we walked The Girl to kindergarten. it was spring and sunny and warm. dandelions were everywhere. on the way home, The Boy dropped my hand to toddler-zigzag around a yard where dandelions > grass by far (kind of like ours.) he bent down and picked yellow flower upon yellow flower. until he came running back to me. he held up his sweaty-dirty-little-boy fist, full of bright yellow and green dandelions and said, “woses for momma.”
heidi and i performed together for years at innumerable oncology and cancer survivor events. heidi is a breast cancer survivor and speaker and we wove her spoken words and my songs or instrumental music into performances of celebration, of gratitude, of honoring…performances we cherished together.
heidi would speak of a lazy river she had been in. how, without doing anything, you just become part of the river…tubing on a slow river is like that. no real thought, just meandering in the flow. like life, it’s easier when you don’t fight the currents.
there is something, for me, about gathering riverstones. we gave them to everyone at our wedding – to mark that each person is part of the river of our life. these beautiful riverstones – the way water created a smoothness on rock…years of the flow has worn down the rough edges, made a beautiful patina. i’m hoping, maybe, i’ll be just like that.
on our work table in our sunroom we have three wedding invitations. each one is beautiful, sent to us by the children of friends or relatives. it is that time, when the next generation is marrying. we are excited for each couple and celebrate with them, whether or not we can be at the event with them.
when we were choosing a piece of music for this ks friday, we decided to honor these celebrations of love-found with the song AS SURE AS THE SUN. (scroll down to listen) it is our hope that in each of these couples they are, “in for the long run, forever…safe to be who (they) are” and that, in that universe mystery of ultimately finding each other, they are loved “as sure as the sun.”
one of the first things i told david when we spoke was that “i don’t do nutshells.” he had asked me a question and framed it with, “in a nutshell….?” i laughed. it is not in my dna to do nutshells. none of my family is good at nutshells. my big brother always told a long long story, filled with minute details. he was brilliant and it was always truly fascinating to listen to him. my poppo was the same way, when you got him started. my sweet momma, well, she was a practiced tangent-story-queen. and my sister? suffice it to say she is much like me in story-telling. 😉
i love a good story. i WANT to hear the details. i WANT to see ALL the pictures, not just a few. i WANT to know what-happened-next. it’s the same way i will tell a story, winding all the peripheral stuff right into the very crux of the point, as if it all mattered and carried the same weight, which, of course, isn’t always true. there have been people in my life who have said, “get to the point!” (which i have to say is not a fun thing to be told; it deflates the storyballoon inside one’s heart and makes you lose track of what it was you were trying to say in the first place.)
i blame growing up on long island as well as dna. people tawwwwwk there. they will go on and on. and interrupt each other. and go on and on. it’s great fun following a conversation that way – you are never bored. perhaps a little blurry on the story-point-edges, but never bored.
it’s a long story is the first piece on the album this part of the journey. it starts off with a lift and has a cello line i wish i had the ability to perform. the amazingly “fine” ken produced an album for me that has withstood time. originally recorded in 1998 on a CFIIIS, this is still my best-selling original instrumental album. we were in the studio for long hours, sometimes as long as 23 hours at a time. but we were moved by our studio musicians and their performances on each track and it was easy to summon the energy for this emotional album.
i just updated my “about” page on this blogsite. i wrote the words “15 albums and a bunch of singles and i’m still wondering what i’m doing in this industry.” truer words were never spoken. our current world, in all its fantastic technology, has changed everything for recording artists everywhere. music is not hard to create. sales are. i have ranted many a time (and even on this blogsite) about this very thing – vastly minimized earnings with the challenge of streaming and burning and grabbing. but i am a musician. and, if you are an artist of any sort, you know that you are what you are and that’s the story.
our studio melange (paintings, music, cartoons, books, children’s books, plays) introduces friday as ks kerri sherwood friday…an opportunity to say a few words about a song or piece of music, maybe acquaint you with an album or a track you haven’t yet heard. something that might resonate with you. something i recorded in a rainy auditorium 23 years ago (a few people will understand that…carol and the-amazingly-“fine”-ken included.) something i flew to nashville to record. something i recorded after twenty-three hours in the studio. something i recorded at yamaha artist services in nyc. something i recorded five days before my wedding. or maybe something new.
