noted!

I'm feeling very encouraged and even spoiled these days by the women of the NOTED! project. Let me explain...

The backstory is that about four years ago, a Huron County woman named Kimberly Payne was impressed with the talent of local women in the arts and started dreaming about how to support the songstresses of Huron County -- both those already performing publicly and those only singing in their showers. (My words, not hers.) Recent surveys of local high school students are revealing that particularly young women drawn to the arts generally feel they need to leave Huron County to purse their love for the arts, and I think this fueled Kim further. So it took a few years, but eventually a generous committee came together (including some folks from the Huron Tourism Association), a compilation recording was planned, funds were raised, a producer was hired (an extremely generous and encouraging woman named Louise Fagan), and invitations were made via local newspapers for demos to be sent in. So much work behind the scenes... I'm sure I know only the tip of the iceburg!

So last weekend, the 17 Huron women chosen for this project came together for the weekend at Brentwood on the Beach in St Joseph's. And what a weekend it was. It's taken me most of the week to reflect on all that was given to us over the course of a weekend before I could write about it.

It was explained to us at the outset that the project had been called "Noted!" because of the musical reference but also because we ourselves had been taken note of, and that we ought to feel special. So on that note (I'll let you decide if thay pun was intended) the weekend commenced. And that sense of 'specialness' pervaded everything that followed.

The workshops planned for us were rich, and included a great songwriting workshop with Donna Creighton, some extremely helpful vocal coaching by Jennifer Fagan, the role of the producer and the recording engineer, and tips on what to expect in the studio, self-marketing, and ideas for success in the music industry. We even had an evening with the lovely Emm Gryner, a recording artist who has chosen to remain a small town girl in Ontario and make her way as an independent artist. (Would you believe that when Bono was asked what songs he wishes he had written in the last 20 years, he named a handful of songs that included "Almighty Love" by Emm Gryner? Now that's a good day in the music business.)

What struck me from these workshops is that artists tend to learn many of the things offered to us in bits and pieces over a period of years. Where else can you go to be offered all of this over the course of one weekend... not to mention, a weekend so freely given to us?

From the setting we were in to the special guests that invested in us to the giftedness, the interest and the encouragement of the other women and the committee, there was an extreme sense of generosity about the whole experience. And it didn't end there.

That generous spirit has carried into the recording sessions where over the two weeks following the retreat, each of us have been scheduled for a few hours in the studio to record our own track for the compilation CD. I had my session at the Music Room in Arkona this past week. And though I'd worked our recording engineer before -- the wonderfully capable and steady Glen Teeple -- it was a very fresh and rich experience for me having Louise as our guide (she has a great ear and a knack for getting the best out of people) and also the treat of having other professional musicians to record with live. My past recordings have all used layering (musicians are recorded separately and each track builds on the next) but this time, I had the gifts of a talented percussionist, string bass player (yummy sound!) and pianist. That was also new for me -- I've always played the keys for myself, but having someone else to focus solely on the piano part I'd written gave me the chance to just focus on the vocals. A friend recently described playing the piano and singing on par with patting your head and rubbing your tummy... I can do it, but sometimes I think I do them better separately.

Now the track we recorded, "Legacy of Love", has a story all its own. When I awoke in the middle of the night with the idea and the beginnings of a melody for this song last fall, I got out of bed and worked on it. (I've learned that those ideas are usually gone by morning, and it's now or never if I don't want to lose it.) Now I'm very thankful I dragged myself out of bed. On the Friday night of the workshop, Louise revealed that we would all be singing together on the chorus of the song I'd written -- exactly what I'd envisioned when I wrote it. And it gets better.

The song is about the legacy we leave as women -- how we've been left a legacy by those who have gone before us, and how we make choices in our lives that leave a legacy of our own for those who come after us. At risk of making this blog my longest ever, here are the lyrics...

Legacy of Love
Words and music by Monica Joy

She heard of a life of promise over the sea
She said goodbye to all she knew so her children would be free
Free to choose, free to follow any dream
That’s the trail she blazed for me

She was so gifted, there was so much she could have done
She chose instead to make everyone else number one
She sacrificed, she did without, she was compelled
She choose to define success as loving well

Now we join our voices together
Echoing those who’ve gone before
We’re mothers, we’re sisters, we’re daughters
Who will carry on a legacy of love

She got the news on a sunny summer day
She’d have to fight for her life, yet she found a way
To live every day to the fullest she could
Not knowing if the winter’s cold would take her breath away

Now we join our voices together
Echoing those who’ve gone before
We’re mothers, we’re sisters, we’re daughters
Who will carry on a legacy of love

Come join our song
Come join our song
Let’s walk along side by side on this winding road

And let’s join our voices together
Echoing those who’ve gone before
We’re mothers, we’re sisters, we’re daughters
Who will carry on a legacy of love
We will carry on this legacy of love

When I penned this, I knew the first verse was about my Grandma who emigrated from Holland for the betterment of her children (and her children's children -- me!). But I couldn't have explained to you at the time which women in particular the other verses had been written about. They were simply stories I felt compelled to tell. But on the last day of the weekend, it came clear that God already knew who these verses were about, and didn't reveal it to me until months after I'd written it.

As we sat around the lunch table on Sunday listening to the track (in preparation for our group session in February), one of the women broke into tears saying, "That second verse is about me." Another one of the women (my dear friend Sarah) had dropped everything and left that morning when her mother -- who found out last summer her cancer was terminal -- took a turn for the worse. Tragically, she passed away before Sarah reached the hospital. It didn't strike me until lunchtime that the third verse was actually about her mother. And then I had tears in my eyes as well. At the visitation on Tuesday, I gave Sarah a copy of the lyrics and she explained that I felt this verse had been a gift given in memory of her mother, even before her passing. I actually recorded it at the same time as the funeral. The timing seemed too divine to be a coincidence.

So I can't get away from the word "generous" to sum up the whole experience. The vision, the invitation, the weekend away, the workshops, the words of affirmation, the late night jam sessions, the networking among the women and others in the music industry, the recording, the gift of the song itself and the gift of having the women sing together on it -- all are generous gifts into what I feel is 'an overflowing cup'.

Hopefully many of you will be able to join us for the CD launch on May 8 at the South Huron Rec Centre in Exeter. I'll be 10 days from due with this baby -- hang in there baby! I'm hoping they let me sing last, so I can make a joke about how the show's not over until the fat lady sings.If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. And thanks also to all those who continue to show an ongoing interest in my music, and a special thank you to those of you who clipped the Noted! invitation out of the newspaper and passed it on with your words of encouragement.And for those of you who have complained that my 'mommy and musician' blog was a little short on the musician side of things, I think this post counts for double and then some. :)