It took me a long time to end up here. Here being, releasing my songs to the world. Up and coming artist at thirty-eight! Never too late, right? The journey was slow because, well…my moon is in Gemini and I get a bit…distracted.

I grew up singing and dancing to my mother’s color-coded cassette collection, ordered neatly in the shallow cabinet above the chart table on our boat. Bob Marley (of course), Crosby Stills, Traveling Wilberries, Bob Dylan, Dark Side of the Moon (the heartbeat at the beginning always thrilled and scared me).

I learned lyrical rewrites from my father’s explicit parodies of folk and reggae classics, which he sang with a smirk as we kids giggled with mischievous delight. And I made my own epic love ballads alone on the beach, under the sea, or on the bow of the boat.

As a teenager, I traded clarinet for piano, and then piano for guitar, deciding my goal was to sing, and memorizing songs on guitar was easier than piano. I learned chords, and tablature, and then every love song from each of my favorite artists. Incubus, Jack Johnson, Outkast. I didn’t mind my voice, and I happily sang to friends and family. And behind the scenes, in moments of deep darkness, I started to funnel my own heavy heart into lyrics and melodies.

I never sang my own songs, though. They were never finished. I never stayed still enough to focus. College was a whirr of work and study and adventures. The years that followed were a whirr of travel and romance and heartbreak. I knew I loved to sing, but I still didn’t know how to use my voice.

In 2015 I found myself working on a tall ship in Long Beach, California. The marine biology program took kids on weeklong expeditions through the Channel Islands, teaching ecology, sailing, and history. Included in this education was a lot of yelling and singing. We sang shanties to raise the sails, we yelled from the top of the 70ft masts, we cuddled in groups at night and sang sea ballads. Needless to say, after three months with a crew of jolly pirates and rambunctious kids, I started to find my voice.

Before the ship set off from California to Panama, I walked the Long Beach boardwalk to meet a man selling a ukulele. A rough and tough little instrument, hand painted and with after-market tuners. I picked it up for $50 and carried it with me for the next three years. Down to Panama, where I sang my favorite covers to my winter crew in Bocas del Toro, across the Pacific to Hawaii, weaving a carrying case from nostalgic t-shirts and sailor sennets, and through my year in Hawaii, where I recorded song ideas in the back of my Subaru Legacy.

The ukulele came with me again across an ocean in 2017, from New York to Ireland, and then down through Europe. By then, my iPhone was full of song ideas (shout out to technology), and by then, I was starting to recognize the critical emotional release I found through singing. I still sought quiet corners or abandoned beaches, but the effect of using my voice was visceral and deep.

My songs and writing were starting to pull hard at my roots, begging for a place to settle and focus and get some attention.

The ukulele crossed one final ocean, from Europe to the Caribbean, where I abandoned it with a charming drug addict in St. Maarten, hoping its addition to his life could combat his habits, and learned later that he quickly left it behind. But by then I’d found myself settled back on my childhood island, in a household of musicians, with extra guitars and plenty of emotions to mold into songs.

I worked at a small deli that hosted a weekly open mic night, and I soon found myself stepping on stage in the middle of my shift, cheered on by the small community that knew me as a baby, with a band behind me and a microphone in front for the first time in my life.

And. I. Loved. It.

My last week on the island, I stepped on stage and sang an original, a love song I’d been working on for years, to the group of islanders huddled around picnic tables under the string lights. They cheered and praised and beamed at me, launching me forward in confidence and ambition.

Quarantine found me settled here in Rincon, Puerto Rico, in a weird time of isolation and stillness. Stillness is weird anyways for someone accustomed to traveling and meeting friends in hostels and busses and sailboats. I treated my quiet months as a retreat, fixing my home and finally giving attention to my muses, who had waited my whole life for this pandemic. I finished some songs and recorded some amateur youtube videos, encouraged by my twenty or so family fans.

And then one day, out of the lonely silence of the pandemic, one new/old friend reached out to hang out. A musician.

“Come jam!” he said.

Which is how I found myself joining a band practice, learning a set of crowd-pleasing covers, and jumping in for a few restaurant gigs when the world slowly started to creak open. My beginner butterflies stopped fluttering, and I learned how to sit and sing into the microphone to a crowd of uninterested diners. I saw what is was to make your money as a musician, playing a few gigs a week, setting up equipment, singing the same songs. I enjoyed my time, but I slowly lost interest. I saw no end goal. I returned to writing my own songs.

And then I met John, surfing of course, and through friends. His instagram profile showed a music studio, and intrigued, I reached out.

“Yes, I’m a retired recording engineer,” he replied, “I built a home studio here in Rincon when I moved from New Jersey. I mostly work on passion projects now.”

I tried to contain my excitement. What if…what if I recorded some songs? Professionally?

I nervously posed the question. He said to send some demos.

Demos? Like…voice memos? Videos? I didn’t have the first idea what a demo was or how to make one. But I sent over a few of my youtube videos. And from those he chose my oldest song, Hurricane Hole, the song for my mother. He said he really liked it, and really like my voice, and he would be willing to give me a discount, $250 for the whole song. And that’s when I learned how much professional recording actually costs. At least $50 an hour, which doesn’t include any production or added elements. With the time we spent in the studio, that song would have cost well over $1500.

Hurricane Hole came out last year. I learned a lot, and I’m still learning. That should be another blog post, everything I’m learning as a beginner songwriter, musician, recording artist.

Now I have another song, “The Wheel”, set to release December 8. This song was a bit harder. Vocals I wrote that I couldn’t actually sing, tempo issues to figure out. I had a meltdown in the studio and cried. No blood, but tears for sure. But it came out good, we think. So good I paid him for his work (still not near full price). So good I paid a professional photo shoot for cover art. So good I’m going to make a fool of myself promoting it on TikTok!

So good I’m going to beg you here to help get the word out.

First, check out my first song, Hurricane Hole. If you like what you hear, follow, save, and even share with a few friends who might like it. Then, stay tuned for “The Wheel”, coming out in a couple weeks!

Thank you in advance!