Liner Notes for the EP, "Elemental" (copyright 2018, all rights reserved, BMI)
These six songs trace central elements in our lives over the last year and a half including travels and touring in Scandinavia, Italy and the Appalachian mountains, a move out of state, performing in bands together and on our own, and our own travels back and forth between New Mexico and Colorado to write, perform, record radio shows, teach masterclasses and collaborate with one another in an interstate Songwriting Group. Most songs were written over skype with guitars in hand, seated at our kitchen tables and by the fireplaces in our living rooms, and all are cowrites written from the ground up, that is, we came to the songwriting table with concepts and ideas but nothing already formed or set in stone prior to the cowrite. Typically, they started with an hour or so of catching up on the more personal or pressing details of our lives, with the key added factor that each of us was actively taking notes in a google doc on what the other was saying as we talked, laughed and commiserated. After that first hour, we would then read back to each other the phrases that stuck with us most from what each other had said in that catch-up session, searching for the common ground between the two perspectives or what felt like where the energy was. This interstitial space was then usually the juice/seed/spark for the song. So, part of the beauty in writing together has been simply showing up to the page/conversation and to the cowrite to seeing what emerges artistically from these open and sometimes very raw conversations. And the other part was the incredible power—something that, in our estimation, happens infrequently—of truly being and feeling heard by another human being. The song, then, is merely the icing on the cake that emerges from this experience of deep hearing and deep listening.
But these songs also trace a parallel emotional journey that followed our geographic movement, where the search for emotional authenticity, openness, honesty and the quest for hearth, home and meaningful work are paramount, and where the process of healing through speaking our own truths—both large and small—emerged as central themes in the cowriting process. Abandonment by new loves, the beauty and safety of finding new loves and long-term partnerships, the creation of trust and connection with someone else, the stress of social hierarchies and mansplaining in the workplace, the newness of leaving home only to come home again and seeing home through new eyes, the challenges of staying connected to an artistic muse amidst busy, workaday lives, the importance of grounding our bodies through physical labor and realigning our hearts with our bodies, and the question of what it means to be a “free” U.S. citizen and the lengths to which others go to attain this membership that we so much take for granted as Scandinavian American women born and reared in this country; these are all thematics with which we’ve been wrestling over the past year and a half and that take shape in these new songs in ways that are also hopefully meaningful to you, our dear listeners. Songs on the album are presented in the chronological order in which they were written from roughly August of 2016-October 2017. As female musicians who have both recorded with primarily male sound engineers up until this album, it was important to us to record, mix and produce this album ourselves, on our own turf, on our own timeframe, with our own aesthetic vision and sound kept intact from start to finish. We very much wanted it to sound like what we might sound like in a live performance setting, and so chose to keep the instrumentation very simple and limited it to what the two of us might be able to do when playing live (i.e., two voices/two instruments at a time, but no more than that). All songs were recorded using MXL-V67 and Neumann TLM103 mics, in a home studio in Louisville, Colorado, produced by both of us, mixed by Meredith, and mastered by Drake Hardin. In keeping with the home-grown elemental album theme, all CD reproduction and album art was done locally in Albuquerque; all album art was done by Kristina, with assistance from visual artist, John Parish.
Track 1. "Unplug Me"
“Unplug Me” emerged from a cowrite with Meredith recently moved to Louisville, Colorado, and Kristina recently moved to the Appalachian mountains in western North Carolina. It also emerged from our own ambivalent relationships to our smartphones and social media more broadly along with the sense that this distraction directly detracts from a connection to our artistic muse. The significance of going to the source of the creative well when one is looking for inspiration became a central theme we wanted to convey in this song.
Kristina:
I was living in a renovated tobacco barn on the steepest mountainside I’d ever seen, doing fieldwork with Appalachian ballad singers and surrounded by grazing sheep in this unbelievably beautiful meadow. I had just visited and cleared all the silt from the spring box at the top of the mountain, the water source for the house and homestead where I was staying as a guest of my friend and photographer, Rob Amberg. This walk up the mountainside to the springbox—and the sense of joy and effervescence I felt, afterward—helped me to realize the importance of “going to the source” for creative inspiration, however that source might be defined, and how essential clearing out the silt—the static or the interference—is in our own creative process.
