One way to start a song is to read a paragraph from any book. Catch yourself off guard by trying to improvise right away based on the words you’ve just read. Think of the paragraph as a ball of yarn. Pull yarn from it. Play with it, roll it around, tug at the tangly parts, roll it back up […]

Love songs from the past Rachel Garlin’s newest album, The Ballad of Madelyne & Therese, is a slight departure for the San Francisco-based singer and songwriter. It’s a suite of songs that tells the story of two women who meet and fall in love in 1940. In the narrative, they struggle with some of the same personal […]

Next Thursday, July 13 will be the second ever performance of The Ballad of Madelyne & Therese, a 1940s story about forbidden love for oneself and others. Join us at The Lost Church in Santa Rosa, CA for a narrated concert with Dave Sampson on guitar, Linden Reed on drums, and special guest Jill Pierce on harmony vocals. 8pm show, Doors open at […]

Sonny Ochs hosted a round of songwriters last night at the Greenwich Village Folk Festival and a bunch of us zoomed in from faraway places. “Please Therese” seemed like a good fit since it takes place on the streets of New York and captures the moment when Madelyne pens a letter in code, attempting to […]

LAST NIGHT IN LA I debuted the first three songs from The Ballad of Madelyne & Therese at the Hotel Cafe while loosely narrating the plot. Developing the narrated concert is like rowing a boat from one song to the next while discovering the route along the way. Each show will be different I think. […]

I’ve always been fascinated by stories about women-loving-women throughout history. How/when/where have these relationships and identities existed during different eras and across cultures? Narrowing my focus to two women in 1940’s New York, I explored my interest by writing some historical fiction on the topic. Here’s a 2-minute trailer for “The Ballad of Madelyne & […]

VIDEO AND LYRICS BELOW Americana Highways hosted the premier of our new video for “Winter Fuel (Good King Wenceslas Revisited)”. Please find Melissa Clarke’s review below along with the video and lyrics to follow. Thank you, San Francisco – the people, the voices, and the stories – for collaborating on this winter offering. Americana Highways is […]

Sometimes when I’m seeking inspiration for a song, I turn to a random page in a book and just start singing what I see, read or feel. It’s a way of prompting a new song without overthinking what I’m going to write.  Books are best when circulated, but recently the Little Free Library (a cabinet used for free exchange […]

Irene Young is hard to get these days; as you may know, she’s a renowned photographer who is currently writing a book about her 50+ year career photographing musicians and artists. As luck would have it, she was able to join us for LUISA and after the multi-cam shoot, she edited a video that we’re […]

On a crisp January day, I hopped in the car for what would be my first in-person meeting with Jonny Flaugher, the bassist and producer I’ve been working with remotely since the start of the pandemic.