1. reflections on the lovely (and unexpectedly exciting) show I played at Mossy Hill Listening Room;

2. some exciting updates on my next show;

3. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

The Chances of Another Snake Coming on Stage Are Astronomical!

In the movie The World According to Garp, a couple is looking at a house they’re considering buying when a small airplane sputters over the treeline and crashes right into the side of the house. The couple and the realtor are stunned, and we are made to assume there’s no way that house is getting sold now—until one half of the couple, played by Robin Williams, exclaims, “We’ll take the house!” He turns to his wife and says, “Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical!”

It’s an imperfect metaphor to say the least, but I did think of that scene as I reflected on the most memorable moment at my recent show at Mossy Hill Farm. In the middle of one of my songs, a large black rat snake decided to slither in from the back of the barn and join me on stage. I thought this was super cool and didn’t even stop playing right away, but eventually I realized the audience was freaking out and I did stop. The host explained that it was a non-venomous rat snake named Winston who helps with pest control, and we let him pass through to the other side of the barn.

The reason I thought of Garp is that I hesitated to share the snake story because I didn’t want it to deter people from going to Mossy Hill—but I figure that we got a unique experience so that anyone who’s afraid of snakes doesn’t have to! My 1st cousin once removed and her wife were at the show, and when Winston appeared, the wife turned to my partner and said, “We can say we were here for this.” In other words, this doesn’t happen every day, but it’s happening now, and we can tell the story as a first hand account! I suspect the chances of Winston slithering through the barn in the middle of a show are pretty low, and even though this isn’t really how probability works, I’m going to pull a Garp and say I knocked the statistics down even further for future shows. You’re welcome (or, for critter lovers like me, I’m sorry?).

The snake was definitely the most unusual part of the show, but it would have been a memorable night even without Winston’s appearance. I was one of 3 artists performing that night—Colin Allured is the musical host of the listening room series and played a mix of originals and covers along with drummer Usman Salahuddin, then Marco Sartor entranced us with his classical guitar playing of pieces from throughout South America.

Colin had me sing harmony on a few of his songs, and he was kind enough to learn and play some really wonderful electric guitar parts to fill out my songs “Perfect Stranger” and “Lost at Sea.” And, Usman sat in with me on drums the whole set, which was an absolute blast! He had listened to some of my songs ahead of time, but a lot of what he did was just following along in the moment, and it was awesome. He’s such a sensitive, responsive drummer, and he told me later that he pretty much just plays jazz these days but loves playing with singer-songwriters. He’s from the area and based in Brooklyn now, but he said he’s in NC fairly often and would love to play with me again sometime—so here’s hoping you’ll get another chance to see him join me on stage sometime!

I think it’s also important that I underscore how intentionally the space was curated by the good folks of Cardinal Rhythm, the nonprofit emerging from and expanding beyond this listening series. They emphasized from the beginning that they wanted to create a real listening room atmosphere and invited folks to limit the use of cell phones (which is part of why there isn’t any photo or video evidence of Winston’s visit), and it created this lovely container of sharing and connecting and being present. It felt like an easy space to be in, like we were hanging out in a living room together exchanging stories and songs. I’m excited that the summer series has been expanded to two more listening rooms in August and September, plus a fall festival in October, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for Mossy Hill and Cardinal Rhythm.

Next Up: The Martha Bassett Show, September 17, with Fiona Burdette!

The Martha Bassett Show has been on its summer hiatus, and I’m looking forward to it restarting this week, even more so to being a featured artist on September 17! I’m especially excited that Fiona Burdette will be coming down from Connecticut to play cello with me on the show—her playing is central to my album The Night, and I can’t wait to collaborate with her. Also on the show that night will be Halley Neal, The Holland Brothers, and of course the wonderful TMBS house band. You don’t want to miss this, September 17 at the Reeves Theater in Elkin.

My rock raffle at Mossy Hill was kind of a flop—turned out that was a little too much for me to manage while playing a show—so I just made a personal donation to the City with Dwellings Housing Stability Fund (you can do the same here!) and left the painted rock at Mossy Hill as a gift (though now I may need to go back and add a snake in the corner!). I made one for the Martha Bassett Show, and I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with it, but I am enjoying the idea of painted rocks as my branding!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TV: My partner and I have discovered the 24-hour Law & Order channel on our TV, and we sometimes put it on as background noise. Recently, my partner commented on how much she loves “that teddy bear” McCoy, much to my confusion. Turns out she was associating the actor, Sam Waterston, with his character Sol in Grace and Frankie. I hadn’t seen it, so we dove in, and it’s been a blast. It feels light and funny while also dealing with some heavy stuff, and the cast is excellent. Waterston is indeed a teddy bear, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are a great pair for a chaotic buddy comedy, I’m always happy to see Martin Sheen, recognizing Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters was a delight, and thankfully we aren’t the first people to confuse June Diane Raphael (Brianna in Grace & Frankie) for Rhea Seehorn (Carol in Pluribus).

2. MOVIE: My church’s summer movie series is underway, and a few weeks ago we watched How to Train Your Dragon (the 2010 animated original, not the “live action” remake…). I just really love this movie, and not just because Toothless reminds me of my former dog Crash. There’s a lot in it about the stories we tell about ourselves and others, and even some disability themes that were accidentally well timed for Disability Pride Month. If you haven’t seen this movie, or haven’t seen it in a long time, it’s worth a watch.

3. MUSIC/VIDEOS: I’ve always been a fan of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, and on a recent Saturday, my partner and I started by watching a few videos of artists we knew—namely (formerly Lil) Bow Wow and Sarah McLachlan—and then just picking random ones from there. We got the unexpected pleasures of Laurie Anderson, Guitarricadelafuente, and more. I highly recommend just putting this series on shuffle and discovering some music you might not have gone looking for on your own.

1. some thoughts on Pride Month and how my relationship to it has evolved, including a plug for the queer love song I released last year;

2. a reminder about my show coming up at Mossy Hill Listening Room, and the offbeat mini raffle for a good cause I’m test-driving at it;

3. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently (plus 2 bonus elements).

Proud to Just Be

I couldn’t tell you the exact year, but I’m pretty sure the first Pride parade I attended was in Durham sometime in the mid- to late 2000s. My friend Jay and I moseyed over from our dorm on Duke’s campus and saw the sights. I’m not positive, but I might have worn a shirt I owned that said “gay? fine by me.”

My engagement with Pride Month and Pride events has fluctuated over the years. I’ve lived in Winston-Salem since 2012, but I missed local Pride events for the first 6 years because I was almost always on a church mission trip in Haiti the same weekend (this is back when Winston-Salem Pride was in October—something I’d welcome a return to!). When our Pride celebrations reverted to June as part of a COVID shift, I bumped into yet another regular church conflict that kept me from attending for a few years.

