I have been here and there, mostly here, in Chicago, eating all the peaches and corn until they give way to grapes and apples. I also have three show announcements, two trio (with Quin Kirchner and Victoria Park) and one solo show:

9/11: Madison, WI: WSUM’s Snake on the Lake Festival, with Why Bonnie & Baileyrp at UW Madison’s Memorial Union Terrace. 7 pm. Free.

9/13: Chicago, IL at Ravenswood ArtWalk with Rami Gabriel and Joel Patterson Trio. 2:30 pm. Free.

9/24: Chicago, IL at Judson and Moore, supporting Lawrence Rothman. Did you know they’ve probably mixed and or produced on a bunch of records you love? I’m opening solo, tickets are here.

lastly, a poem

(I wrote this one)

How will I find you when the war is over?

How will I know the ringing in my ears has stopped

being normal?

Ushering in solitude, I do not trust it,

my glance is suspicious, I am ashamed. Withholding from its desperate reaching arms the last thing I have, my love. Ruined by the prospect of another war. How will I ever commit to peace when this shawl of resentment hangs heavy on me?

How will I ever call a name

again without the fear it goes unanswered, the solitude tilling the soil for its grave. How will a grave ever see me

like you saw me? Am I untruthful

in my present form? Is there another

place I can go where the ground is firm, where there are no bodies

or secrets underfoot?

Hell warms

the tomb,

but it is here.

I pass it every day

on my way

to work, snaking the street

thick with diversions.

I shrug my coat off

on approach,

a drug could not contain my reaction. There are scorch marks

on my hand, my face

until next time,

HG

The Lightning! An idea, a feeling, even if you don’t know how to articulate it yet. Embracing all possibilities, feeling them channel through you. When I was younger, The Lightning wasn’t something I felt like I was purposefully employing. It just happened sometimes, and when it did it felt mysterious and, well… electric. I played a strange harmonic on my saxophone on accident. I sang unfinished lyrics to an empty room. I drew something I didn’t even realize was living in the back of my mind until it hurtled out.

Now, I find ways to try and see The Lightning, because I realized it’s always around. Piece of trash on the street? A single line of poetry? A candid photo? A flock of birds squabbling over who gets to live in the “good” tree? I have seen The Lightning in these things. Sometimes it’s a spark that takes a while to become a storm; takes weeks, months, years. It’s hard to be patient, but I try my best to keep conditions favorable for a storm. I take little pieces of The Lightning and write them down, hide them away. Then one day I might line them all up, and the storm returns: The Lightning meets the ground, and I catch it.

upcoming shows

Friday, June 26 - Chicago I am playing a solo set at the Empty Bottle supporting Lydia Cash’s record release! Contrary to playing more new stuff, I will be playing a lot of old stuff from Gruñona, just because I feel like it! Tickets are here.

Thursday, July 16 - Kalamazoo I am playing a solo set at Glow Hall opening for some musicians I admire very much: Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart. They released a great record recently called BODY SOUND. Stoked to do a little road trip for this one! Tickets are here.

studio time

I continue to be at Narwhal with Brian Deck; last week Katie Ernst (one half of the truly incredible Edith Judith) came in to play some upright bass on a few songs, and I had Quin Kirchner and Victoria Park back in trio mode with me. Things are sounding cool and it’s been very fun! Perhaps I will have something for you to hear later this year…

recent amusements

Rosalía’s show at United Center. I saw her at Aragon Ballroom the last time she played Chicago in… 2022? My seats were worse but that didn’t diminish from how stunning the show was (especially the orchestra conductor, Yudi Heredia! she ruled)

The new PJ Harvey single.

Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler. Both unsettling and settling, in a Millennial way.

Eating all the strawberries, making hibiscus tea, drinking the mezcal that my cousin very kindly brought me from Mexico City.

take care,

HG

P.S. - Northern Venezuela was hit by the strongest earthquake since 1967 last night— my family are thankfully all okay and accounted for. Please keep them and the country in your thoughts as many people are still missing.

I am thinking about so many things and have several half-written essays in my drafts here. Moving forward, I will make an attempt to finish these and circulate them. For now, just a few things to note as spring emerges.

solo set at Fitzgerald’s

I am playing a solo set at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, IL tomorrow evening! I am supporting Billy Allen and the Pollies and will play at 8:30 pm. Please come! Those of you who have seen me recently will know I have been playing some new songs, as well as a variety of old ones. Tickets are here.

subvert cooperative

I am very excited to have joined a new music platform, Subvert, as a co-owner. I am hopeful for cooperatively owned platforms to provide an alternative to streaming platforms; the idea is that they provide better and more direct compensation to artists and create a space to share music beyond the tedium of ad-centered social media algorithms. My music is offered digitally, at a discount to cooperative members. Check out my page here.

march daily songwriting practice

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I was going to attempt to write a song every day for the month of March, and while I got off to a promising start, I stopped about two weeks into doing it. It is hard! And while I had the time, I started feeling that the task was becoming rote and diaristic in a way I didn’t particularly like or find useful. However, I did work on a lot of music that month and last, particularly because I am…

playing the saxophone again

Many of you may not know this, but I play the alto saxophone, and have since I was eight years old. I played in school for ten years, and then for a few years in my mid-twenties, when I was in the touring band for a shadow puppetry company (a tale for another time). When I was in a studio session in early March, I realized I had to have saxophone on one of the songs we were working on. I said, “I hear a saxophone part here, I will bring mine tomorrow,” to which Brian Deck said, “What?!” And then I had to explain the Lisa Simpson of it all. But hilariously, I keep hearing saxophone on things, and there is a little bit of it on all of the songs we’ve tracked so far; so I’m back, baby! If you record music and are intrigued by the idea of having saxophone on it (or backing vocals!), please bang my line. I love playing it and I love currently being in recording mode.

loved

Quickly, some things I have really enjoyed:

Clockwatchers, a film by Jill Sprecher. If you like Ottessa Moshfegh’s work, you will love this. Such a good film with baby Toni Collette and Parker Posey about corporate surveillance, temp work, and feminism in the ‘90s.

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Whew! This is helpful for understanding how and why the internet (and everything else tbh) has gotten so bad thanks to a combination of bad policy, the rise of technofeudalism, stymieing Right to Repair, and, unfortunately, so much more! A lot of through-lines with Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine.

Train on the Island by Aldous Harding. I love this artist and I adore this record. Harding has self-identified as a “song-actor” and I really agree with that description. Such a treat to listen to over and over, I feel like I glean new meaning from it every time. Can’t wait to see this performed live.

take care, talk soon,

HG

I realized that writing a record takes as long as it needs to when I started writing another one shortly after I released Cosmovisión. Not to be corny and use yet another horse metaphor, but sometimes you have to really gently coax a song to come toward you and sometimes it is thundering in your direction at a full gallop and you have to just jump on up. It’s felt like the latter, particularly in the last few weeks as some personal commitments have come off of my plate.