Meredith:
Having just moved from my home town of seventeen years, I knew that my attachment to social media could become a problem. I missed my friends and family and wanted to see them all the time but I also wanted to familiarize myself with this new place. It was a constant struggle to keep my head up and be in the present moment so I wouldn’t lose touch with my songwriting self. Through face to face interaction with new found friends and musicians, I was able to maintain my muse but when we sat down to write this song, I wasn’t quite sure that would be the case.
Track 2. "Leave Home to Come Home"
“Leave Home to Come Home” was born shortly after Kristina had returned from a two-month songwriting tour in Scandinavia and a visit to the Italian island of Sardegna and Meredith had recently returned home to Albuquerque for the first time after moving to Colorado. We wanted to convey the newness that an “old” place can take on once you’ve shifted your focus and your gaze and then returned to it; we also hoped to convey both the beauty to which one returns and the impossibility of ever really escaping our demons by running away from them.
Kristina:
Shortly after returning from Scandinavia, someone said to me that “you leave home to come home,” and that resonated to my core. I had been transported so completely during my tour and fieldwork in Sardinia that, upon coming home, I literally had no memory of which key opened my gate, or my front door, for that matter. It was as if I’d been gone for two years. At the same time, the beauty of returning home to my rural life in Albuquerque’s south valley was intense, where everything—the smell of fresh roasting hatch green chiles, conversations with my neighbors, the safety and warmth of my own home and my kiva fireplace—felt brand-new and as if I’d never really fully experienced them, before.
Meredith:
What struck me the most about visiting “home” for the first time after venturing forward to find a new home was how quickly life moves on without you. In the mirror I felt like I looked the same and when I made music it sounded the same but Albuquerque had changed enough that it wasn’t the place I left. All of the people I saw again, though- they were the same and I could prove it by sitting down and having a chat or simply looking in their eyes. That gave me comfort and also made me feel okay about starting a new life. Our movements can seem so important sometimes when, in the grand scheme of things, they are really very small.
Track 3. "Sunday Frame of Mind"
“Sunday Frame of Mind” was written on a Sunday afternoon. We were discussing the mundanities but also the incredible stressors of contemporary workplaces—our own workplaces in particular—and how small and constricted this can make you feel when you’re in the thick of it. It emerged from the desire to try to retain some of the peace, serenity, and sense of openness and expansiveness of a Sunday in the middle of the work week when stress and expectation and a sense of failure are acute and your stomach is in knots and it feels like the weekend will never come again. We wanted a song we could sing to ourselves on a Wednesday to lift us up.
Kristina:
I now have a tradition where, on Sundays, I don’t leave my house with any motorized vehicle. I sit on my back stoop with my dog, in the sun, we go for walks, I cook, bake, talk on the phone, and ground and center for the upcoming work week. When we wrote this song, I was basking in sunlight, seated at my back table, my dog Nira asleep at my side, my guitar warm from the sun, and thinking about how wonderful I felt in that moment, writing a song with Meredith, and dreading the work week to come and really needing/wanting and anthem or a ballad that would give me strength and courage to get through it. Meredith gave me this gift of cowriting it with me in that moment and running with that particular juice/seed/spark so I’d have something later to remember that moment.
Meredith:
I remember seeing the sunlight glowing behind Kristina’s face when we were sitting down to write this song. Even as the session started I had the feeling that it was the last bit of sunlight for a while, as if I had to grab onto it so it wouldn’t go away too quickly. Writing music usually has the ability to take me far away from the stress I experience in the day-to-day commute, work, work-some-more lifestyle. This song definitely took my stress away because, even if I wasn’t going up to the naysayers who take my smiles from me, I was able to sing about it. Sometimes that’s all you need to do.
