February Newsletter: An early glimpse of "Sparkbird"

Hello! Happy February!

I was so caught up in the release of Look at the Harlequins! (Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play) that I forgot to send out a new song last month! To make up for it, I'm sending a big one — the demo for the title song on my next full-length album, Sparkbird. I've been busy orchestrating ten songs for it, and I'm hoping it will be ready later this year.

While this song doesn't mention any birds by name, it's very much a tribute to birding and the joy that the pursuit of birds has brought to my life.

A "sparkbird" is the bird that gets you obsessed with birds. For me, that's the Western Tanager. Actually, I have a picture of the Western Tanager who sparked my passion and ultimately inspired this song! There he is.

This is the "incredible, bright yellow bird with an orange head and black wings" I mentioned to Kelsey Greco when she interviewed me for this Vortex Magazine article.

As exciting as the discovery of this Western Tanager was, way back in 2011, I didn’t really start birding right then. But more and more, birds became tied up in my self-care and mindfulness practices. There were individual birds I looked for on my daily bike rides — a hummingbird who was always perched at the top of a certain tree, a pheasant who was always on top of a certain pile of bark chips.

I was appreciating birds but kind of tiptoeing around them. For some reason, I had this idea that if I dared to go out with a pair of binoculars, some Real Birders would call me out and tell me to get off their turf. Eventually I met a Real Birder — my friend Rebecca Waterman, who contributed backing vocals to "Grey & Green" — and I asked her very sheepishly if she thought it’d be okay if I looked at birds even though I didn’t know anything about birding. She told me to just do it, and that she didn’t know a ton either but you just learn as you go.

It makes me wonder — how often do we wait for permission to do something that could make us happier?

If watching birds happens to be something you're interested in but feel unqualified to do, let me be the one to say: you have permission! Or maybe you want to learn to play an instrument, or to speak another language, or do calligraphy, or write a poem, or make something out of clay. You have permission to do those things, too! You'll probably be terrible at it at first, but being terrible at something is the first step towards being good at something.

On the subject of birds — this week I'm going to the Winter Wings Festival in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to do research for the young adult novel I'm writing (which, if you haven't guessed, is bird-related). If you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you'll be seeing some glimpses of that trip, which promises to be very cold and snowy.  ❄️⛄️

Oh — also, this demo is of course a work in progress! In the end, it'll have real instruments, and definitely some percussion. 😊

PS If you're interested in having me play a house show sometime this year — anywhere in the world — let me know! Here's my helpful guide to hosting a living room concert.