I spent a weekend earlier this month recording at Narwhal with Brian Deck, who I made Cosmovisión with. I like working with Brian; aside from being a veteran producer and engineer he is also a former band kid, a lifelong Illinoisan, and I feel like our brains pretty much work the same way. We worked on recording three songs—he played percussion, I played guitar, saxophone, and sang, and then we basically took turns playing bass and keyboards while Emma and Q attended to the desk. It was challenging and really fun, especially coming out of saxophone retirement.

We will keep moving along, doing more sessions and bringing more people into the small world of this. One day you might hear it! Such is the gentle promise of the beginning of an artistic process.

writing/recording a song every day in March

I have been and continue to be deeply inspired by hemlock, aka Caroline Chauffe, an artist who I would described as “road-based” but hails from Louisiana and has become a deeply important member of the Chicago music community. They have an ongoing practice of writing and recording a work every day for a month a couple of times a year, and then releasing a compilation of those songs on Bandcamp.

I have wanted to do something like this for a while but haven’t made a consistent amount of time to dedicate to it. This year, I am home for all of March, and so I am going to try it! I’ve done it a couple times already this month to make it as accessible as possible for myself. I think Nick Papaleo told me once that having studio conditions that are easeful and set up in advance make it so much easier to create more, especially stealing moments between my day job and chores/daily life activities. I’ll release whatever the result is some time in April.

show at Judson & Moore

Here’s a place where I will be revealing some of the fruits of my labor, at Judson & Moore on April 2 with Olivia Ellen Lloyd and her band who are making their way through the Midwest this spring. Tickets are here!

recent amusements

Menewood by Nicola Griffith. Oh my gosh, this book was good. I read its predecessor, Hild, over 10 years ago and think very fondly of it. It is a very readable imagining of the early life of Hilda of Whitby, an abbess from early 7th century England who was eventually canonized as a saint. Griffith mentions in the author’s note of this book that the few mentions of her in the surviving records of the time describe her as “deeply respected,” a huge rarity for women of that time. This work of historical fiction looks at what a proto-Christian England looked like, when other gods still held sway over culture, when life was smaller and more precarious. There’s sword fighting, revenge, schemes, queer romance, visions, community, and hope for the future. Even though it didn’t happen, it felt real to me.

1999 by Prince. This happened to be one of the last records I purchased in the iTunes store before Apple Music became a thing, and since I have quit streaming for the foreseeable, I have been digging through my library of digital media. This is such a joy to revisit. It’s cool, it’s hot, and it’s downright strange. I want to listen to more music that strikes a balance between sincere engagement with the present moment and Fun Imagination Land.

The Pitt. My show is on!!! Literally what I shout every Thursday. I think an explanation of the hype with this show is that we like watching people handle crisis after crisis without completely losing their minds because… that’s what we all have to do right now on a global scale.

Love and Fortune by Stella Donnelly. This record is such a beautiful examination of the end of a friendship. It feels like the result of a lot of patience, with the key message being “closure is a gift you give yourself.” It’s my favorite of the records she’s made so far, it feels extremely genuine.

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind. I saw this exhibition at the MCA on the day it was closing, and I’m so glad I did. It is meaningful to witness art that is so influenced by war, and about the creation of an inner world that is so rich as a response to it—but the participatory nature of her work makes it so inviting and playful to be inside of it, to survive with her and imagine better futures.

take good care,

HG

I have a personal update, a show announcement, and a few favorites from this past year I wanted to highlight.

i quit streaming

Yep, I canceled my Apple Music subscription, and I’m saying I’m taking a year off, though I’d like it to be a more permanent change. I have a few reasons for doing this, the main one being that reading Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine last year really challenged me to think about what streaming has done to my relationship with music as a listener. When I announced I was removing most of the Half Gringa catalog from Spotify, many people reached out and asked what service they should switch to, what would benefit me more as an artist. And while there are other services that pay slightly more and aren’t as logical to target as Spotify is for a boycott, my main takeaway from Pelly’s book is that over the span of a decade, streaming in general has completely changed the way we consume and value music, and it is not the positive force that I think many people (including independent musicians like me) hoped it would be in terms of democratizing music distribution.

So! I am seeing what it’s like to not use streaming for a year. My general listening habits are such that I’m not worried about making a big change like this. I’m not inclined to have music constantly on in the background of my day-to-day life and I’m not big on letting the algorithm choose for me; as a musician I tend to be vigilant about listening fatigue. I anticipate more friction when I want to listen to something specific, but I am excited to listen to more of the radio.

You don’t have to quit streaming tomorrow to reconsider your relationship to music. I think finding a good local radio show in a genre you like and adding that to your rotation would do a lot, mostly in terms of getting real recommendations from people who care a lot about music. CHIRP Radio and WLUW are two of my favorite independent/college radio stations in Chicago, I listen to them online and riding around in the car. Even if there isn’t one in your town, you can listen to most of them online from anywhere. If you have a favorite station or show, let me know.

an evening at The Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture

So, so excited for this show. No opener, 1.5 hour set, $20 ticket, and free parking! Full band: Quin, Victoria, Brenden, Ivan - and Julia Mendiolea will be playing guitar with us for the first time. I met Julia last year when I subbed in as a backing vocalist for Y La Bamba, she is an absolute shredder and I’m so excited to have her join us for this set! We’re playing songs from all over the HG catalog as well as some new stuff before I hit the studio again (!!!), don’t miss it!

Get Tickets

three favorites of 2025

Book: Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

Record: Haley Hendrickx and Max García Conover - What of Our Nature

Song: Sudan Archives - A BUG’S LIFE

take good care of each other,

HG

Not everything you write for a record makes the cut, and sometimes it doesn’t even make the list for getting studio time — that was the case for my new single, “Nelly in a Dream.” To me, it belongs firmly with the other songs on Cosmovisión, but it wasn’t ready for that session. Which is why, when Brian Deck asked me if I wanted to work on something else last summer after we finished the record, this was one of the songs I sent him. Just me and the guitar, no adornment or arrangement, the opposite of what I had done for the other songs.

Luckily, Brian is great at what he does, and has been doing it for a long time. And since I came to the Cosmovisión session with the record pretty much fully formed, I wanted to work on something where things felt more equal in terms of vision (pun hugely intended). It’s a hard thing to do because this shit is extremely vulnerable!!!!! I have to trust the people I’m giving my work to, especially at a stage where the idea is nascent. It is fragile, as am I!