Finally, in 2023, the stars aligned and I was able to be at Winston-Salem Pride. By then, I had been the lead pastor at Green Street UMC for over 2 years. Green Street was the first Reconciling (open & affirming to LGBTQ+ folks) congregation in the Western NC Conference of the United Methodist Church, and I was excited to attend as openly allied. At the time, I had some inkling of my own queerness, but I wasn’t yet fully embracing it. I pulled on a rainbow button-down over my clergy collar, whipped out my rainbow umbrella, and enthusiastically joined my church members in dancing through the downtown streets, publicly proclaiming myself as an ally. (Little did I know that a photo from that day would be what caught my now-partner’s attention on a dating app years later, though she initially thought my clergy collar was a Halloween costume.)

By Pride 2025, I was not only more out to myself and others, I was also newly partnered in a visibly queer way. I’ve had an allergy to a big, public coming out, so once I’d had the necessary conversations with close friends and family, I decided to just act as if everyone knew. I showed up to church on the first Sunday in June wearing a shirt that read “This Queer Pastor Loves You,” and put it on again for the Pride parade. That was my first time being publicly, clearly out. I’m thankful that I got a lot of love and support, though there were also sticky moments to navigate and unintended impacts on my loved ones. Turns out knowing cognitively that discrimination happens is different from experiencing it in your life and relationships (which I also knew cognitively, but now I know it in my body).

As June approached this year, I found myself in a much more secure and playful space with my identity, and that showed up at our local Pride. Going with my church’s “OUT West”-themed parade float, I sported a denim jumpsuit with a big belt buckle, a disco cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a bandana, and a bedazzled bubble gun. At some point I realized I wasn’t wearing any rainbow, and yet I felt queerer than ever. There was something in that realization that gave me some affirmation. While I love rainbows, I’d grown confident enough in who I am that I didn’t need them to signal that to others.

Settling in to just being myself has been a joy (and a relief). I recently attended Annual Conference for Western NC United Methodists, and I lost count of how many people came up to me to tell me I looked happy, that they were happy for me, etc. I told my partner that she’s a big part of that, but also that I had started doing the work to ground myself and become more of myself before I met her, and that I was proud of that.

I released “Summer Song” not quite a year ago, and I’m sharing it here with a reminder that although it doesn’t say this explicitly, it is a queer love song. I’m grateful for love of all kinds that sustains us in ourselves and in community.

Next Up: Mossy Hill Listening Room, July 23; and looking ahead to TMBS!

Colin Allured has been hosting a music series at Mossy Hill Farm in Pfafftown on the 4th Thursday of the month, and I got to attend the June show featuring Colin and The Couldn’t Be Happiers. I loved the vibe of music, art vendors, food, and more, all on a beautiful little flower farm. I’m looking forward to being featured be on the July 23 show along with Colin and Marco Sartor. You can find out more here.

I floated this idea last month, but I am going to try something a little offbeat at the show—at my merch table, I’ll have a raffle for this hand-painted rock, with tickets going for $5/each. Proceeds will benefit the Housing Stability Fund at City with Dwellings. This fund has prevented more than 100 families a year from becoming homeless at an average of $400/each. Through the advocacy of Forsyth STRONG/Forsyth FUERTE, that fund is expanding, and I’d love to give even a small amount toward the important work of homelessness prevention that City with Dwellings is doing through a community-first lens.

Looking ahead, I’m super excited to be a featured artist on The Martha Bassett Show in September—and especially that Fiona Burdette will be coming down from Connecticut to play cello with me!! You don’t want to miss this, September 17 at the Reeves Theater in Elkin.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MUSIC: One of the most badass songwriters and humans I know put out a new album on June 12. I got to listen through Jess Klein’s Dreaming Aloud ahead of its release (and had gotten some earlier previews playing in the band of The Martha Bassett Show when we took things on the road to Boone a few months ago). Lately I’ve been resonating in so many ways and places with the idea (and reality) that making beautiful things is one of the most powerful ways to connect people and resist all that needs resisting, and this album does that powerfully. Jess writes, “The thing I want most in life is to use my work to give you, the listeners permission to feel, to be alive. Feeling alive, claiming your space, trusting you came here for a reason - these are acts of love for the world. And despite all the noise and robots and uncertainty, despite the scared little linebackers, love is still, stubbornly, the best that we can do.”

2. TV: I kept hearing about Widow’s Bay on podcasts I like, and I finally decided to give it a shot. It’s incredible! It’s a horror-comedy, and my brother and I were talking the other day about how so often in that genre the comedy sort of takes you out of the horror, but that’s not the case here. Widow’s Bay is genuinely scary AND funny, but the humor feels so authentic and true to life, thanks to brilliant writing and the really wonderful acting particularly of Matthew Rhys. He manages to portray these super relatable moments where something literally deadly serious is going on, but something funny also happens in such a way that you think, “Of course that’s how it would go.” (For example: Rhys’ character attempts to rip up a Widow’s Bay calendar in a fit of rage, but it won’t tear—the physical comedy is absolutely hilarious and somehow adds to the emotion of the moment even as you can’t help but laugh.)

3. MOVIE: Speaking of horror-comedy, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come popped up while my partner and I were looking for something to watch, and seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar on the movie poster, we went for it. This movie is the style of horror-comedy that I’m used to—less realistic and more slapstick than Widow’s Bay—but it was a pretty fun romp (if quite gory). We hadn’t seen the first movie, but we pretty quickly got the summary through the proxy of a new character—basically, a young woman marries into a family who turns out to be part of an international Devil-worshipping cabal and finds herself in a literally deadly game of hide and seek on her wedding night. Part 2 is basically that all over again but with members of the other families who are part of the Organization, and a more experienced protagonist (though I’m pretty sure both movies together take place in the span of, like, 48 hours?). It’s a great cast (SMG, Elijah Wood, and Shawn Hatosy being my favorites) and a silly, bloody diversion.

4. TV: As I make this list, I’m starting to wonder if the weird dreams I’ve been having lately are due in part to how much horror/thriller material I’m consuming…but my partner and I have been watching the new Cape Fear series, and it’s pretty creepy. This remake of a 1991 movie that was a remake of a 1962 movie features a very scary Javier Bardem along with Amy Adams (love her) and a talented cast navigating a terrifying game of retribution tangled up in the criminal (in)justice system. I feel like I have no idea what’s going on most of the time, and I’m loving the element of mystery adding tension not just to the more obvious bad guys but also to the complex supposed protagonists. I was especially delighted to see Juliette Lewis in the kind of deeply unhinged performance she’s so good at and to learn that she was also in the 1991 film, so that’s on my watch list now.

BONUS: A new song (but not really)

OK, I haven’t really been writing music lately—my spare time has been mostly spent on the various visual arts and crafts I’ve gotten into the last few months—but I am entirely too proud of this little Mary Poppin’s parody that I sing to myself when I tend to our vermicompost.