so – in keeping with valentine’s day (and every day) – not to be all geeky-mushy and everything, when IS the last time you slow danced? this song, SLOW DANCE, when it was released as a single from the album AS SURE AS THE SUN climbed a secondary adult contemporary radio chart up to #13.
for a recording artist, there is nothing like hearing your song on the radio. except for maybe slow dancing with the love of your life. yup. no comparison.
slow dance. the song. it seems to speak to people. and THAT is my work. what more can i ask for?
The piano at Northwestern University was a Steinway D…a beautiful old 9 foot instrument, with depths and trebles on which hundreds of artists had performed. The case had seen better days; the bench had raw splintering wood in a few spots, but the instrument itself was rising to the occasion as, i suspect, it always had. Its quiet resonance, its deep voice made it worthy of grand stages. I was exhilarated with the opportunity to record on this piano…I felt a synergy with it. And I was so ready. The energy around a first album is unparalleled. In short, you really have no idea how much you are going to feel..the anticipation, the fear, the excitement, the self-consciousness, the confidence, the pressure of playing, the joy of playing, the retrospective re-hashing of everything you put down on tape, the letting-go of the re-hashing of everything you put down on tape…
We had the foresight to hire an excellent piano technician to be present during the whole process in Evanston. This instrument had some personality – a little curmudgeonly to say the least. Zingers and thudding hammers and some intonation idiosyncrasies were the challenges of the moments there, but our tech was on top of it all. The result, after all those long hours, was a recording of a piano with great history, demonstrating its strengths and sneaking in a few weaknesses. (Hmm….not unlike ourselves, eh?)
I recorded two more albums on Steinway D’s…both in Milwaukee in a studio that didn’t have an air conditioner leaking into the space (although I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything!) The studio was climate-controlled and quiet and I had no idea if it was day or night as we spent long long hours recording in a space with no windows. Once again I discovered a piano with a few quirks; once again we had our skilled technician with us.
The piano gods of the day were people like George Winston and Jim Brickman, John Tesh and Yanni, Suzanne Ciani and David Lanz. With the exception of George, all of these artists were Yamaha artists. (Many others (who are singer-songwriters as well as pianists) join their ranks: Elton John, Sarah McLachlan, Phil Vassar, Norah Jones, Barry Manilow… ) Many of them recorded on CFIII’s, which is Yamaha’s 9 foot grand, or the C7, Yamaha’s 7’6″ grand, both fantastic instruments.
And by that time I was really honored to be on this same exclusive Yamaha Artist roster. There are a mere 88 contemporary piano recording artists on this roster. I am truly proud of this association; I have had wonderful relationships with the pianos and with some remarkable people. There have been unexpected and warm gifts of friendship. There have been pianos I have fallen in love with. My Yamaha fills my writing studio; it fills me with inspiration…
I have to say that I haven’t encountered a grumpy Yamaha…they are reliable in the studio (and on stage) and have a personality so worthy of this emotional, evocative style of music. Yes, the tech was around, but not 24/7 anymore and the piano responded with the consistency of a workhorse. Each piano that has been transported in for me, each piano that has been housed in a venue or recording studio, that big grand in my own writing studio…these are instruments I am aligned with….that perseverance, that dependability, that…sisu! Yes…these pianos have sisu! A fortitude that is authentic and not high-maintenance, true to its art and not prissy. And ohmygosh, with such a richness…
My sweet sixteen(th) album will, of course, be recorded on a Yamaha. It will be a compilation of songs with an organic layer cake of piano, voice, cello, consonant-timbred stringed instruments, and the kind of hand percussion that you can feel keeping beat inside your body. I feel great anticipation as I write for this album. And fear, and excitement. And self-consciousness and confidence. And pressure and joy. And I will hash and re-hash and re-hash again. But, along the way now, arriving here, I have learned the art of letting go…the art of setting free Art..the moment you say to yourself, “It’s enough. It’s time.”
