Dear friends,
How are your hearts??
I've had this draft letter sat here since the start of February, and it has been re-written and not finished several times now. All that to say, I've been thinking of you.
Lots.
Today, I do have good news! As I'm writing this letter, the final master for Four Places is uploading to the distributor, as ready as it will ever be, and will be available for you guys 4/4! If the digital robots have not yet got it going on Spotify and all the other places, I'll be posting it on my website with a link for you all.
I know most of you have enjoyed hearing this song played live, so now you'll have a copy to take with you, whichever place your heart calls home.
Though I wrote it some years ago, I'll have not seen my family, or been home to Oregon in two years, so definitely feeling this song at the moment.
A few notes about the track:
Last August, I submitted an unmastered Four Places into the 2020 UK Songwriting Competition. The song achieved a Finalist position in the Singer-songwriter category, which is the only category where vocals are judged alongside the song craft. Less than 2% of entrants make it to Finalist, out of nearly 10,000 entries from 84 countries. Winners and finalists are listed at https://www.songwritingcontest.co.uk/2020.html
in case you need to see for yourself to believe it. Maybe I do.
Mark Winterburn has done an amazing job co-producing and mixing Four Places last summer in spite of my sub-par home recordings and has added a tasteful atmospheric ambient guitar "fabric" for the acoustic instruments to weave into. Mark is a fantastic producer to work with and puts up with me so very well.
After years of musically flying solo, it is so motivating to have a partner in crime again. We are finishing up a few more tracks, which sound WAY different from Four Places, and chugging along toward an album!
My friend Tully MacKay-Tisbert, a singer-songwriter in Southern California, picked up some new studio kit recently and mastered Four Places. We used to play at the same coffee shop, Kope Kope, in Hilo, Hawaii in the mid-2000's. He is an accomplished singer-songwriter with many album releases, yet so humble and an encouragement to my soul.
The cover art for this release was created by my friend (and art teacher) Anita van Zyl. She had asked me what I had in mind for design, and I said I'd tell her after she had time to think and sketch. It turned out that we had each individually come up with the idea of using an anatomy-style black and white heart sketch for the basis of the design! It grew from there and even put down roots.
What a blessing to be able to involve such talented souls in this.
More songs are on the way; I know it to be true this time. But I *really* must wait for an album length to release again, I really must. Or at least an EP.
Four Places will be available on my website, aerynn.com, or streaming through all the usual places. More than four. If you prefer to stream tracks rather than buy downloads that take up digital space (or CDs that take up real space!), but still want a way to support artists/writers directly, Spotify now offers a link at the top of the Artist Spotify profile for Paypal contributions. The link for mine is https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/aerynnmusic, which will go toward getting more music produced, mixed, and into your ears.
I hope the wait is worth it, my friends. There is so much more in the works!!
With thanks to the most high for the gift of song,
—Aerynn