I did recently start working on a slightly creepy song that draws on verses from the Psalms to reflect on the more foreboding elements of the pervasiveness of AI in our culture…we’ll see if that ever surfaces.

EPILOGUE: Pouring one (cup of tea) out for Anthony Stewart Head

If you know me, you probably know I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I was sad to learn of the death of Anthony Stewart Head, the actor who played Rupert Giles in the series (among other incredible roles over the course of his career). Giles’ green mug has been one of many little hyperfixations brought on by the podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer, and I even got a tattoo in the shape of this vintage Fire King jadeite piece, which I have thanks to my girlfriend’s incredible thrifting skills. Tony Head was, by all accounts, not only a brilliant actor but also a lovely human, and I know his loss is felt deeply in many public circles as well as by his family.

1. reflections on my recent house show with Sadie Gustafson-Zook and themes of community, safety, and neighboring;

2. looking forward to a July show at Mossy Hill Listening Room, and introducing a weird new idea;

3. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently (which includes the first book to make me cry in I don’t know how long).

House Shows and Reflecting on Community, Safety, and Neighboring

North Carolina had some weird weather this May, including a good bit of rain around Memorial Day weekend. And while I’m getting old enough to gaze out the window at a drizzle and mutter “We really needed this rain,” it did require some pivoting of plans for the Patio Show with Sadie Gustafson-Zook. Thankfully we were able to move inside, and I turned our living room and kitchen into a cozy little listening room. A fun and weird mix of people (my favorite kind) showed up, and we snacked, chatted, and sang along together.

Sadie is fantastic live, and it was so fun for the inaugural house concert (of hopefully more to come) to feature her. She took a break from co-producing a record for Flamy Grant (!!) to come play a number of songs from her EP The House on the Park, which I’ve talked about here before—it’s an incredible collection of songs recorded as a benefit for rent relief in her home of Minneapolis—as well as some older songs (like “Maybe I Don’t Know” and “Weatherman”). She even pulled out a super fun song she wrote for a new kids’ band she’s part of, The Laamartians—the song is about Big Bog in Minnesota, and it was a total blast and inspired me to get into some science-themed songs for The Pocket Dinos (coming soon!!). All in all, Sadie was wonderful—even my deaf dog Betty White enjoyed the music.

Because I’m me, I (a) did the most when it came to providing snacks (including two homemade sourdough loaves—one cinnamon raisin, the other made into a garlicky cheesy pull-apart situation with marinara on the side), and (b) I included a community reflection activity. I’ve been thinking a lot lately (and really for many years) about community, safety, and neighboring. Recently, my partner found a Playmobil police station for $3 at Goodwill, and I’ve been slowly transforming it into a DIY community center, adding a mutual aid fridge, Free Little Library, rooftop garden, rain barrel, community board, and more. I set it on a shelf during the show and put out slips of paper with different questions on them, inviting folks to write or draw their answers and then add them to a magnetic board.

Here are the questions, should you want to reflect on them yourself:

1. What does safety look, feel, sound, smell, and taste like to you?

2. What resource does your neighborhood or city/town have that you think should be everywhere?

3. Describe a time someone was a good neighbor to you.

4. Describe a time you were a good neighbor to someone else.

5. When and where does community feel most real or possible to you?

Next Up: Mossy Hill Listening Room, July 23

Colin Allured is hosting a music series at Mossy Hill Farm in Pfafftown on the 4th Thursday of the month, April-July! I’ll be on the July 23 show along with Colin and Marco Sartor. You can find out more here—hope to see you there!

Also, I’m trying something out for this show…I’ve been doing a lot of rock painting in my free time, and I decided to paint a rock for each upcoming show for however long that’s enjoyable for me. I’m thinking about doing a silent auction starting at $5 where folks can bid on the rock for a given show and the proceeds will go to a nonprofit or mutual aid fund.

Is that a weird idea? I mean, it is weird, but would you participate?

Anyway, here’s my rock for Mossy Hill. (Is this my branding now?)

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. AUDIOBOOK: I don’t remember the last time a book made me cry, but Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere did. This novel has been on my list for some time, but recently a church member brought it up in connection with something I said in a sermon, and it was the nudge I needed to get into it. Atmosphere combines smart science with great character and relationship building, and a gorgeous and heartbreaking queer love story. Two favorite moments: when one partner shares some simple delight with the other and says, “I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found.” Romantic af. And this one about God and the universe: “I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God. My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet. How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another? And also offer us the comfort that we are not alone?” And the ending? Whew. Knocked me out. Highly recommend.

2. TV SHOW: I’m grateful that I didn’t name this segment “Good Things” but “Things I’ve Enjoyed,” because sometimes we need to just enjoy something kinda crappy. Between rain and sickness recently, I ended up watching a ton of the Netflix show La Brea. The premise is that a sinkhole opens up in the middle of LA (in the La Brea tar pits) and those who fall into it end up in a time portal back to 10,000 B.C. The show is bad—the writing is bad, the acting is bad, the whole things starts to feel like ChatGPT tried to write a spinoff of Lost. And that mindlessness was a great backdrop for a bunch of visual art projects I’ve been working on. To its credit, they did have queer representation and some other borderline progressive things, but nothing with any depth. Things did get too weird for me somewhere in season 2 (because somehow this terrible show got THREE seasons?!) and I stopped watching.

3. TV SHOW: OK, this is a show I both enjoyed AND actually recommend. My partner and I decided to try out The Boroughs and ended up getting into it and watching the whole first season. It feels like The Thursday Murder Club + Stranger Things, and I love it. Set in an idyllic retirement community, this science fiction series has elements of mystery with a great cast and smart humor. Similar to The Thursday Murder Club, it trades on the underestimation of elderly folks, a theme I find really interesting. Also, the show’s intro is extremely Doctor Who-coded—not sure if that was intentional, but I dig it. I’m currently trying to convince my mom, who hates scary movies/shows, to watch it—we’ll see if she takes me up on it.

4. PODCAST: I recently re-discovered Radiolab and have been making my way through their recent catalog. They always explore such random things, and even (maybe especially) topics I don’t think will be interesting end up sucking me in and teaching me something. Case in point: the recent episode “This American Cockroach.” I didn’t expect the culinary side quest or the complicated link to racial history and identity, and it helped me appreciate this critter I occasionally find in my house because that’s living in the South (though we call them “Palmetto bugs” to make ourselves feel better…).

BONUS: 15-Second Rock Garden Tour!

I mentioned I’ve been painting rocks lately, so here’s a quick little tour of the rock garden my partner and I have been adding to. Please enjoy my silly improvised song. (Disclaimer: I did not paint all of these rocks, some were done by my partner or our friends!)

1. an invitation to a very special house show AT MY HOUSE! with SADIE GUSTAFSON-ZOOK! on MAY 26! Let me stop yelling now…

2. musings on the Tiny Swap Museum that’s proving to be a real bright spot and how it’s making me reflect on home, community, and joy in a time of social and political crisis;

3. heads up about some other shows, both mine and ones I’m playing on;

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Come Hear Me & Sadie Gustafson-Zook in My Backyard!