We worked on this song piecemeal, doing some preproduction, rehearsal, and vibe staging before working at Narwhal and bringing Brenden Cabrera in to play keys and synths, and then after getting the main structure of the track done we did some overdubs at our respective homes and just sent them back and forth over email until we felt like we were happy with it. And so! Please enjoy:

Listen to "Nelly in a Dream"

last show of 2025!

This Saturday at Schubas! The vibe is fun, the vibe is party. Or at least that’s what I’m channeling! Emily Jane Powers kicks it off at 8 pm, HG band will play at 9 pm.

Get Tickets

take care,

HG

I meant to send an update sooner than this, but the end of summer was marked by my second bout with COVID — after three years of managing to dodge it, I once again found myself in its jaws. Not fun, but orange juice and applesauce slowly revived me. I am sad I missed a trip to upstate New York to visit Lucy, and it was also a bummer to be sick while Sound & Gravity was having their inaugural festival in town. Ain’t that the way.

I can’t believe summer is over. I had a nice time, which surprised me. Until Leo season comes it’s not particularly my favorite season. I tend to feel weirdly existential when a year hits the halfway mark. Maybe it’s not summer, just June, which would track because I was at my friend Evan’s funeral in June. Not great.

I do think that in honor of Evan I tried really hard to have a good time this summer in memory of him. I threw a very casual birthday party where the only demand was that everyone come in some kind of costume, and people really did! Super creative, shmedium effort DIY costumes, including Mr. Darcy, Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, a retired color guard member, a ladybug, tea, coffee, daisies, Han Solo, Marge from the Simpsons, Guy Fieri, a handsome fruit, and a handsome fruiteater (me).

I gotta be honest, fall has not gotten off to a good start. For those of you not local to Chicago or Portland, masked federal agents operating as part of ICE have been terrorizing and kidnapping our neighbors in warrantless arrests. They have been doing this in different neighborhoods for weeks, racially profiling and detaining US citizens and immigrants with legal status, body slamming members of the press, handcuffing elected officials, causing car accidents, tear gassing civilians, and generally trying to prevent any sort of upholding of constitutional rights or due process by the law. It’s giving secret police and we do not like it.

A helpful thing you could do if you have the means and are not in a place being affected by these raids is donate to ICIRR, that is, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. If you aren’t in a position to donate, please share some of the articles I linked above (or anything that Block Club Chicago is reporting on because they have been a very crucial on-the-ground news source) with your community.

last headliner of the year!

Band has one more headliner in Chicago this year, and on a Saturday! We will play a longer set (do you have a request? let me know) and my dear friend Emily Jane Powers is opening with her band - she put out one of my favorite records this year, Earnest Jamming Partners. Strongly suggest buying tickets now:

11/22 - Half Gringa with Emily Jane Powers @ Schubas

summer reads

I had time to finish a few books while ill and thought I would share my favorites of the summer:

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar

I’m a big fan of magical realism, but it’s been a few years since I’ve read something with those elements that really struck me. This book was also recommended to me by Evan a couple of years ago, and it was nice to read it and imagine what he thought of it. Set in an Iranian village after the Iranian Revolution, this book is narrated by the ghost of a 13-year-old girl and centered around her family’s repeated bereavement and the relationship between the living and dead. It is beautifully written, and though it does draw from Gabriel García Márquez’s well, there is a distinct, urgent voice with which this story is told.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

A romance novel? An examination of colonization and the multiracial experience? A spy thriller? I’m still trying to wrap my head around this book. It is strange and funny and messy and earnest, perhaps to a fault. However, I’m still thinking about it, which feels significant. I look forward to reading what Bradley writes next.

The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time by Hugh Raffles

I bought this book at the Seminary Co-op in Hyde Park a couple of years ago because the conceit intrigued me. Its loose theme is unconformities, or sudden breaks in the geological record, and uses different types of rock to examine the anthropological eras that are tied to them. I’ve always gravitated toward nonfiction books that are told in narrative style or support the structure of a memoir, and I feel that this book in particular strikes a good balance of the inward and the outward. It also presents a few specific historical moments in a multi-dimensional way; you can see the relationships that humans have to power, to the land, and to one another. It felt like I read it at the exact right time.

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

This book recently won the Pulitzer in the Memoir category, and I believe it’s the first graphic novel to do so (and the first to receive a Pulitzer since Art Spiegelman’s Maus). On a personal level, this book is the most meaningful piece of work I’ve read in the last decade. It resonates bone-deep. Hulls spent ten years writing it, and in that time is able to examine the effects of immigration on her relationship with her mother and her mother’s relationship with her mother with such care and empathy, most crucially toward herself.

limited Spotify catalog // a Feist cover

Late last month, an open letter was published that I signed, along with 35 other Chicago musicians (now up to 85!), who are pulling some or all of their existing catalogs from distribution on Spotify. You can read the letter here and my additional statement here. From my perspective, de-centering Spotify — and honestly streaming services at large — as part of the music discovery and sharing experience is a good thing, and I am choosing to treat it for what it is: a marketing tool. Not an income generator or a fan base builder. It is one of many (worsening) tools. This shift in perspective has helped me not put as much stock into it. And Spotify’s practices of using AI to create content that benefits them, as well as their investors’ support of war tech, certainly doesn’t incline me to pander to them in any sort of way.

Anyway! This was a long one, thank you for reading. As a treat, I have a cover of Feist’s song “The Park” up on Bandcamp.

Listen to "The Park"

take care / cuidense,

HG

Hello from the back half of August - it’s warm, there’s crazy rain, every fruit is at the farmer’s market and I am making jam.

postock

My month kicked off with a drive up to Wisconsin, to Post Farm, to play Postock, or “Chicago music family reunion” as Viv referred to it. A lot of folks work extremely hard to put on this weekend camping fest, it was so fun and restorative and engaging in a way that I didn’t even know I needed. I went on a prairie walk led by Marina Post; the farm includes 65 acres of rewilded prairie land and it is filled with native plants and animals. My neighbor Jess Galli made five amazing meals, I made camp next to sweet Andrew Sa, I saw so many friends and incredible bands, and the stars were insanely bright. It was perfect.

lake jump

The weekend after Postock, my friend Markie and I got lunch and went to Hollywood Beach. It was hot, it was windy, I surrendered to the horrible texture of sand. But when we jumped in the lake I forgot about all that. So cool! So fresh! May you all jump into a body of water before summer’s end.

