New Single “Desert Dreams” ~ Out Now!
Today, April 19, 2024, my new single, “Desert Dreams” is live on all the streaming platforms; regardless of where you stream your music online, keep in mind it’s always extra supportive to visit Bandcamp and purchase from there, as that $ (after Bandcamp’s cut) goes directly to the artist in a timely fashion.😇
“I feel beyond lucky and grateful that Eric, who produced the track with such magic (and added layers of enigmatic instrumentation as well), and Jason Goforth, my longtime musical cohort who played the beautiful pedal steel and ambient sound layers, were able to truly bring this song alive musically. I’m also grateful that Clint Mullican (you may know him from Watchouse) was able to hold it all down in his masterful way on the upright bass.
What is Desert Dreams about? On the one hand I could talk about cultural desolation -- the spiritual bankruptcy -- that we the living have inherited; you can see it hanging over this country like an endless dark cloud. It’s there amid the ever-expanding sprawl of interstate exits, big box stores, fast food joints, gas stations, Dollar Generals, and now the ominous 5G towers sprouting up literally everywhere… And how, to me, there are places in the American West especially where all at once past-present-future seems laid bare.
Alongside the grandeur and sheer beauty of these regions there’s a ghostliness, an absence, that hangs in the air.
On the other hand, “Desert Dreams”, like all of my songs, came from a feeling. It IS a feeling — a feeling too complex and vast to sum up with any kind of prose. It is one expression of the unnamed longing that is always right there, just under the surface of daily life.” —- from my most recent newsletter. For the timeliest news and a more personal account of my music’s inspiration and provenance subscribe to my mailing list in the box on this page.
Thanks for visiting!
JJN
New Campfire Video + Spring News
On the heels of returning from another Texas journey, I’m excited to share a little bit of news AND a live campfire video, shot by Jesse Weeden of One Trick Pony Media and The Last Troubadours. It’s my version of the country classic “She’s in Love with a Rodeo Man”, a song that features a West Texas waitress and a rodeo star who has seen better days. I used to hear my cousin Jake sing it around campfires and always loved it, even as a young girl. I felt like I was watching a scene from a movie.
For me, that “scene” has always evoked mixed emotions — one of the hallmarks of a good country song.
Watch the video here
ALSO, we’ll be releasing a new single, “Desert Dreams”, on April 19th! I’ll definitely be writing to remind you and fill you in on the details when that comes around. And most exciting of all, it looks like we’ll be able to release the full album, Not Lost, by early July. Stay tuned to my social media pages for updates, and if you haven’t subscribed to my newsletter yet, you can sign up in the box on this page.
Happy Spring!
JJN
GREAT MYSTERY New Video + Musings on Shared Consciousness
December 10, 2023
“The diversity of the sounds of everything in Nature just being themselves is the bloodstream of God.” ~ Martin Prechtel
It’s early December somehow and as we spiral and spin to the sacred center of the year, I’m sharing a ‘field recording’ video of a song I wrote last summer, called “Great Mystery”.
We filmed in early August, with much help from the unruly yet uncannily musical cicadas. It was a different world then, not just a different season. Late stage Tennessee summer is the jungle phase — so many tiny creatures passing through, their unique sounds landing in the watery air all night and day. I think filmmaker/songcatcher Jesse Weeden captured the spirit of the moment perfectly.
As for the song itself…this is a love song. Love for the self, on such an unpredictable journey through life; love for soul mate — whom you hopefully meet along that journey — and love for all of creation: love for the Divine, acknowledging that the Divine shows up everywhere in the natural world.
It also has to do with renewal. Finding that the root that grounds you is the star that guides you, and letting that truth revive hope, strength, dreams…regardless of society’s opinions or imposed limitations.
I did not set out to write a song about the Great Mystery. Nor did I set out to sing the refrain “something to believe in”. But sometimes a song rather writes itself.
If someone were to ask me just what the Great Mystery is, well, I would have a hard time explaining in concrete terms. The late Jamie Sams, author and Holy Person of the Cherokee and Seneca tribes, in her book The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers explains:
“In Tribal Traditions we do not consider Grandfather Sun a deity. We do not worship trees or rocks. We do however see the Eternal Flame of Love that the Great Mystery placed in all of Creation and we honor that spiritual essence…There is only one Original Source and we call that Creative Source, the Great Mystery.”