Track 4. "Fortress"
“Fortress” emerged from a conversation about dating and relationships, openness and betrayal. We both came to this place of saying yes, it makes you feel so vulnerable, but still, I’d rather be raw and wounded than build a fortress around my heart.
Kristina:
This song was born out of a disastrous first date with a man who was in a relationship but hadn’t disclosed that prior to the date. Despite the incredible humiliation of learning this fact after the date was over, I was still left with this sensation that I’d still rather be raw and open with my emotions—and wear my heart on my sleeve like in any good country song—than become careful and cautious and guarded. It still felt like this risk was worth taking, and writing this song was part of my own journey back to a space of hope and openness.
Meredith:
I’ve had my fair share of relationships gone awry when the person I was dating turned out to be very different than who I thought they were at the start. No matter how much it hurts, I feel like it’s always worth it to put your heart on the line instead of guarding it. In the end, if you’ve guarded it too long, it can hurt more than any love lost.
Track 5. "Freedom"
“Freedom” was born from a conversation on the true meaning of this word and how it shifts from person to person and is so dependent on our own framework and sense of (often unacknowledged) privilege. We wanted to tackle the idea from multiple angles, starting with the arduous journey of a Mexican migrant crossing into the United States, but then also to think about freedom for women in constricted relationships or who lose their voice through the constant pressure as young girls to be the peacemaker, to acquiesce and “make nice” to the detriment of the development of their own senses of self and voice and ability to navigate the world on one’s own with joy and confidence. Meredith later added the (glorious) bridge to this song.
Kristina:
I had just learned the word “man-splain,” and thought it was the best and most accurate term since sliced bread to describe many of my own interactions in my professional orbit as an academic and my musical world as a touring singer/songwriter and recording artist where (male) recording engineers often high-jack your artistic project, often without even knowing it or realizing it or meaning to! And Trump had just been elected and so migration and the politicization of the U.S.-Mexico border was on our minds.
Meredith:
I wanted to ask a question in this song because too many times songs tell you a truth or explain something in depth. I’m not sure anyone who has had freedom their whole lives can really understand what it means. I also wanted to make sure this song pointed out that freedom can leave anytime she wants so if you’re free right now, you ought to try to be grateful.
Track 6. "Elemental"
“Elemental” emerged from a morning in which both of us were doing heavy physical labor around our homes as we got ready for winter before our cowrite; the song was inspired by a bright red maple tree in Meredith’s front window in Louisville, CO and also by Kristina’s time living and ranching on the Navajo Nation. Meredith had been raking leaves, Kristina had been chopping wood and preparing a fire, and we met up for our cowrite with flushed cheeks and fresh blood pumping through our veins. In this song we wanted to evoke the incredible feeling of warmth and safety you feel when you are sitting by a fire in the winter beside the one you love. So, “Elemental” is our love song to the elements and the changing of the seasons.
Kristina:
The second verse references a round pen, a training structure for horses that I helped to build and shim the logs for when living on a ranch in Many Farms on the Navajo Nation. It was also inspired by one of my favorite seasonal activities on Navajo Nation, “hauling wood”—mostly aspen, juniper, and cedar and oak—from the Chuska mountains and bringing it back in the truck to the ranch where it was used to heat the entire house via a very small but powerful wood stove. In the middle of writing this song, I also came to the strong realization for myself of how important physical labor is sometimes for realigning our hearts with our bodies when we’ve gotten lost in our heads for too long. For me, there is no replacement for this kind of work: the work, and the realignment, is in the manual labor/in the doing.
Meredith:
There is little on this earth I find more gorgeous than the changing colors of the leaves. How can death be so beautiful? This song was my attempt to hold on to that image and carry it with me through the freezing winter. In the fall, all the preparation for the cold while the trees are so vibrant is such an exciting time and it’s followed by such a need to sleep longer and stay bundled up. Two extremes sitting side by side, working together. Imagine throwing your mittens off after collecting the firewood so you can hold hands by the fire…
We hope you love these songs as much as we enjoyed birthing them and the idea of sharing them with you.
