I Know I Can Love More

I have made twelve records.

CLEO SEPTEMBER is my lucky 13.

And funny, but it feels like the first one.

For I have learned big lessons.

There are many Artists out in the world, singing, shredding, bleeding on the floor with intensity, or shaking it with easy sexiness, quietly cooing, pulling you in.

The wisdom is to embrace it all. See and hear and take in as much as you can. Let it wash into you. Absorb.

I spent time inside the music industry and for me, that time was ruinous.I was paid advances I have yet to recoup, and whilst under contract, I felt paranoid. Competitive. Fearful. Doubtful. On a time line. Every other female artist , I thought, was probably better than I was. And every guy was going to get further than I could. Never did it occur that we were all part of the same batch.

My feeling that I was the odd duck kept me away from going to see other people perform, championing them, caring about them. I judged by tribe, and found no one genre I could rest easy inside.

The Covid pandemic created more excuses to isolate. I am grateful for the space and time to have made my own album, enlisting a couple of drummers for a couple of the songs, but pretty much doing everything. I liked having the control, and making something that I really liked the sound of.

Still, I learned when I met Fernando (Perdomo) I learned to trust, and to slow down, and let someone else have ideas. This album is the first time I have ever fully collaborated, and it opened my heart. I started to listen to other people. I found James Houlahan. James Fritz Booth. Michaela B. Jordan. Will Hawkins. After I had fallen in love with Fernando's solo projects.

This week I discovered Chris Price.

I found out that I can listen more than once and get something new each time. I found out that I will not fall apart if I love someone else's music, go to see them, champion them.

I discovered Nate Smith and am about to jump into rehearsing as part of his band Saint Pacific. It is so thrilling to be a part of something. This is making music. Listening and feeling a sense of belonging and merging.

It's weird. Making music is not about showing. It is about disappearing into the sound and taking your listeners with you. You are all volunteering to go someplace.

It is not an audition. Making music is making a one-time experience. It's a drug trip. It's intimacy. It's a surprise.

But it is not alone.

And this is what I heartfully learned. I can love more.

My concert at The Hotel Cafe is my chance to show up and open the door to a love adventure.

With you. With a band. With everyone gathered.

I'll be ready. Though I don't have to know the destination. We will arrive.