Kickstarter

In 2006 my husband and I opened the Stone Mountain Arts Center...a little 200 seat music hall behind my farmhouse in rural Maine. It has been a labor of love and a big boost to an arts-starved community. At the same time my aging mother came to live with us, as she could not take care of herself any longer. Also, a labor of love, she had five exciting years living here and seeing folks like Mavis Staples, Mary Chapin Carpenter and her favorites, the Smothers Brothers, come up our country road and perform in a renovated barn literally in my backyard. It has been a wild five years running this little giant of a music hall and taking care of my mom at the same time.

In mid-October she passed away, and I found myself feeling a little lost, realizing that it was time to get back to some kind of normal life. Normal life for me is performing and making albums. So, as I step into a new chapter of my life, a new album is a good place to start. Christmas is a time when you think of your childhood and family and since that weighs heavily on my mind these days, I am in a good place to work on such a nostalgic project.

The Stone Mountain Arts Center is where I do all my playing now, not to mention cooking. cleaning, bartending and producing. We bring national acts like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Bela Fleck up here to an unlikely little barn in the middle of nowhere.

It is in this beautiful barn that we will record a new Christmas album.....a
barn that has hosted so much beautiful music, and a barn that is especially magical at Christmas time. This will be my second Christmas album - my first was my most popular selling album...go figure? But it is over ten years old, and it's time to put a new toy under the tree so to speak. So that's what I am going to try to do.

I spend most of my time now bringing music up here to the willy wags. It keeps me full time busy but with great artistic and human reward. But it has kept me out of the music industry loop a bit (ha..maybe that's a good thing)and funding an album seems a daunting task....so here we go with Kickstarter.

Funds raised will go towards the cost of recording, musicians, and pressing the first run of the album. I have self released 7 albums, so I am comfortable with the process and deadlines. I will enlist Duke Levine and Kevin Barry on guitars once again for musical support on this album, and the songs will be many of the favorites you have heard at our Christmas concerts over the years.

Anyway, I hope you can help support this little project...as my husband always says, "helping the little guy can only help the big picture". And on a personal note, it will be nice to take off my apron for awhile!
xoxoxoxo
cn