It's all about the pants

One snowy December night back in Vermont, my daughters created real magic. They transformed a pair of white painter’s pants - the ones you get at the paint store - into a fabulous surprise.

They carved printing blocks by hand, mixed fabric paint, and printed guitars and moons all over the old painter’s pants. They were beautiful!

Let me explain.

These have been my favorite, affordable, go-to type of pants since I was a teenager. My kids knew this, and also that I have always had a passion for music, for the moon, and for everything in the sky.

I started playing guitar and piano in earnest when I was seven. I have collected songs all my life, and performed music in all sorts of styles, languages and places. When I was a teenager in northern Virginia I used to host backyard jams (wearing a plain white, earlier incarnation of those painter’s pants). My mother put up with all this, welcoming my school friends as well as people I’d pulled in off the street. She made sure that everyone stayed safe and fed, and that we didn’t blow a fuse off the porch. We came together almost every non-freezing weekend for many years, making a lot of noise at the cows that mooed back at us from across the fence.

We and the music evolved and grew. We gawked at the moon and wondered together at the world, and many of us went on to become professional musicians.

This was a deeply formative time for me musically. But as much as I had a passion for it, I put off my own music career. I went to college and graduate school. I got married and raised two strong young women. Our family worked and lived in several countries as well as the US, and we worked to revive a 250-year-old farm in Vermont (shameless plug for New Day Farm maple syrup).

When I moved to Austin with my husband John, fresh after what feels like several lifetimes, the creative vibe and pure potential of the place inspired me, and I went out and bought an electric guitar.

Then came the pants

As soon as I was presented with the magnificent pants, things started to move. I found welcoming jam sessions and master classes. I played at bars and Texas roadhouses and the storied stages of Antone’s and the Carousel Lounge. At various times I played rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, bass, and lead vocals and harmonies - just having a ball. I found myself playing in three bands all at once while also performing solo.

And I wore those pants to every show.

And then the real magic happened.

Those pants conjured up the spirit of my backyard teenage jams and flung that magic into my present reality. New, original songs started dropping down on me like manna. This all happened organically, and I did my best to capture the ideas before they wafted off to somebody else. I can hardly remember a more creative time.

Then a dear old friend from grade school, and those old teenage jams, introduced me to his buddy Matt Smith in Austin. Matt is the inspirational producer and musical polymath of Six-String Ranch. Matt had also been playing since he was a kid and came from Saratoga, NY, just down the road from me in Vermont. He understood my layered influences, and acted as guide, shaman of sound, and collaborator for an intense, highly productive round of recording. Together, we produced twelve songs for my debut solo album and EP.

So I turned a new leaf as a recording artist.

And it’s all thanks to my brilliant daughters and those magic painter’s pants.