I first heard Sadie Gustafson-Zook at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas in the fall of 2023 and was immediately drawn to her thoughtful songwriting, Joni Mitchell-esque voice, and disarmingly quirky stage presence. I’ve followed her music ever since, including sharing her most recent release, The House on the Park, in one of my “Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently” segments—and hey, her NPR Tiny Desk Contest entry, featuring the song “I Just Wanna Be” from said album, made their Top Shelf list this year! I’m super stoked that she’s coming through North Carolina and—can you believe?!—playing a house show in my backyard!

Join us on Tuesday, May 26 for an intimate concert on the patio that took a few years off the end of my life (but dang it I know how to build a patio now!). Doors are at 6:30 p.m., the show will start at 7, and it’s a $20 suggested donation. I’ll open with a short set, and then we’ll all get to enjoy Sadie’s performance, which I have no doubt will be moving, engaging, and definitely worth your while. Bring a blanket or chair to set up in the yard; I’ll provide snacks (I’m planning to bake something yummy) as well as water & lemonade, and it’s BYOB for anything else you might want. If the weather’s looking bad, we’ll just move inside!

The last thing about this show ties into my reflection for this month—we’re inviting everyone who attends to bring something to add or trade for the Tiny Swap Museum at my house!

When Your House Becomes “The Happy House”

I’ve been in my little green house on the park since August of 2015, over a decade now (!!). It’s a place that has brought me great joy, taught me a lot, and seen me through so many big life moments. It’s a unique layout (yes, the kitchen downstairs IS original to the house!) with exposed brick, a random interior stained glass window, and beautiful landscaping (where my revolving door of big dogs hasn’t destroyed it).

And, it hasn’t always been an easy place to be. It’s where my marriage soured and fell apart, with layers of stress that most people will never know. It’s a very literal stone’s throw from my work, something that has felt oppressively heavy in seasons of exhaustion and burnout. And it’s in a neighborhood that’s a strange mix of family history, supportive friendships, and animosity like I’ve never experienced (a story for another time and place).

I didn’t realize how much I’d withdrawn into my house, and how little joyful effort I’d put into it for years, until my partner started spending more time here. And while at first that realization was tinged with shame, it quickly turned to excitement and even hope. The vision I’d had for sharing space and creating home hadn’t come to pass in my marriage, but it’s rooting now in new ways, most of which I never anticipated.

The front yarden (yard + garden) that I had mostly left on autopilot (bless the landscaping queers who planted an amazing assortment of mostly native perennials before I move in!) now is home to various dinosaurs, painted rocks, random figurines, and an assortment of disco balls. Friends have told me our house is “an explosion of joy” and that the morning light thrown around “filled [their] heart with smiles.” Strangers compliment us on the whimsy and vibrancy of our little bit of land. And the other day, a young boy visiting the Tiny Swap Museum (more on that in a moment) declared this “the happy house.”

That made us smile. Even as war and genocide rage around the world; even as our “representatives” roll back voting rights, healthcare access, and more; even in the face of homo- and transphobia, we have created a haven of inclusive, affirming, inviting joy. A happy house.

One of the core sources of joy and whimsy at our house has been the Tiny Swap Museum. My partner had gotten an odd little cabinet, painted and labeled “Music Shop,” at a thrift store, and one day she decided to put it out by the sidewalk, adding a sign encourage folks to trade tiny treasures. It’s become a fun part of our day as my partner curates it, stocking it regularly with new goodies and collecting some of her favorite items to show me. It leads to lots of positive interactions and connections with neighbors, and since it’s apparently made its way to TikTok, we’ve even seen folks drive in from other parts of town to check it out.

Probably one of my favorite happenings related to the Tiny Swap Museum is that kids have started making art in order to have something to trade. From painted rocks to crayon pictures to origami to a hot glued picnic scene on jelly jar lid, these little handmade treasures have been some of our favorites. And it’s been a joy to know that we’re helping to motivate kids (and adults, because we’ve also gotten a crocheted tiny leaf, mini paintings, and more from grownups!) to create and to share.

And there is a powerful economic message in the Tiny Swap Museum. My partner likes to tell people that it’s a place you can come to get something special without spending money. In an increasingly oppressive capitalist economy, that’s a big deal. The Tiny Swap Museum tells us that we all have something to give, to share, to create, that things don’t always have to cost money, that we don’t have to keep all our things forever. The Tiny Swap Museum has helped me to let go of trinkets and small things that brought me joy at one time but no longer do—it gives me a reason to ask myself whether it might make someone else happy.

So, come to our patio show on May 26, and bring a tiny treasure to share or swap!

Other Cool Shows Coming Up…

I’m back in an every-2-weeks rhythm of playing in the house band of The Martha Bassett Show, and we have an extra gig this month: WFDD’s Spring Fling! Join us at YMCA Camp Weaver in Greensboro on Saturday, May 16 for a live taping of the show with special guests From China to Appalachia, Duncan MacMillan, and Colin Cutler & The Hot Pepper Jam. It’ll be a blast.

And speaking of The Martha Bassett Show, I’m thrilled to once again be a featured artist on the September 17 show! Make a plan now to come see me, Halley Neal, The Holland Brothers, and of course my fellow house band members.

But first, summer—don’t miss the new music series that Colin Allured is hosting at Mossy Hill Farm in Pfafftown on the 4th Thursday of the month, April-July! I’ll be on the July 23 show along with Colin and Marco Sartor. You can find out more here—hope to see you there!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. AUDIOBOOK: I’ve heard good things about The House in the Cerulean Sea for ages, and one friend in particular has recommended it more than once. After a recent reminder from her, I finally listened to TJ Klune’s novel and was absolutely charmed by the story, the characters, and Daniel Henning’s lovely narration. This quote has stuck with me: “Hate is loud, but I think you'll learn it's because it's only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you're not alone, you will overcome.”

2. MOVIE: For the last 4 years, my church has done a summer movie series where we watch family-friendly movies on Wednesday evenings and then tie in themes of the movies to the sermon and service the following Sunday. In preparation for this year’s series, I watched a few recommended movies I’d never seen, and I adored The Mitchells vs. The Machines. The premise is simple: a family of oddballs survives a robot apocalypse and becomes the only hope for humanity’s survival. The whole family is beautifully neurodivergent in different ways, and the story is full of messaging about perceived deficits, or seemingly useless skills, being vital in the right context.

3. CHILDREN’S BOOK: This feels like cheating, but I think everyone needs to know about the alternate ending to Shel Silverstein’s classic The Giving Tree if you don’t already. I love this book, and, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve worried about the message it sends: that love means giving to the point of self-destruction, that happiness is found in self-abandonment. A few years ago, Topher Payne created The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries, which picks up at the point where the boy asks the tree for its branches to build a house. It diverges from there, and I encourage you to check it out and add that ending to your mental file of that book.