In another of my favorite books, a poetry anthology called News of the Universe, Robert Bly speaks of “twofold consciousness”; he is referring to a shared consciousness between humans and everything else alive in the universe. He claims:
“There is a poverty that comes when human beings claim all consciousness for themselves.”
In the book, published by the Sierra Club in 1980, he shares commentary on a diverse collection of poems, some of which are marked by the aforementioned poverty, others reveal at least a “transparency”, where the human psyche becomes open, allowing reverence for the Great Mystery, perhaps; at the very least, the poet’s life might be in the poem, but it is not the only subject matter, it is does not take up all available space.
In the final section of News of the Universe, Bly highlights a few poems that he says, “feel ‘whole’, ‘healed’, from widely separated cultures, just to see what our poetry may look like in a few hundred years.” (I appreciate his optimism!)
He opens that section, “Part Six: Leaving the House” with an Ojibway verse (adapted by Bly from Frances Densmore’s translation) :
Sometimes I go about pitying myself
And all the time
I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
Someday I will write more about what Bly calls “night-intelligence”, and about the “call one form of consciousness makes to another, a call either answered or not.”
For now I leave you with the video and song itself. I hope you enjoy.
*Also ~ Last month I made two albums available in CD form on my Bandcamp site: Angels, Demons, Red-Tail Hawks and Depending on the Light, so now there is a place to order CDs if you want one. 💫
As always, thank you for reading and listening. And may you all feel blessed beyond measure this season! ✨
JJN
October 24, 2023
Light runs through the body
Autumn comes with the twilight, And boats grow rare on the river. Flickering waters and fading mountains Always touch the heart of man. I never grow tired of singing of their boundless beauty.
From the poem “Autumn”, by Li Ch’ing Chao A.D. 1081-1143
Greetings from between eclipses, from between the rivers, mountain and valley, from all manner of in betweens…truly in the thick of autumn now, a season of in between, and the season of Metal (no, not the music genre) according to Classical Chinese Medicine. Since I’ve been getting regular acupuncture treatments from a Classical Chinese Medicine practitioner I’ve been learning a little about this ancient Eastern tradition and cosmology — including the five elements of Wood, Fire, Water, Earth and Metal. These are the elements found in the natural world around us and they are found inside each of us as well. It seems Metal is perhaps the most difficult for a modern, Western mind to embrace. It is the element of our season of fall because it has to do with letting go, with dusk, with withering and decay, with sorrow…
For better or worse, these are concepts and emotions I have never shied away from and they happen to be abundant in my catalogue. As I perch here on the cusp of releasing a new full-length album (hopefully early 2024) and after making recordings and releasing them for nearly three decades — another in between — it’s hard not to look back on what I would call my body of work.
In doing so I was moved to make a playlist, on the great monster of Spotify since they make it so ridiculously easy, that goes back to 2007. It contains tracks from Luminous, Birdlight, Angels Demons Red Tail Hawks, Depending on the Light, and my two newest singles.
As I compiled the playlist it didn’t take long to notice the running themes of light and flight — and letting go as well. Maybe it is well suited to the season. I think the “deepest cut” of all is the last track; it’s called “Beautiful” and is from Luminous. It has more of a linear story than most of my songs and a cinematic vibe— a young woman longs for adventure and to break out of the confinement she feels:
All dolled up, little girl is grown up now
Feeling tough, longing for that deeper cut —
making less than wise choices in the process:
Past the bones in the ditch, sun-bleached, half hidden now
by the leaves fresh from falling —
On to the fence laying down
by the path, half overgrown
that leads to the quarry —-
She was feeling good
until something in the reflection
in the glass
made her wonder:
Am I beautiful?
Go to the playlist here:
Finally, the upcoming album is coming along in the last mixing stages, and we are planting seeds for a western tour this spring, plus more live dates in Tennessee and beyond. Remember too that my trio, with Eric Davis and Jason Goforth, is available to play for private events, and I’m open to solo concerts as well. (Link to contact form below.) One of my all time favorites was performing solo at a women’s retreat in New Mexico. As we gathered in one room I needed no amplification and I felt my songs/vision deeply received. Maybe more than ever, now is the time to create the experiences we want, outside of the proverbial box.
As always, thank you for reading ~ and take good care out there!
🧡
JJN