19 years ago today it was snowing. this morning i look out the sunroom window at golden leaves on the ground, a grey sky, rain falling. not as stunning as snow falling, but still part of the plan…a season of preparation, of going fallow in the overcast to come back stronger in the sun…
19 years ago today it was frenetic…the official release of my first original album with a big concert to celebrate it. family and friends had flown or driven in to be here and i was balancing my time between kirsten (who was 5), craig (who was 2), practicing and visiting and getting all the details in place…
19 years ago today ‘released from the heart’ entered the world…funny how you can be nervous and sure at the same time. this heart-project – so raw-ly (is that a word?) me…scary to put ‘out there’ and yet i was so ready.
19 years ago today i played the piece ‘galena’ on stage to start the release concert..originally written, spur of the moment, in galena, illinois where three of my friends and i were mini-vacationing. we had some amazing mystical moments during that trip, things you simply can’t explain. you know what i mean; those things that are happenstance, but aren’t happenstance. we sat around a table at a bistro, enjoying wine, laughing, talking, listening to a piano player who was accompanying various servers as they sang broadway tunes. my friends, carol, jo, patti, volunteered me to play the piano. i wasn’t about to duplicate the broadway theme, so i noodled around and wrote a piece on the spot (later to be called ‘galena’.) a family dining there insisted on buying the recording of this piece, which didn’t exist. one of the members of the family persisted and tracked me down in wisconsin, asking me to please record this piece that had meant so much to their celebration that evening. motivation. an impetus. it pushed my buttons and i started exploring the options.
that’s where the most amazing producer comes into the picture. our first recording encounter, which was also our first meeting, was not without challenge. my playing was measured, unemotional. ken’s suggestion was to get someone else to play the music i had written. i’ll never forget that. i was appalled. so we re-entered the project, building a remote studio in one of the concert venues at northwestern university. the day we started our recording there was blistering hot and the air conditioner units on the roof began to leak into the auditorium. we laid comforters on the chairs and could still hear the persistent drip, drip, drip. so we waited. two more dates there and at least twenty-six hours of playing and re-playing and re-playing and we had completed the fifteen pieces on the album. a zillion details remained: editing, mastering, graphic design, getting a UPC, cd (and cassette) replication choices, copyrighting my music, seeking distribution channels……
thank you to all of you who, 19 years ago, were a part of this beginning for me. and thank you to all of you who have been on the journey with me along the way. your prodding, your enthusiasm, your quiet help, your encouragement, your making-me-think, your life wake-ups have all been exactly what i needed. granted, i, like anyone, would have loved an easier journey, but then it wouldn’t have been this very journey. and so i trust the design of it all and try to learn each of the lessons.
and so 19 years ago today i released that first of what is now 15 albums and a few singles. and today? today i sat and listened to every track of ‘released from the heart.’ i am on the way to recording a new album…a new vocal album. it’s been 12 years since ‘as sure as the sun’ was released and it’s time. here’s the thing, though. as i think about this new album, as i come out of a long fallow, i wonder. i’m not 36 anymore. i’m 55 and by the time this album is done i will be 56. and i want to be relevant.
so today, 19 years later, i’ve decided to share the stories, the ones behind the pieces i composed. in concert it is natural for me to do that; people have asked me if i would record albums with the stories as well. i personally can’t imagine listening to me speak every time i heard the music – you know that thing about hearing your own speaking voice on tape – seems blahblahblahblah-ish. but i will write the stories…and, in this new day, share them in a new way. and in the writing-back and writing-forward, i’m hoping for clear relevance. the other night john the drummer said, “it’s not your job to determine relevance. it’s your job to put your work out there.” as i listen to this album and watch my little candle flicker next to me, i’m beginning to suspect that relevance is already there. for each of us.
one of the first things i told david when we spoke was that “i don’t do nutshells.” he had asked me a question and framed it with, “in a nutshell….?” i laughed. it is not in my 
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