4. PERFORMANCE ART: This could have been a TV show rec, but it’s a show about weird arrest stories, and while it’s often good mindless background noise, it also has its moments of unnecessary escalation of situations by police, so instead I’m sharing one story from one episode that has stuck with me. Back in 2016, performance artist Asher Woodward stopped traffic in Portland, Maine by dressing up as a tree and crossing the street very… very… slowly. The sight of cops trying to figure out where to put handcuffs on a guy absolutely covered in branches is pretty funny, but I just love how this goofy act forced everyone involved to notice the routines and systems that govern their lives as invisibly as the water where a fish swims.

1. reflections on collage as an art form that can help us transform painful stories and problematic legacies;

2. looking forward to a new music series at Mossy Hill Farm;

3. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

“The movement — that’s the hero.”

There are a lot of creative and interesting people who attend the church where I’m a pastor; one of them is Janice Weiss of Outlandishly Unique. Janice makes incredible collages, and as part of our church’s Lenten series this year, I recruited her to help us make a collaborative art project over the course of the season through collage. Here are a few photos of that process and the end result. (I was a little obsessed with the fact that Gritty made it in.)

That project inspired me to add collage to my list of crafts/hobbies, so I went through the free bins at McKay’s and started by taking a used canvas from our local secondhand art supply store and incorporating illustrations from a kids’ book about bats into the painting that someone else had made.

I may be most technically proud of one I finished the other day—my church’s logo collaged out of pieces of our Lenten devotionals, which are full of poetry, music, and visual art, from A Sanctified Art.

Collage, it turns out, is very meditative, mindful, and creative for me. Just tearing and sorting paper (because of course I now have an organizing bin that divides pieces of paper by color) is so soothing.

But I’ve realized it can also be a powerful medium for reframing and retelling stories that are complicated, painful, or problematic, or for subverting untrue stories we’re told.

The other day, my partner found a children’s book she owns about civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. We both sighed heavily, and then I asked if she would be OK if I tore it up—not to destroy it, but to remake it.

Since news broke of Chavez’s abuses of young girls and women, I’ve been wrestling with how we lionize individual leaders and therefore obscure the reality of movement work and set us all up for pain. A quote from a survivor has stuck with me: “It makes you rethink in history all those heroes… The movement — that’s the hero.”

The book has beautiful illustrations by Yuyi Morales, a Mexican-American children’s book author and illustrator. I went through the book, tearing out scenes and images and pieces and putting them back together in ways that center the movement instead of Chavez.

After I made my collage, I found out that it aligns with the spirit of a post that Yuyi Morales made after news broke of Chavez’s violations. It turns out that book was the first she illustrated, and Chavez was a meaningful figure in her life and imagination—but, as she says in her video, she believes that children deserve better than the hero stories we so often give them. I think we all deserve better.

The story of the farmworkers’ movement never should have been so much about Chavez in the first place. The movement is the hero. I made a second piece with a few scenes illustrated by Morales, adding that quote from Esmeralda Lopez: “The movement — that’s the hero.” The mirror invites us to see ourselves as part of the movement, reminding us that we can’t wait around for a hero or a savior, that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

I have more pages from this book that I’ve saved and may adapt into artwork. I’m grateful for Morales’ original art and for her recent reflection, and for this tangible way to reframe and reimagine a legacy that needs to be reckoned. As we decenter this one man, I hope we won’t let his violations poison a liberation movement, and I hope we get better at resisting and nuancing hero stories going forward.

A New Music Series in Pfafftown

I’m looking forward to being part of a new music series being held at Mossy Hill Farm in Pfafftown this spring and summer! On the 4th Thursday of the month, April-July, Mossy Hill will host artist table displays, yard games, and a social hour from 5:30-6:30 p.m. followed by live music from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Curated by local musician Colin Allured, the series will feature some familiar-to-me-names, including Martha Bassett and The Couldn’t Be Happiers. I’ll be on the bill on July 23 along with Colin and Marco Sartor. You can find out more here—hope to see you there!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MUSIC: I heard Sadie Gustafson-Zook at the Walnut Valley Festival in 2023 and have followed her music and taken her jazz guitar online class since. Having moved to Minneapolis last year, Sadie experienced the ICE occupation there firsthand, and she just released a beautiful collection of songs to raise funds to support her neighbors. The House on the Park was recorded live over a half day of storytelling, snacks, and singing, and the songs range from the wistful “Just Wanna Be” to the acerbic yet danceable “Piggy” and everything between and beyond. Sadie’s work represents some of the best of how I think artists should be engaging in neighboring, community, and justice, and I commend the album and the opportunity to support Minneapolitans (apparently that is the word for people who live in Minneapolis!) to you.

2. BOOK: My partner picked up Vanishing Treasures at a thrift store, thinking the couple-page odes to various threatened or endangered animals, along with illustrations of each creature, would delight me—and it has! I’ve been really captivated by Katherine Rundell’s writing style—it feels like the way I write naturally, but since most of my writing is for the pulpit, I spend a good bit of energy making sure my words translate to oral delivery and that my vocabulary doesn’t leave a broad audience behind. I’ve been reading Vanishing Treasures a little like a devotional, soaking up each entry, learning about animals and hearing both the warning about the mass extinction we’re living through (and committing) and the hope and resilience offered by these creatures.

3. CHILDREN’S BOOK: Katherine Rundell has written other books, and coming out this fall is one called Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise—a title that immediately captured me because I really believe it. I’ve always loved children’s books, and my partner has encouraged that in a big way, including by buying me children’s books on occasion, including most recently Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Richard Jackson. Geared toward kids ages 3-6, it’s a wonderful read for any age. Even in the simple (but really beautifully crafted) writing style, I learned things I never knew about how space travel works, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

4. MOVIE: The book version made this list a while back, and I’m happy to report that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Project Hail Mary! It was definitely more of a buddy comedy than the book (though the book did have that element), but I tend to be pretty generous toward adaptations if they’re faithful to the heart of a story or just doing their own thing, and I found this movie hilarious and heartwarming. I’ve even gotten some non-sci-fi-loving acquaintances (including my partner, who surprised me with a midday showing shortly after it came out in theater) to check it out.

Bonus: for my birthday, help me & my partner choose a band name!

Last Thursday (my original post said Friday because apparently I can’t even remember my own birthday), I turned 39! It’s hard to believe I’m entering the final year of my 30s, even harder to metabolize everything that has happened in this decade—ordination, marriage, job changes, getting a second master’s degree, surviving a global pandemic, saying goodbye to dogs, getting separated and divorced, meeting a new love, coming out as queer, marking a decade in my house, putting out an album, getting diagnosed with ADHD, adopting Betty White…yep, I guess you could say a lot has happened! I’m hoping this year will bring more gifts and growth, even as the world continues to be full of heaviness and sorrow.