tiger bomb showcase + sonido fest + big rain

This past weekend was very fun and also filled with lightning! Friday night trio (me + Brenden Cabrera and Quin Kirchner) played the Tiger Bomb showcase at Schubas. I adore TB, I’ve worked with them as my radio promoters for my last three releases and they’re super supportive of independent artists. Saturday trio went Pilsen to play Sonido Fest, a free festival put on by the National Museum of Mexican Art. We got two songs into the set before Ferni the stage manager tapped me on the shoulder - we’d been told we would probably need to hold for a storm. I felt the temperature drop about ten degrees while we played “The Kármán Line” and unfortunately, that was not just the last song we played, but in fact the last song of the whole festival. It poured rain for the rest of the evening. We were bummed, the audience and staff were bummed. But that’s how it goes outside in Chicago summer sometimes. Thanks to everyone who waited out in the rain, and to the Sonido Fest staff for being so kind and taking great care of us. Hasta la próxima.

and now: presenting the First Church sessions

The week after we played the Cosmovisión release show at Schubas, we went to First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn to film a few songs with Bob., aka my friend Robert Salazar (who made the video for “Miranda” with me). Nick Broste recorded the audio and Lucy was in town and able to take part. It was so fun, please enjoy and share!

til next time,

HG

It is not open, apparently still closed for holiday break. We call the number on Google, which is confusingly linked to another restaurant that is clearly not where we are. But Evan can’t accept this, and is upset in a way that unfortunately makes me laugh really hard. The restaurant says it’s open on Google! Yes, but… it clearly isn’t, and there are a million excellent places to eat in this city. But it’s our last night here and it has to be magical in the exact way I imagined it! Haha, I know dude! But I think we will still have a magical time if we go back to that other place we really like.

I finally manage to cajole him in going back to a place we’ve been to and enjoyed. Evan spends dinner theorizing why the harried person on the phone would say the restaurant was open when it wasn’t. He is notoriously a huge prankster among our friends, but doesn’t care for being on the receiving end of a joke, even if it’s just a weird little mistake that we happened to cross paths with. He wants to be the architect of his tribulations, or feel like he’s being led into to some unexpected, course-shifting life experience. In this way, we are different travelers. I prefer a slower pace, going to the same places a few times, letting the people who spend time there reveal their particularities to me. I don’t like cramming things into every moment, I want to walk in step with the people around me and observe how they live. I want to try to understand them.

Evan suggests we take a day trip back to Hydra, a place we’d visited during our separate study abroad experiences in college. It has served as a naval base and as destination for expatriated artists in the 1950s and 60s, among whom included a young Leonard Cohen. We find his memorial bench and play “So Long, Marianne” and watch the boats drift in the harbor. While spending sunset at the beach, Markie and I clamber up onto a rock platform to sun ourselves like mermaids. There aren’t really beaches on Hydra, just stairs to the sea where the water is shallow enough to swim around in. We wave at Evan, who has floated away from the rocks and is enjoying the water, when the tide rushes up suddenly and sucks us off of the rock and down into the sea. It startles me so much that, in a panic, I grab at the jagged platform edge with my arm and hold on. When I open my eyes underwater, I realize it isn’t that deep and that I can let go. I swim up next to Markie and make for the ladder by the tiny dock. When I climb out of the water, I realize the rock cut my arm. Not too badly, but it is bleeding a little and so I go into a nearby cafe to ask for some band-aids. Later, when Evan gets out of the water, he says he saw us get sucked under. “I thought maybe I was the only person on this trip now,” he jokes.

I can’t help but feel like the sea was trying to warn me. “Hey! Your friend is dying and you have no clue,” it seemed to say. “Enjoy this moment before things get worse,” or, “It’s not an ulcer and Evan should go to the doctor right now.” In my journal from that time, I mention that the “ulcer” is really bothering Evan. It is chilling to read. I had no reason to think that what was ailing him was anything other than what he was told it was. But I still remember the force with which the ocean grabbed us, as if to shake us awake into something.

Markie leaves to begin her journey back home, and so Evan and I have a few days in Athens, just the two of us. We haven’t spent time alone since I’d last visited him before he left New York for LA. What if we each plan a surprise day for the other? I feel certain this idea was Evan’s, but perhaps it was some unseen force moving our chess pieces toward something I would cherish later.

He leads me to a bakery and then a neighborhood neither of us had been to before: Kypseli. It’s cute, queer, bursting with ceramic shops and bookstores. In the evening, we get Thai food and watch Fargo in an outdoor cinema, then go for martinis after. We could take a cab home but we always choose to walk two miles back to the apartment.

On my day, we go to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, see an exhibition about love in the age of the Internet. We go to the port and snoop around art galleries. We have dinner and then see a terrible, terrible adaptation of Aristophanes’ The Wasps (the director added an justification rap she performed at the end of it in a ballgown after Athenian critics panned it… it was that bad). We stand in line at a popular local food truck for an hour only to eat the grossest hot dog we’ve ever encountered. We drink soda from the corner store to wash the taste from our memories.

The goodness of these days could power a city. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, it’s there, and it’s dusk. The rain comes down like it did that September and we watch the water creep up the tires of the motorcycles outside a tap room. We slosh our way to the Metro, marveling at how scary the world we love is. We fall asleep listening to the neighbor’s television through the floor.

When Luz from Y La Bamba comes to town, I go to Pilsen where they are DJing with Quin at Punch House. We spent a long day rehearsing for two shows they are in town for and the bar is mercifully chill. Somehow, we start talking about the unconscious realm, and I tell them about Evan, that he died two weeks before.

I think about the places where he consciously exists in my memory, but I hadn’t consider the places where he unconsciously exists. When will he reveal himself again? I wouldn’t call this an afterlife of sorts, but perhaps it is another way he continues to exist. I wonder, looking at his brother Sean’s handwriting in a letter. I wonder, holding a shirt I remember him purchasing on Hydra. I wonder, reading a book he recommended to me two years ago. What parts struck him most? What did his memory hold on to?

Dear Manouka, did eventually return from holiday break, but not for long. It permanently closed sometime in early 2024. I look it up and find this out when I am visiting Evan during an earlier part of his treatment. “Ha!” he says, “we can’t go, but neither can anyone else.”

Evan, I know you can’t read now (and if you somehow could! you would certainly not be reading my sad bastard newsletter lol), but if I say this maybe the energy of this sentiment will find its way into the realm where your soul now resides. I love you and you were so incredible. Thank you for being my director, committee liaison, roommate, sounding board, colleague, travel companion, wingman, co-star, shoulder to cry on, queer mentor, pain in my ass, number one fan, inspiration, and my dear, dear friend. I wish I was still in the Athens airport saying goodbye to you. I wish I was still on the lawn of Barnsdale Art Park saying goodbye to you. I wish we were still in the sun, each going our separate ways, so that when we reunited we would each bring something new to show the other. But it is tragically not so. I have walked in step with you to try and understand who you are, what you meant. I must, and I will, carry you, your light.