~Meredith Wilder and Kristina Jacobsen, January 2018, Louisville, Colorado
These six songs trace central elements in our lives over the last year and a half including travels and touring in Scandinavia, Italy and the Appalachian mountains, a move out of state, performing in bands together and on our own, and our own travels back and forth between New Mexico and Colorado to write, perform, record radio shows, teach masterclasses and collaborate with one another in an interstate Songwriting Group. Most songs were written over skype with guitars in hand, seated at our kitchen tables and by the fireplaces in our living rooms, and all are cowrites written from the ground up, that is, we came to the songwriting table with concepts and ideas but nothing already formed or set in stone prior to the cowrite. Typically, they started with an hour or so of catching up on the more personal or pressing details of our lives, with the key added factor that each of us was actively taking notes in a google doc on what the other was saying as we talked, laughed and commiserated. After that first hour, we would then read back to each other the phrases that stuck with us most from what each other had said in that catch-up session, searching for the common ground between the two perspectives or what felt like where the energy was. This interstitial space was then usually the juice/seed/spark for the song. So, part of the beauty in writing together has been simply showing up to the page/conversation and to the cowrite to seeing what emerges artistically from these open and sometimes very raw conversations. And the other part was the incredible power—something that, in our estimation, happens infrequently—of truly being and feeling heard by another human being. The song, then, is merely the icing on the cake that emerges from this experience of deep hearing and deep listening.
But these songs also trace a parallel emotional journey that followed our geographic movement, where the search for emotional authenticity, openness, honesty and the quest for hearth, home and meaningful work are paramount, and where the process of healing through speaking our own truths—both large and small—emerged as central themes in the cowriting process. Abandonment by new loves, the beauty and safety of finding new loves and long-term partnerships, the creation of trust and connection with someone else, the stress of social hierarchies and mansplaining in the workplace, the newness of leaving home only to come home again and seeing home through new eyes, the challenges of staying connected to an artistic muse amidst busy, workaday lives, the importance of grounding our bodies through physical labor and realigning our hearts with our bodies, and the question of what it means to be a “free” U.S. citizen and the lengths to which others go to attain this membership that we so much take for granted as Scandinavian American women born and reared in this country; these are all thematics with which we’ve been wrestling over the past year and a half and that take shape in these new songs in ways that are also hopefully meaningful to you, our dear listeners. Songs on the album are presented in the chronological order in which they were written from roughly August of 2016-October 2017. As female musicians who have both recorded with primarily male sound engineers up until this album, it was important to us to record, mix and produce this album ourselves, on our own turf, on our own timeframe, with our own aesthetic vision and sound kept intact from start to finish. We very much wanted it to sound like what we might sound like in a live performance setting, and so chose to keep the instrumentation very simple and limited it to what the two of us might be able to do when playing live (i.e., two voices/two instruments at a time, but no more than that). All songs were recorded using MXL-V67 and Neumann TLM103 mics, in a home studio in Louisville, Colorado, produced by both of us, mixed by Meredith, and mastered by Drake Hardin. In keeping with the home-grown elemental album theme, all CD reproduction and album art was done locally in Albuquerque; all album art was done by Kristina, with assistance from visual artist, John Parish.
Track 1. "Unplug Me"
“Unplug Me” emerged from a cowrite with Meredith recently moved to Louisville, Colorado, and Kristina recently moved to the Appalachian mountains in western North Carolina. It also emerged from our own ambivalent relationships to our smartphones and social media more broadly along with the sense that this distraction directly detracts from a connection to our artistic muse. The significance of going to the source of the creative well when one is looking for inspiration became a central theme we wanted to convey in this song.
Kristina:
I was living in a renovated tobacco barn on the steepest mountainside I’d ever seen, doing fieldwork with Appalachian ballad singers and surrounded by grazing sheep in this unbelievably beautiful meadow. I had just visited and cleared all the silt from the spring box at the top of the mountain, the water source for the house and homestead where I was staying as a guest of my friend and photographer, Rob Amberg. This walk up the mountainside to the springbox—and the sense of joy and effervescence I felt, afterward—helped me to realize the importance of “going to the source” for creative inspiration, however that source might be defined, and how essential clearing out the silt—the static or the interference—is in our own creative process.