One of my main hopes/goals for this next turn around the sun is to record and release a children’s album with my partner—we’re workshopping band names right now, and the current top contender is “The Pocket Dinosaurs.” Let me know what you think of that or if you have other ideas, and stay tuned for more from TPD or whatever we end up being called…

1. my new single, “Lost at Sea,” is out now!

2. watery musings on grief and gravity;

3. info on several different kinds of opportunities to see/hear me play this month;

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Listen to my new song “Lost at Sea”

“Lost at Sea” is a (hopefully) not-overly-maudlin grief anthem, a musing on the unmooring and disorientation that can happen in the wake of loss. I recorded the guitar and vocals while in the studio with Ethan Gingerich, and sent along an old recording I’d made of the waves breaking in the Charleston Harbor and a solo on my Hammond M-111 I’d captured on an SM57 at home. It all came together in this simple, short track that is both an homage to my soul dog, Crash, and an invitation to anyone experiencing grief to name the way a loved one’s absence can persist like a phantom limb. You can listen/download everywhere.

The Oceanic Gravity of Grief

I remember exactly where I was when the image that would become the song “Lost at Sea” came to mind. I was out running errands, and as I pulled up to the intersection of Hanes Mall Blvd and Jonestown Rd, about to get on Highway 421, I thought, “Oh, I need to run home and check on Crash.” And then I remembered that Crash, my dog, was gone. It felt like I had briefly reattached to a tether that had been there for a decade, a tether that kept me in an orbit that would circle back by my house even on my busiest days, only to remember the reason for that return no longer existed.

The feelings I felt in that moment were mixed: grief at remembering I would be going back to an empty house; relief that I wasn’t on a timeline for doing so; nostalgia for the time I had with this sweet dog; a nervous curiosity about what shape my home and family would take in the coming months and years—especially because the loss of this dog also came in the wake of divorce and a radical reconfiguration of my personal life. There was newness and promise in the mix, too, as I was in the beginning stages of an unexpected gift of a relationship that was helping me move through deeper layers of awareness and closure. My partner later said she felt like Crash hung on until he knew she was staying and would care for and protect me, so that he could let go.

Because Crash’s decline had been happening for quite some time, I didn’t have the acute shock of grief that comes with a tragic or unexpected loss. And, it was still hard to return to an empty house. I didn’t go home for more than the time it took to change over laundry for the first few days after Crash passed. And in the coming weeks, I would notice little habits I had unconsciously built around his presence: heading to the spot where his dog bed used to be as soon as I got back from work or errands; looking for him around the house when I realized I hadn’t seen him in an hour or so; not picking up food I dropped on the floor because he would take care of it.

The nautical imagery of “Lost at Sea” speaks not only to the sense feeling of an anchor coming undone but also to the way grief comes in waves. My grandmother died in 2017 and my grandfather in 2023, and I miss them more at certain times of year—holidays, birthdays, death anniversaries. I’ve also grieved my grandmother anew as I’ve fallen in love this year, wishing she could have met my partner. Sometimes grief comes and goes in the rhythmic swell of ocean tides; other times a tsunami will catch us unaware and we’ll find ourselves drowning just when we thought things were settling down. This is the nature of grief—it is no more linear or controllable, and no less natural, than the waves on the sea.

I’ve created a playlist on Spotify that blends themes of loss and gravity and swimming as a metaphor for struggle—check that out for songs from various indie artists as well as a Kelly Clarkson recording of a song from Hamilton and a Depeche Mode cover from the show The Last of Us to accompany “Lost at Sea.”

I’m Playing Shows This Month!

I have three very different opportunities to perform in March, and I’d love to see some friendly faces. Here’s where I’ll be this month:

March 11 - Oak Ridge, NC - During the season of Lent (the 6 weeks leading up to Easter), Oak Ridge Presbyterian Church holds Soup & Sound concerts on Wednesday evenings, and I’m the entertainment on the 11th. Come at 6:00 for food; I’ll start playing at 6:30 p.m. Dinner and the concert are both free, so come on out.

March 24 - Winston-Salem, NC - A new neighbor of mine, recently relocated from Chicago, has (re)started monthly Idea Potlucks that feature “dishes” of ideas and performances rather than food. I’ll be part of this month’s “adult show-and-tell” at the Wake Forest Center for Private Business, 500 W. 5th Street, 3rd floor, from 6:00-8:00 p.m., along with 5 other presenters. Get your tickets now!

March 28 - Winston-Salem, NC - Just announced! Migrant Birds and I will be reprising our bill from a year ago at Gas Hill Drinking Room. I’m looking forward to opening for this talented crew again. Get more details and advance tickets here.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TV: I got into Shrinking when it first came out and loved it—I’d say it might be Harrison Ford’s best role. I have to wait until my partner isn’t around to watch episodes from the current season because as a therapist she can’t handle shows that trade in blurring of ethical boundaries (and wow does this show throw those completely out the window in wild ways!), but I just love these messy characters, and it’s been fun (and moving) to see Michael J. Fox as a guest actor.

2. AUDIOBOOK: My Storygraph tells me I listened to this book a few years ago, but I have the memory of a goldfish—which I don’t mind, because it means I can enjoy books and shows and movies more than once, sometimes forgetting even major twists! I turned on When No One Was Watching in the car on my way to a week of study leave at Duke, where a lot of my focus was on neighboring and gentrification, issues my church is facing right now. As I prepared to dig into a lot of nonfiction books and historical documents, a Black woman-written thriller described as “Rear Window meets Get Out” set in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood seemed like a good place to start.

3. PODCAST: I got into Ologies years ago and for a long time listened to every episode. I fell off a while ago, but a recent bonus episode of 2025 interview highlights sucked me back in. I love Alie Ward’s motto—“Ask smart people stupid questions”—and that listening to the pod gives me fun things to teach my partner instead of just downloading about my day. (The fact that a rattlesnake’s tail moves 400 times faster than a hummingbird’s wings required a mid-afternoon text, but I saved some more layered squirrel facts for when she got home from work!) They also have shortened, profanity-free episodes called Smologies that are great for kids, classrooms, etc.

4. MUSIC: Back in December, I responded to an invitation from my pals The Couldn’t Be Happiers to their show with Haunted Like Human in Greensboro. HLH is a Nashville-based duo with mythology-rich songwriting and a queer following, and my partner and I have been listening to their music ever since. “Family Name,” “Run Devil Run,” and “Things Fall Apart” are just some of the songs that are in regular rotation for us these days.

Bonus: Video from Muddy Creek Cafe!

Back in January, I played a really fun show at Muddy Creek Cafe. Amazingly, they provide quality audio and video recordings to performers. My voice was in rough shape from a bad flu that lingered from the holidays, but I’m grateful to have some good videos of me playing live, including this one of “Thanks to the Night.”