His memorial is this coming weekend in Albuquerque, and so my Minneapolis show has been canceled, and my Milwaukee show has moved to August (more on that soon).

But, I soldier on, band in tow for some East Coast shows next week, and a Chicagoland fest shortly thereafter. Come see us! We had rehearsal today, and I think this will be a fun run as a quartet.

6/18 - New York, NY at Groove

6/19 - Philadelphia, PA at Milkboy

6/20 - Columbia, MD at Lakefest - FREE

6/24 - Ann Arbor, MI at The Ark - FREE

7/5 - Berwyn, IL at American Music Fest - SOLD OUT

A fun thing I got to do at the end of last month was sing backup for one of my favorite musical projects, Y La Bamba. We headlined Empty Bottle and Do Division, and I learned 16 songs to prepare - the majority in Spanish! It was challenging, but I loved it. Luz is an incredible writer with an innate talent for harmonic structure, particularly in vocal and guitar parts.

Here’s a little clip of us at the fest, shout out to my gemela, Mercedes, for being my partner in backing vocalist crime:

I also want to mention that I was on The Great American Folk Show! Thank you to Prairie Public and NPR Podcasts for having me. You can listen to the episode I’m on at the link below, and a fun thing is that it includes the demo version of “Where You Ride.”

Listen

And finally, if you live here in Illinois, please sign up for text alerts from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to be alerted when there are confirmed ICE sightings in your area. It is crucial that we keep our eyes open for our neighbors and communities. I saw a video of a group of neighbors in Florida yelling “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” Game of Thrones style at ICE agents, and boyyyy did those people pack up and leave quickly. Would love it if we could continue with that energy.

Look out for each other,

HG

Hello from the exhale. It has been almost six weeks since Cosmovisión came out and I finally quit holding my breath for what felt like two hundred years. If you’ve listened to it, THANK YOU, especially if you purchased a physical or digital copy. If you haven’t listened to it, what the hell? Kidding, no, it’s fine.

I didn’t make this record for casual listening. I made it for big emotions, the stroke of midnight, the break of dawn, the end of an era, and so on and so forth. Not playlist-able! No thanks! Not for background! Not Muzak! I didn’t want this to slide over your brain. I wanted you to think about it, interact with it, and contextualize it in your one wild and precious life.1

In rehearsing with the band, we made something that is really fun (and somewhat of a challenge!) to play live. I have spent the last month shedding, because the way I wrote some of these was fun in terms of structure, but difficult in terms of how to sort out playing guitar live. I am excited to get into somewhat of a rhythm with this; I miss the feeling of getting comfortable with music enough that you can (and must!) change things up, hear things from a different perspective, find something new to observe about what your fellow band is doing and play off of that. Different show, different vibe. And so! With that, we are playing some shows, which I have linked below.

chicago record release show

This Friday at Schubas! Where this journey began! I imagine a handful of you were at the Schubas show in January 2024 where we tried out most of the new record on a stage in front of people before we hit the studio. It is different now, and I do love a circle! So here we are again. According to my daily count email, tickets are selling rapidly, so I highly suggest you purchase one ASAP.

Comovisión Release Show Tickets

tour dates

I am playing some band shows this June! Please come and see me, Quin, Sam, and Brenden play some music for you. Buying a ticket in advance does truly help the show go on, so please do so if you are able.

6/18 - New York, NY at Groove

6/19 - Philadelphia, PA at Milkboy

6/20 - Columbia, MD at Lakefest - FREE

6/24 - Ann Arbor, MI at The Ark - FREE

7/5 - Berwyn, IL at American Music Fest - SOLD OUT

Hope to see you out there soon -

HG

Making this record felt, at times, like an exorcism. It was a huge challenge for me on a personal level and a musical level. I demoed it alone, through much of the pandemic, through deep sadness, and with tragedy upon tragedy unfolding around us. When I began reaching out to musicians to put a band and production team together for this, I somehow summoned the courage to ask people whom I frankly thought I had no business asking to come and work in a room with me. I cannot believe they said yes. Watching the things I wrote come to life with this group of incredible artists was nothing short of a miracle to me.

I wrote songs in both Spanish and English for the first time. I felt called to do this for a long time, but this record was when I felt really empowered to. Thank you to Spanish Sin Pena for helping me to get there in my own time, for providing a place for heritage speakers to be brave and embrace all the parts of themselves that didn’t feel good enough. I feel it is more important than ever for us to speak and sing in Spanish. It is an antidote to this administration’s poisonous rhetoric about immigrants, and it is a sign to our diasporic family that all are welcome here.

Brian Deck, it is truly an honor. You have made some of my absolute favorite records and working with you was my dream. Thank you for indulging my weird ideas and taskmaster attitude, and for getting me to sing nearly all of this record live with the band to a click (my nightmare lol). I learned so much from you and your process and am excited for the next one.

Brenden Cabrera, Quin Kirchner, Victoria Park, and Sam Cantor - thank you for being so open and willing. Even though we didn’t have the ability to get these “tour tight” before we hit the studio, it sure sounds like we did. Thank you for bringing your whole brains to these songs every week for three months; they would be nothing without your expert care.

Lucy Little and Ivan Pyzow - thank you for coming in and dealing with my sloppy scoring as well as arranging strings and trumpet so beautifully, knowing full well that not everything would make it into the final edit. Thank you to Lia Kohl and Daniel Villarreal, literal celebrities to me, for jumping in to add gorgeous cello, congas, and percussion to give the record the final sonic texture it needed.

Thank you to Michael Usrey, Andres Fonseca, Nick Papaleo, Vivian McConnell, Robert Salazar, and Gia Margaret for lending an ear when I needed it and being some of the most inspiring people I know. Half Gringa would not exist without your support and love.

Thank you to those who came with me on the Smallest Smile Retreat of Art and Friendship - Ariana, CJ, Markie, and most of all, my beloved friend Evan. This retreat gave me the last push of confidence I needed to make my most important piece of work so far. Evan, you were the first person who taught me how to make art bravely and unapologetically. This record is for you.