Meredith:
Having just moved from my home town of seventeen years, I knew that my attachment to social media could become a problem. I missed my friends and family and wanted to see them all the time but I also wanted to familiarize myself with this new place. It was a constant struggle to keep my head up and be in the present moment so I wouldn’t lose touch with my songwriting self. Through face to face interaction with new found friends and musicians, I was able to maintain my muse but when we sat down to write this song, I wasn’t quite sure that would be the case.
Track 2. "Leave Home to Come Home"
“Leave Home to Come Home” was born shortly after Kristina had returned from a two-month songwriting tour in Scandinavia and a visit to the Italian island of Sardegna and Meredith had recently returned home to Albuquerque for the first time after moving to Colorado. We wanted to convey the newness that an “old” place can take on once you’ve shifted your focus and your gaze and then returned to it; we also hoped to convey both the beauty to which one returns and the impossibility of ever really escaping our demons by running away from them.
Kristina:
Shortly after returning from Scandinavia, someone said to me that “you leave home to come home,” and that resonated to my core. I had been transported so completely during my tour and fieldwork in Sardinia that, upon coming home, I literally had no memory of which key opened my gate, or my front door, for that matter. It was as if I’d been gone for two years. At the same time, the beauty of returning home to my rural life in Albuquerque’s south valley was intense, where everything—the smell of fresh roasting hatch green chiles, conversations with my neighbors, the safety and warmth of my own home and my kiva fireplace—felt brand-new and as if I’d never really fully experienced them, before.
Meredith:
What struck me the most about visiting “home” for the first time after venturing forward to find a new home was how quickly life moves on without you. In the mirror I felt like I looked the same and when I made music it sounded the same but Albuquerque had changed enough that it wasn’t the place I left. All of the people I saw again, though- they were the same and I could prove it by sitting down and having a chat or simply looking in their eyes. That gave me comfort and also made me feel okay about starting a new life. Our movements can seem so important sometimes when, in the grand scheme of things, they are really very small.
Track 3. "Sunday Frame of Mind"
“Sunday Frame of Mind” was written on a Sunday afternoon. We were discussing the mundanities but also the incredible stressors of contemporary workplaces—our own workplaces in particular—and how small and constricted this can make you feel when you’re in the thick of it. It emerged from the desire to try to retain some of the peace, serenity, and sense of openness and expansiveness of a Sunday in the middle of the work week when stress and expectation and a sense of failure are acute and your stomach is in knots and it feels like the weekend will never come again. We wanted a song we could sing to ourselves on a Wednesday to lift us up.
Kristina:
I now have a tradition where, on Sundays, I don’t leave my house with any motorized vehicle. I sit on my back stoop with my dog, in the sun, we go for walks, I cook, bake, talk on the phone, and ground and center for the upcoming work week. When we wrote this song, I was basking in sunlight, seated at my back table, my dog Nira asleep at my side, my guitar warm from the sun, and thinking about how wonderful I felt in that moment, writing a song with Meredith, and dreading the work week to come and really needing/wanting and anthem or a ballad that would give me strength and courage to get through it. Meredith gave me this gift of cowriting it with me in that moment and running with that particular juice/seed/spark so I’d have something later to remember that moment.
Meredith:
I remember seeing the sunlight glowing behind Kristina’s face when we were sitting down to write this song. Even as the session started I had the feeling that it was the last bit of sunlight for a while, as if I had to grab onto it so it wouldn’t go away too quickly. Writing music usually has the ability to take me far away from the stress I experience in the day-to-day commute, work, work-some-more lifestyle. This song definitely took my stress away because, even if I wasn’t going up to the naysayers who take my smiles from me, I was able to sing about it. Sometimes that’s all you need to do.
Track 4. "Fortress"
“Fortress” emerged from a conversation about dating and relationships, openness and betrayal. We both came to this place of saying yes, it makes you feel so vulnerable, but still, I’d rather be raw and wounded than build a fortress around my heart.
