there and often magically appears when the time is right. So stay tuned—and tell us what you’d want to hear or see from him!

I’ve been traveling back and forth to my hometown (Rochester, NY) quite a bit recently. My parents are both going through transitions and helping them is a lot of work and emotional turmoil. It’s heartbreaking to watch people you love dealing with confusion and loss of independence. I know everyone goes through this but it’s been really hard. There’s the role reversal aspect which is weird and hard enough as it is but then there’s also all the childhood baggage wrapped up in it as well. My parents were super strict when I was growing up. They’re religious and very old fashioned and they censored a lot of things (I had a Madonna poster hidden in my closet and they confiscated more than a few of my cassettes…) so when I left for college I felt truly free for the first time. I guess searching for freedom has a lot to do with why I wanted to write songs and why performing is so cathartic for me. There was always the dream to escape or be rescued…to find the golden ocean, the diamond islands…that special glowing warm spot to slow down and escape all the pressure….

Despite all the ways my parents and I see the world differently, there’s something stark and almost otherworldly about imagining life without them. In searching for a home outside of theirs I never realized how much their simple existence, even from a distance, buoyed my wandering. Just knowing they were somewhere on the map steadied me more than I’ve had the capacity to understand until now. Sending love to anyone moving through this threshold in life or who has already crossed it. If you’ve found perspectives or maybe even rituals that have helped you move through this without sinking into the waters of anxiety or sadness, I’d be grateful to hear them.

I’ve had some time to read with all the time on the plane and I’m almost done with The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I love it so much! My wonderful boss at the shop where I work part time loaned me The Secret History this summer and I loved that one so much too. I think Donna Tartt is a genius (I don’t think I’m even close to being alone here!). There are tons of subtle and also bowl-you-over incredible aspects of her writing but one thing I love is how intimately she lets you get to know the main characters…their inner worlds are so wide open which makes the whole experience of the story so juicy and compelling. I also love how candidly and deftly she writes about class and opportunity. Both Richard in The Secret History and Theo in The Goldfinch end up in worlds they might not have inhabited if it wasn’t for their talent, intelligence and fate doing the strange and magical work it does…I love how DT works the struggles of being someone in that position into the stories and I also love all the angel characters who help along the way. I’m perpetually and passionately always rooting for the underdog plus I’ve personally had many angel characters show up for me so far in this lifetime….have you? Oh and her descriptions of partying and the aftermath are always so visceral I can almost feel the pain of a bleak morning in my 20’s just reading them.

In music news we have a cover out this month on Father/Daughter Records! We covered ‘I Said What I Said’ by The Softies for the F/D 15 year anniversary compilation. Jessi released our first EP back in 2011, I think we were her 6th release at the time and we’re honored to be a part of her label’s story. Maybe you’ve already seen the post going around but they didn’t use our entire quote for the release for some reason so I’m including it here:

“I Said What I Said’ feels like a missive on the complexities of relationships and the need for truth but also how hard it is to get to that point sometimes….from a different perspective it actually felt relevant to some of the things we’ve been feeling about the music industry and our relationship with it as of late…so it sort of took on a new life for us, so we were thinking about that while we were working on this.

It was really fun to try on their song and we sure do hope The Softies don’t hate it! While we were making this we were listening to the Elis Regina & Antonio Carlos Jobim record ‘Elis & Tom a lot as well as 16 Lovers Lane by The Go Betweens so it’s possible some of those textures were influencing us here.”

Listen here:

Oh and I turned 44 in October! I feel pretty good about that number…it adds to 8 which in numerology represents abundance, success and achievement. If you turn it on it’s side it’s the infinity symbol. 8 is governed by Saturn (the planet that rules time, hard work and karma) and in the Tarot it’s the Strength card. Sometimes I feel like if I could go back and be 24 or even 34 but have the brain I have now I would be some kind of unstoppable force. I’ve written a lot of the lyrics in PBC music for and about looking back and giving myself encouragement in situations where I felt like I didn’t have what I needed….but with the new music we’re working on I’m excited for everything that’s coming and I’m trying to figure out what a Blush Code Creature is (I think I definitely am one…) and everything is feeling so green and fresh again in the studio…so here’s to 44 and making it through hard times with as much love and forward motion as possible. Love you all so much!! Thanks again for being here! ❤️‍🔥

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