Listen

Purchase

Music and Lyrics by Isabel Olive

Produced by Brian Deck and Isabel Olive

Engineered and Mixed by Brian Deck at Narwhal Studios in Chicago, IL

Mastered by Sarah Register

Guitar and Vocals by Isabel Olive

Keyboards and Synths by Brenden Cabrera

Guitar by Sam Cantor

Drums and Percussion by Quin Kirchner

Bass by Victoria Park

Cello by Lia Kohl

Violin by Lucy Little

Trumpet by Ivan Pyzow

Percussion by Daniel Villarreal

Album Photography by Makenzie Creden

Design by Sarah Reed

Not so with Tour Chat, at least in my opinion. I love Tour Chat because it involves relevant practical information (“remember check out is at 11”), keeping track of your tour mates (“i got lost on the way to the bathroom, plz send help”), opportunities (“donuts in the green room!!!!”), and memes (“i didn’t know i needed to see a frog in stilettos until now”). Renaming the Tour Chat with references to group jokes is also an incredible way to memorialize the weirdness of tour.

Some favorite Tour Chat Names of tours I have been on include:

Duck Rotatiothon

Paging Doctor Hot Dog

Danny Devito black hole chicken sandwich

I Want to <redacted> a Bog Body

Cod Baby Big Boy

… and many more that have been lost to the sands of time. Sometimes a Tour Chat Name changes once a day, or even once an hour (overkill tbh). It’s a very silly way to communicate, and I’m very excited to continue the tradition of making minor jokes and incidents into a huge thing.

Tour starts tomorrow in Bloomington! Please forward to a friend in these locations if you can; these shows will be a good time.

March 8 - Bloomington, IN at Blockhouse

March 9 - Nashville, TN at The Basement*

March 10 - Memphis, TN at Folk All Y’all*

March 12 - Dallas, TX at Deep Ellum Arts Company*

March 13 - Austin, TX at Alienated Majesty Books

* supporting Lizzie No

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I saw her play at Salt Shed in Chicago this past September and was reminded of her artistic range - the show began with a performance of her latest work, I Inside the Old Year Dying, moving back into the past with selections from the rest of her extensive catalog. The set ended with a performance of “White Chalk” that squashed me like a bug when she hit the harmonica solo. Other than “Man-Sized,” she didn’t play anything from Rid of Me, to the audible chagrin of some audience members who would not shut the hell up and in addition to saying some frankly gross things that I won’t repeat, got restless in the second half and yelled, “I think you should get mad!”

This heckle felt the most infuriating to me, I thought: She is mad, you jagoff. How can you hear songs like “The Glorious Land” and “The Words That Maketh Murder” back to back and not hear the deep anger and sorrow there? These songs - and the whole of Let England Shake - are a damning condemnation of war set to music that she describes as being almost joyful, both as a counterweight to the lyrical heaviness, but also, I suspect, as a way to get people to sing along and actually listen to the words. The record looks back at the effects of World War I while openly criticizing Western involvement in the Second Gulf War. The fact that she chose to play these songs on this tour, as Palestinian civilians - many of them children - are being displaced and killed, felt extremely meaningful. She talks about conceptualizing this record and how the language of war and the outcomes on the people and the land have been and will continue to be the same.

At the end of this (very good) interview, she refers to herself as a self-appointed song correspondent. Relatable! She also says that she feels like all of her records are political, also relatable! Relationships to one’s self, to others, to nature, to the world: deeply political.

This record challenged me to think about how I would write a record about the future - Cosmovisión. A topic that is so vast and trying to understand where the edges of it are, what the shape of it is. Looking inward to see the threads of connection to the outward. Looking at the past and the present in all of its complexity. I wrote the lyrics almost entirely before I thought about chords. I carried around a packet of lyrics that I stapled together for over a year to continually edit. I confused my musicians with song structures that don’t repeat in exactly the same way because the words were there and I needed to do right by them. I don’t know if my record is good or important, and frankly, it’s not my job to judge. It is what I found when I listened to the world around me, and what spoke itself into being from inside.

tour! tour! tour!

Ok! Going on a little trio tour with Brenden on the keys and Chris on the drums next month. We’ve got a headliner in Bloomington and then some support dates with Lizzie No until Austin, where we’ll play some Not South By shows - more info on that to come. Please buy tickets in advance and give a shout if you’re coming :)

March 8 - Bloomington, IN at Blockhouse

March 9 - Nashville, TN at The Basement*

March 10 - Memphis, TN at Folk All Y’all*

March 12 - Dallas, TX at Deep Ellum Arts Company*

March 13 - Austin, TX TBD

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The first single, “Glacier Walker” is available to stream and comes ready to download with digital preorders. You can also watch a music video I made for it below. This song was written after I visited Iceland and saw climate change’s effect on the melting of the glaciers there. The artwork for the single features a painting by Jill Pelto called 40 Years in the North Cascades which illustrates the rate of snowfall gain versus melt from 1984 - 2022 in the North Cascades mountains.

Cosmovisión was co-produced, engineered, and mixed in Chicago by Brian Deck, someone who has made some of my actual favorite records by Iron & Wine, Califone, Josh Ritter, and Red Red Meat. I still can’t believe I got to work with him on this record, and also now, still! He is a real one and extremely cool.

I am playing a release show with the excellent band on this record at Schubas on May 16! This show will sell out. Tickets go on sale Friday here.

I will have more to say on the incredible musicians who made this record possible, but I want to list them all here: keyboardist Brenden Cabrera, guitarist Sam Cantor, percussionist Quin Kirchner, bassist Victoria Park, cellist Lia Kohl, violinist Lucy Little, trumpeter Ivan Pyzow, and percussionist Daniel Villarreal. Legends, all.

Tracklist:

1. Anywhere You Find Me

2. Your Lies

3. Where You Ride

4. Civilization

5. What’s the Word

6. Glacier Walker

7. The Kármán Line

8. Supervisión

9. Wind Was Crossing

10. The Optimist

Can’t wait for you to hear the whole thing. The next single “What’s the Word” will be out February 18. I won’t lie, it’s a real banger.

If you are a member of the press and want to reach out, please email:

Teleférico Records telefericorecords@gmail.com or info@halfgringa.com

Hi all, it’s been a minute and I feel compelled to get right to it: I have started a record label, Teleférico Records. What on earth was I thinking, you ask?

If you’ve been here since at least February, you know that earlier this year, I made a record. It is finished! All of the EPs and LPs I have released so far I have released on my own. This has been both tiring and empowering, as it means over the course of three releases I have been able to hire and build relationships directly with other people in the music industry (producers, engineers, vinyl pressing plants, radio promoters, booking agents, graphic designers, photographers, music licensing firms, filmmakers, etc) and have total control over the creation and release of the music I make. The margins this industry runs on are so insanely thin, and getting thinner, and I figured the more I can do on my own, the more I am able to keep the ecosystem I have healthy and at a manageable(ish) size. So! I decided to formalize my releases under my own record label, where I am the sole employee and artist… but maybe one day I’ll have the ability to do some other fun satellite projects for it as well.