Kristina:
This song was born out of a disastrous first date with a man who was in a relationship but hadn’t disclosed that prior to the date. Despite the incredible humiliation of learning this fact after the date was over, I was still left with this sensation that I’d still rather be raw and open with my emotions—and wear my heart on my sleeve like in any good country song—than become careful and cautious and guarded. It still felt like this risk was worth taking, and writing this song was part of my own journey back to a space of hope and openness.
Meredith:
I’ve had my fair share of relationships gone awry when the person I was dating turned out to be very different than who I thought they were at the start. No matter how much it hurts, I feel like it’s always worth it to put your heart on the line instead of guarding it. In the end, if you’ve guarded it too long, it can hurt more than any love lost.
Track 5. "Freedom"
“Freedom” was born from a conversation on the true meaning of this word and how it shifts from person to person and is so dependent on our own framework and sense of (often unacknowledged) privilege. We wanted to tackle the idea from multiple angles, starting with the arduous journey of a Mexican migrant crossing into the United States, but then also to think about freedom for women in constricted relationships or who lose their voice through the constant pressure as young girls to be the peacemaker, to acquiesce and “make nice” to the detriment of the development of their own senses of self and voice and ability to navigate the world on one’s own with joy and confidence. Meredith later added the (glorious) bridge to this song.
Kristina:
I had just learned the word “man-splain,” and thought it was the best and most accurate term since sliced bread to describe many of my own interactions in my professional orbit as an academic and my musical world as a touring singer/songwriter and recording artist where (male) recording engineers often high-jack your artistic project, often without even knowing it or realizing it or meaning to! And Trump had just been elected and so migration and the politicization of the U.S.-Mexico border was on our minds.
Meredith:
I wanted to ask a question in this song because too many times songs tell you a truth or explain something in depth. I’m not sure anyone who has had freedom their whole lives can really understand what it means. I also wanted to make sure this song pointed out that freedom can leave anytime she wants so if you’re free right now, you ought to try to be grateful.
Track 6. "Elemental"
“Elemental” emerged from a morning in which both of us were doing heavy physical labor around our homes as we got ready for winter before our cowrite; the song was inspired by a bright red maple tree in Meredith’s front window in Louisville, CO and also by Kristina’s time living and ranching on the Navajo Nation. Meredith had been raking leaves, Kristina had been chopping wood and preparing a fire, and we met up for our cowrite with flushed cheeks and fresh blood pumping through our veins. In this song we wanted to evoke the incredible feeling of warmth and safety you feel when you are sitting by a fire in the winter beside the one you love. So, “Elemental” is our love song to the elements and the changing of the seasons.
Kristina:
The second verse references a round pen, a training structure for horses that I helped to build and shim the logs for when living on a ranch in Many Farms on the Navajo Nation. It was also inspired by one of my favorite seasonal activities on Navajo Nation, “hauling wood”—mostly aspen, juniper, and cedar and oak—from the Chuska mountains and bringing it back in the truck to the ranch where it was used to heat the entire house via a very small but powerful wood stove. In the middle of writing this song, I also came to the strong realization for myself of how important physical labor is sometimes for realigning our hearts with our bodies when we’ve gotten lost in our heads for too long. For me, there is no replacement for this kind of work: the work, and the realignment, is in the manual labor/in the doing.
Meredith:
There is little on this earth I find more gorgeous than the changing colors of the leaves. How can death be so beautiful? This song was my attempt to hold on to that image and carry it with me through the freezing winter. In the fall, all the preparation for the cold while the trees are so vibrant is such an exciting time and it’s followed by such a need to sleep longer and stay bundled up. Two extremes sitting side by side, working together. Imagine throwing your mittens off after collecting the firewood so you can hold hands by the fire…
We hope you love these songs as much as we enjoyed birthing them and the idea of sharing them with you.
~Meredith Wilder and Kristina Jacobsen, January 2018, Louisville, Colorado