1. an announcement about my song “Lost at Sea” coming out in 2 weeks;

2. some reflections on redemption songs, old and new;

3. news about a few upcoming shows (and a fun one I just went to);

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

You are all on the wind, I’m lost at sea

On February 27 (or 28, I might have messed up when I scheduled the release!), my song “Lost at Sea” comes out as a single. I wrote this last year reflecting on the loss of my soul dog, Crash, who I had for over a decade, though I intentionally made it open-ended enough that many kinds of grief could be contained by it. The track features simple instrumentation—me on nylon-string guitar, vocals, and organ (my Hammond M111), plus a little audio recorded on the Charleston Harbor in March of 2020. You can pre-save it now.

(Re)Learning old redemption songs

The band Over the Rhine has a great song called “New Redemption Song”:

Lord, we need a new redemption song
Lord, we've tried, it just seems to come out wrong
Won't you help us please, help us just to sing along
A new redemption song, a new redemption song

I used to lead a midweek worship service grounded in Americana/roots-based music, and we always pulled secular (or at least not-explicitly-worship) music into it. We paired “New Redemption Song” with its obvious reference, Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”:

Won’t you help me sing these songs of freedom?
’Cause all I ever have—redemption songs

I’m thinking about this pairing in a new way lately as I reflect on the occupation of Minneapolis by ICE and the resulting violence. I’ve been trying to listen to Black women—a habit I’ve worked toward for many years but which comes in to sharper focus whenever injustice makes a dramatic appearance in the news—and I’ve heard again and again the refrain:

This is not new. We have tried to tell you. If you are new to the movement, welcome—but please don’t fail to connect the dots, or none of us will get free.

In other words (if a bit of a stretch)—maybe we don’t need a new redemption song. Maybe we need to remember—or learn for the first time—the old ones, and by doing so situate ourselves in a long struggle to harmonize our visions of the good life.

In reality, it’s probably both. I love Over the Rhine’s “New Redemption Song,” how it riffs on and recontextualizes Marley’s call to help sing along. But I’m assuming OtR was aware of and probably intentionally pointing to the old “Redemption Song.” And in his song “Rivers of Babylon,” Marley does something similar with a much older song—a Psalm from the Babylonian exile. That’s what I hope our art and activism can do today—echo, uplift, and connect us to more ancient freedom struggles for strength, inspiration, and hope.

I started thinking about this on a much narrower, more personal level recently as I worked on an old song of mine that I’ve been slowly poking at the lyrics for over almost a decade. I wrote this song in 2016 shortly after Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were killed by police, and in the wake of a terorrist van attack in Nice, France.

I’m not sure I’m totally there with it yet, but the goal is for it to be sort of a bitter prayer—I was tired of “thoughts and prayers” and struggling with the spiritual bypassing I saw many Christians engaged in. The song still feels relevant, and there was something helpful about working on this song that emerged in a specific moment but which clearly—even more clearly now—was about something much bigger, older, and more persistent, whether from 2026, 2016, or decades and centuries before.

It had a different name when I wrote it, but I’m now calling it “Here Today.” We’ll see how it evolves, but I’m grateful for witnesses who helped spark this adaptation of a verse, referencing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s image of the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice:

We pray for kingdom come, thy will on earth be done
But prayer is not enough
The arc does not just bend, it’s bent and bent again
True justice waits on us

What do you hear in these sounds?

Last night, I got to see Dar Williams live in Asheville. I’ve loved Dar for a long time, and her songwriting retreats have had a huge impact on my life, including being responsible for my album The Night. She was joined by two multi-instrumentalists and singers, Seth Glier and Caitlin Thomas, and we got some really cool trio arrangements of her songs spanning her career, including her new album Hummingbird Highway. I was particularly taken with an older song of hers that I hadn’t really listened to—“What Do You Hear in These Sounds?”

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TV: My partner and I recently finished watching the first season of Pluribus and I’m a big fan. It’s a post-apocalyptic show, but it’s done in a way that felt totally new to me as someone who loves the genre but can find it somewhat predictable, With a not-totally-likable, queer main character, it’s thought-provoking, funny, intense, and more.

2. NONFICTION BOOK: At my church, we’re doing a lot of reflecting with our leadership about neighboring as we face some changes and challenges in our building and with nonprofit partners. Since I live in the same neighborhood as my church, I experience these things on a personal as well as a professional level, and I decided to do some intentional study on what a faithful response to gentrification is for churches that want to give an authentic answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” Greg Jarrell’s book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods has been a starting point to this exploration, with a focus on Charlotte but relevance far beyond.

3. FICTION BOOK: I haven’t read much over the last year, but this weekend I started reading Martha Wells’ novella All Systems Red. It felt good to get back into some science fiction, and the shorter format feels less daunting as I sort out what my relationship to books will be like in this season. I’m still early in the book, but the story coming from the perspective of a “murderbot” is already fascinating.

4. MOVIE: On one of our many snow days, my partner put on Encanto in the background. I love this movie, and it made an appearance in a recent sermon between our cabin fever rewatch and a reference to the miracle candle at a church leadership retreat. I particularly love Luisa and the message that we all hold magic inside us—together.

Bonus: Gramophone Fun!

We’re at a family mountain house this weekend, and part of what’s great about having my curious and inquisitive partner in this place I’ve visited all my life is that she asks questions about things I’ve never thought to look into. We found some pretty cool old photos and memorabilia while exploring various cabinets, and then she pointed at an old gramophone and asked if it worked. I had no idea, but a few minutes later, she had learned that it was made between 1900-1920, and she figured out how to crank the handle and play a record on this totally mechanical music player that amplifies via a horn and sound box. Pretty cool!

Come see me in Old Salem!

On Friday, January 9 @ 7:00 p.m., come see me at the Muddy Creek Listening Room in Old Salem (at 626 S. Main St.). I’ve gotten to see some great songwriters here and am excited to be in this intimate space. You can get tickets here.

2025 in Review: January

I started 2025 by participating in a songwriting retreat that would eventually lead to the development of my album The Night. I’m about to kick off 2026 the same way, with Dar William’s Many Stars online songwriting retreat! But I have to highlight one big happening this past January: the release of my first single as Emorie Hush. “Dance It Out” featuring Russell Kelly came out on January 24 and set a genre tone I would immediately pivot from because who cares? (Music marketers, that’s who, but I am not one!)

2025 in Review: February

February saw the release of my second single, “Hollow Bones” featuring Russell Kelly. It’s also when I attended my first Folk Alliance International conference, this one in Montreal. I heard and met so many incredible musicians, bonded with members of the Greensboro music scene, and played some original songs on Canadian soil for the first time.

2025 in Review: March

In March, I got to play shows in Winston-Salem and Greensboro as Emorie Hush and to start back as part of the house band of the Martha Bassett Show after our winter break. The musical highlight, however, was probably the online jazz guitar class I took with Sadie Gustafson-Zook (an amazing singer-songwriter!), which helped solidify my newfound love of jazz chords.