HG 2024 highlights

• Making the third HG LP at Narwhal Studios. That was a big one.

• Playing some dates with one of my favorite artists, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

• Occasionally joining Sidepieces, a monthly country covers night at Hungry Brain

• Opening for Juliana Hatfield, who made me immediately want to run home and practice guitar

• Playing at Metro for the first time!

• Joining the Prater Day booking roster

• Debuting the songs for the new record at Schubas before hitting the studio

my favorite records of 2024

1. Rosie Tucker - Utopia Now! Sharp punk bangers about community.

2. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven “Loud Bark” is my song of the year and on a playlist I have called “*screams externally*.”

3. Hannah Frances - Keeper of the Shepherd Expertly crafted songs about healing that reverberate in my bone marrow.

4. The Marías - Submarine When I need to dance it out, I’m dancing it out to this.

5. Waxahatchee - Tiger’s Blood Unfussy production presents Katie Crutchfield’s songwriting at its best.

6. Sarah Shook & the Disarmers - Revelations River Shook is one of the most genuine songwriters I know and these songs benefit greatly from having them in the producer’s seat as well.

7. Bnny - One Million Love Songs How do you continue to love after immense loss? This record is both the question and the answer.

8. Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us An excellent band continues its god-tier five record run.

9. Charli XCX - BRAT Need I say more? To me, the best parts of this record are BRAT as character and remixes as fun family trees to explore.

10. Hermanos Gutiérrez - Sonido Cósmico In my brain, this record is always on.

11. Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor The production on this is perfect to me. The rhythm section! Bless them.

12. Mandy - Lawn Girl I love that some of the cuts from Xobeci, What Grows Here got souped up for this, and every melody is truly unforgettable.

13. St. Vincent - All Born Screaming/Todos Nacen Gritando Long live guitar music!!!

14. Advance Base - Horrible Occurrences This is Owen Ashworth at his absolute best. The narrative of this record is so good and was crafted with such care and compassion for its characters.

15. hemlock - 444 Carolina Chauffe is such a prolific songwriter and the way they approach their craft on a literal daily basis is deeply inspiring to me.

16. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Woodland Oh man. This record is extremely beautiful and deeply sad, an accurate portrayal of life if I ever heard one. True legends of songcraft.

favorite shows

Minor Moon’s The Light Up Waltz release show at Lincoln Hall

PJ Harvey at Salt Shed

Wombo at Baby’s All Right

Reyna Tropical at Empty Bottle

Fruit Bats/Kevin Morby/Hurray for the Riff Raff at Salt Shed

hemlock and Tenci at Constellation

favorite book

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

and now, a little treat

Wow! You made it to the end of this meandering email, and that deserves a treat.

The treat is my new single, “Glacier Walker.” It’ll be out in a more official capacity and on streaming on January 14th, but since I’m my own boss, I can do what I like! I hope you enjoy it.

More very soon,

HG

After the show, I got to investigate the WLUW CD library. Most college and independent radio stations have libraries filled with music DJs have added to their rotations. I like looking at everything, categorized by decade and locale using stickers, and reading the notes on the jewel cases. Bunny Gets Paid by Red Red Meat was there. Vivian’s record Bathing Peach was there. Big Black’s Songs About Fucking was there with an exasperated note from a past station manager reminding DJs that they can’t say the title of the record on air since it violates FCC regulations. I thought fondly of Steve Albini, leader of Big Black, essentially telling the Reagan administration to eat it. It was nice to talk about music I like, listen to it for two hours, and then take a little trip back into the past.

Finally, I am hitting the road again! Opening for Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, whom I adore. The full band is also playing Metro tomorrow night with Tobacco City and Red PK and it’s a big, special one - don’t miss it. It’s all ages!

Tickets Here

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I tend to agree and plan to do all of the above, however, I like reading quite a lot. It is one of the engines that power my songwriting machine and summer is when I want to do most of it.

I have public libraries to thank for that and public school teachers who assigned optional summer reading lists. And my mom and dad (hi mom and dad!), who are abject nerds. Though my access to television and movies was intentionally limited, I was allowed to read whatever I wanted, and I did.

Summer reading is ideal even when the weather isn’t. Getting lost in some long book during a huge rolling summer storm is one of life’s finest things, and same goes for days when it’s so unbearably swampy (a fond ‘what’s up’ to my fellow swamp dwellers) that no amount of being at the lake will cure. Sometimes, I just need the air to be dry, and you know where it’s dry? The library. The bookstore. My room, with an AC unit running.

Is this sounding weirdly good to you right now? Great, step right this way for some recommendations and what I’m cruising through this summer. I split them up by categories that I tend to reach for during summer specifically. Also, I announced both a new partnership with a booking agency and a Big Show with the full band last week, so if you want to skip the nerd stuff you can just scroll to the end.

Long and Absorbing Books

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Older Women Who Are Tired of Bullshit

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Younger Women Who are Completely Normal, Given the Circumstances

The Seaplane on Final Approach by Rebecca Rukeyser

Severance by Ling Ma

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Indelicacy by Amina Cain

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Both Hilarious and Frighteningly True

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Young Adult Novels That Remind Me of Being on Summer Break

Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

The Pearls of Lutra by Brian Jacques

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Poetry

Voyager by Srikanth Reddy

Please by Jericho Brown

Devotions by Mary Oliver

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

These are what I am currently/imminently/recently reading:

Wellness by Nathan Hill

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Bunny by Mona Awad

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins

new booking agent

Exciting announcement! I have started working with Prater Day booking agency. If you book shows and you are interested in having me play your festival/support your artist please email Virginia and Austin at virginia at praterday dot com / austin at praterday dot com.

Metro Show with Tobacco City and Red PK

I am thrilled to be playing Chicago’s storied Metro for the first time on September 6! I have a full band lined up for this, which I don’t do often, so if you haven’t seen it or heard the new songs I highly suggest you come to this show. I heard Tobacco City also has new ones in the bag and I was delighted by Red PK’s set at Empty Bottle last spring. Please do us a solid and buy your tickets in advance! $15 is a steal: https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/72238614/

The fires on Mt. Parnitha died and the temperature in Athens dropped about 10 degrees a few days before Evan, Markie, and I took the ferry to Hydra. Hydra is a Saronic island about a 2-hour ferry ride from Piraeus, the port closest to Athens. There are no cars allowed, except a garbage truck, and if you feel up to it, you can hike around the perimeter of the island in a day.

I came to Hydra for a day trip the last time I was in Greece, in 2012. I took the below picture of the port with my digital camera. The photo that follows it was taken in August of 2023.

It looks busier, and it certainly was, but it seemed mostly unchanged. Asproulis, the Greek lace shop I had made a poor financial decision in is still there (I may have made only a slightly less poor financial decision in it this time). The old pharmacy is still there, as well as the gentleman who runs it, shooing his cat inside so he could close for an afternoon break. And the house that Leonard Cohen lived in is still there, its sprawling bougainvillea in bloom.

Leonard Cohen came to Hydra in 1960 and joined a community of expat artists. These included novelists Charmian Clift, George Johnston, Axel Jensen, and Axel’s wife, Marianne Ihlen. Ihlen was Cohen’s muse, and after her tumultuous marriage, she began a relationship with Cohen that lasted for most of the 60s. She died of leukemia in 2016, almost exactly three months before he did, suffering from the same cancer. He sent her this email before she died:

Dearest Marianne,

I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. This old body has given up, just as yours has too, and the eviction notice is on its way any day now.

I’ve never forgotten your love and your beauty. But you know that. I don’t have to say any more. Safe travels old friend. See you down the road. Love and gratitude. Leonard

Evan, Markie, and I walked around the island and found the memorial bench dedicated to him. Overlooking the Saronic Gulf, we listened to “Bird on a Wire” which he wrote about Hydra. The sky was a perfect blue. We walked north of the port to an old slaughterhouse where the DESTE Foundation was hosting an art show about technology. It was mildly frightening but overlooked the gorgeous sea.

This trip felt huge and important when I was on it. The morning we spent in Hydra communing with the spirit of Leonard Cohen and looking at art installations is so clear in my memory. It is even more huge and important in light of what I know now - two months after I returned from Athens, Evan was admitted to the hospital and subsequently diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He is currently undergoing treatment, but this cancer is advanced and aggressive. I am hopeful that he will be able to join me on the next retreat I do, but I am so grateful I was able to spend this time with him.

Evan planned for us to read a novel set in Hydra as a group to give us something to discuss while we were there. It had its issues and ultimately I wasn’t partial to it, but it was nice for us to think about art as a group in the context of where we were. Leonard Cohen and his cohort feature heavily in the novel, and I think a lot about how he may have remembered Hydra and his life there, what it meant for his music and his friends. I wonder now what it will mean for me, for mine.

Thanks for your patience and sorry for disappearing for a bit. The new record is almost done (!!), and so I have been focused on things related to that (and also playing Baldur’s Gate). I have a couple more pieces of writing from my time in Europe, but I will also send a few more contemporary missives as well. If you want to donate to my album fundraiser, you certainly still can, as I work to cover mastering costs: https://gofund.me/e19eee2e.

Thank you, and solidarity to all of the students across the US who are protesting the ongoing killing of civilians, nearly half of whom are children, in Gaza.

HG

Hello!!!

I come to you from the other side of a great chasm - the chasm of Making a Record. Well, mostly. My teammate in this relay, Brian Deck, continues on through the mixing process. But the recording process for this batch of songs is done, and I think he got what he needed from me and my coconspirators to make something fun. For those of you without extensive knowledge of the process, here’s basically how it goes:

1. I write songs. I make demos (aka recordings in my house) with varying levels of instrumentation, arrangement, and approach. I think of it like an audio collage that ultimately depicts what I hear in my brain. I also worked with Viv, a.k.a. V.V. Lightbody, a friend and self-described “album doula” on sifting through like 18 demos and identifying some patterns and potential energies/instrumentations. I did this back in 2022 and it really helped me come up with a blueprint for what I wanted to do stylistically.

2. I write chord/lyric charts and rehearse a band I have assembled. In this case, Quin Kirchner, Victoria Park, Brenden Cabrera, Sam Cantor, and I started to rehearse these songs together in September. They patiently learn and work through everything with me and suggest stylistic approaches and chord tweaks to ensure everything sounds copacetic.

3. We play a show. We did this at Schubas! Other bands may do a whole tour to work out a set but I had neither time nor money for this, so one show had to suffice.

   

4. We go to the studio. This part of the process varies wildly - in the past I have done a weekend here, a weekend there, and a lot of additional home recording to add backing vocals and extra parts. This time, I wanted to try and do it in one sitting. I took time off from work to try this full-immersion approach and I have to say, I loved it. I am tired, but it’s a good tired, like finishing a hard run or beating the big boss in a video game. I felt 100% present with the work. I felt like I didn’t have to settle on any takes because we recorded to a click track, I didn’t make any big concessions that I didn’t feel good about, and it was fun. Shocking.

5. After we finish the main full-band tracking, we do overdubs. This is for instruments that benefit from sound isolation, like trumpet, strings, and backing vocals, as well as extra tasty riffs of keyboard, guitar, and percussion. When I say I brought in an all-star cast of musicians for this session, it’s not hyperbole. Ivan Pyzow and Lucy Little, two of my regular collaborators, came in and added trumpet and violin parts (and Lucy wrote some amazing string arrangements and cleaned up the parts for the ones I wrote, bless). Lia Kohl, my old touring buddy and neighbor, came in to add cello. Daniel Villarreal, who made my favorite record of 2022, added congas and aux percussion. Things are sounding downright magical at this point.

This next part is new to me. Brian Deck has made some of my favorite records of all time. They soundtracked a lot of my earlier musical experiences and defined a lot of my musical tastes. A thing he literally said to me during this session is “Distortion is my religion” which in context was, I think, a joke, but also, king behavior. So after we finished the main session, he went back to the studio and did something called “reamping.” Basically, the shorthand is that you take a track and reprocess it using an amplifier in a room. He set up some guitar amps in the room that we tracked in and played, for example, only the vocal track of a song through one of the amps. The amp changes the quality of the sound and he records it, as well as the sound of the room around it to give it some dimension. He did this for a few different instruments and the effect is really cool!!! I am earnestly really delighted by this and it was neat to observe and learn about. It gives him more of a palette to work with when mixing the record.

So what happens now? I’m taking a minute. A breather, a nap. A slight pause before Brian sends me the first mixes and I have to start thinking about them. I have been working at my day job and then just… lying down. It’s great. This weekend I may attempt to cook some things, see a show, and clean my office. Or just think about how good it felt to be making something with people I admire. I want to keep this time preserved in my memory so that when I am trying to shop this record to a label, or adding to the endless scroll of social media, or casting my line into the abyss of the music industry in various manners, I can have it as a constant reminder that I made something I am very proud of on my terms. And that the day will come when I can embark on that life-giving journey again.

With love,

HG

P.S. - One more time, thank you again if you have donated to my record GoFundMe. Your support means so much and pays all the wonderful people working on this. If you haven’t yet donated or want to help get the word out, you can do that here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-half-gringa-make-her-next-record