2025 in Review: April

April began with turning 38 and taking a trip to Los Angeles for Buffy Prom (put on in part by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Jenny Owen Youngs) and ended with me having my first girlfriend, thanks in part to a song I wrote called “Take You to the Beach.” It’s also the month we video recorded a live performance of my song “Star Chamber” at The Ramkat and put that out for National Parks Week in support of park rangers and staff impacted by federal budget cuts.

2025 in Review: May

May started with me playing a great songwriter circle at Gas Hill Drinking Room and wrapped up with an unforgettable performance with the Martha Bassett Band and the Piedmont Wind Symphony. Several of my original songs were set for wind symphony by the amazing David Mailman, and it was unforgettable to hear “Ain’t I a Woman,” “Hot Pepper Queen,” and “The Plow” in those arrangements.

2025 in Review: June

June was a bit of a quiet month music-wise because it was a busy one for work and community—from our church hosting its first Drag Queen Story Hour and participating in the local Pride parade and festival to our annual conference of Western NC United Methodists and more.

2025 in Review: July

July is when we went into the studio for my album The Night! Recording with Ethan Gingerich alongside Fiona Burdette on cello, Pat Lawrence on bass, and Martha Bassett and others on background vocals was a dream. The recording process was nerve wracking but SO fun because of the great people involved.

2025 in Review: August

In August, I dropped a surprise single, “Summer Song,” which I’d written in the spring and recorded in our spare time while in the studio for The Night. The sweetest love song you’ll hear that mentions bug spray, it’s also the first time I played vibraphone.

2025 in Review: September

September is always an interesting month emotionally for me, and this year was no exception, with travel for 2 unexpected funerals. I did get a tattoo of the drawing from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I’ve used with my Emorie Hush branding, and I brought home a deaf albino pitbull named Betty White.

2025 in Review: October

In October, I released “Thanks To the Night,” the lead single from my album The Night, and I had an amazing listening party at West Salem Public house. The listening party was really a highlight, and I felt so much love and energy in that space from family, friends, and fellow musicians. I also released a second single from The Night, “New Moon.”

2025 in Review: November

November started with the official release of The Night! It was pretty amazing to see an idea that started to incubate in January come into the world by November, especially with beautiful artwork by Alice Jette. And, because I can’t let a release marinate, I put out my first original Christmas song at the end of the month, “What To Do for Christmas.”

2025 in Review: December

December doesn’t usually entail much music for me because church work really kicks into gear. But this year, I’ve been working on bringing my pastoral self and my musician self together in some ways (which I only recently was reminded was actually one of my musical intentions for 2025!), and I recently tried out my first “song sermon.” I’ve done things like this before, weaving music through a preaching moment, but this is a more specific form that I’m enjoying. I used my song “What To Do for Christmas” in our Longest Night service of grief and consolation, and I’m about to start the new year with a song sermon using Brandi Carlile’s “Church and State.” I’m excited to see how this form of merging identities and creativities might grow in 2026.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MOVIE: I’ve somehow never seen a Knives Out movie, but I’d heard good things about Wake Up, Dead Man, and it did not disappoint. Fascinating plot, excellent characters and acting, and a slightly quirky whodunit tone that I loved.

2. TV: In a search for something creepy with a sapphic storyline, we came across The Haunting of Bly Manor. I haven’t seen Hill House yet, but I really enjoyed this one. It was very much a one-episode-a-night kind of thing to prevent nightmares, but a good watch.

3. GAME: My girlfriend found Paint Chip Poetry at a thrift store, and it’s a fun wordplay game with a few different ways to play. I actually wrote a poem I kind of like that’s starting to evolve into a new song, so we’ll see where that goes, and this may be a songwriting tool I can use in the future.

4. BOOK: My mom received a copy of Raymond MacDonald Alden’s children’s book Why the Chimes Rang when she was a child, and we’ve read it as a family every Christmas. I eventually found my own copy on eBay—note that newer editions of this story have completed different wording and language, which bothers me because I’ve heard the version from the 60s so many times!—and read it to my partner this year. It’s a heartwarming story about how compassion and humility always win out over wealth and power.

Here’s what’s in this month’s Substack:

1. celebrating the fact that The Night album is out everywhere!

2. dropping a sad Christmas song into the universe for the holidays and reflecting on the complexities it points to in our lives and in the world;

3. inviting you to a show coming up in January;

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

The Night is here!

I’m so excited that The Night has now been out in the world in its entirety for several weeks! If you haven’t already, you can listen to it everywhere. I’m so thankful to everyone who supported the making of this album in various ways, to Ethan Gingerich for his great engineering/mixing/mastering work, to Alice Jette for the beautiful album artwork and Sam Schumacher of Steel String Photography for experiments in moon portraits, to Fiona Burdette and Pat Lawrence for their instrumental talent, and to Martha Bassett as well as Fiona Burdette, Jessie Burdette, Maggie Clark, and Kayla Parker for their background vocals. I’m also very grateful to Dar Williams and the Writing a Song That Matters community for making space for these songs and this concept to incubate and develop, and to everyone who has supported in different ways, asked how things were going, reflected with me on metaphors of light and dark, and listened to and shared my music. I love you all and I hope you enjoy The Night.

Releasing a new original Christmas song

Because I can’t just let a new release chill for a minute before putting something else out, I’ve also just dropped a new holiday tune. Last year about this time, I put my freshly learned jazz guitar chords to use and wrote an original Christmas song. It’s a sad song that reflects on how different kinds of loss or change can leave us wondering what to do with the holidays.

I wrote this song thinking primarily about my grandfather, whose death in the fall of 2023 was the last domino in a gradual shift in the gravitational center of my family’s Christmas traditions. (The lyrics in the bridge are a nod to my grandfather’s annual practice after presents were opened of singing, to the tune of “Deck the Halls”: “Merry Christmas, everybody, you don’t always get everything you want,” which had new meaning that first Christmas without him.) That loss coincided with my divorce and some other challenges loved ones were facing, and suddenly long-standing rhythms around the holidays were up in the air.

And I know that for many people, the question of what to do for Christmas or any other special occasion is a recurrent uncertainty. I feel this most acutely this year in thinking about immigrant communities who have had family deported or are facing that prospect daily, about unhoused folks facing cold weather unusually early where I live, about the people of Ukraine and Sudan and Gaza (and remembering this invitation for Methodists to leave the second candle on the Advent wreath, the peace candle or the Bethlehem candle, unlit in solidarity with Palestinian Christians—which my congregation has done for 2 years, including at a Christmas in July service). This song doesn’t seek to resolve any of that but leaves space for grief, loss, and whatever else gets glossed over in the merry and bright of it all.

If any of that resonates, you may want to join me at my church’s Longest Night service at 6:30 p.m. on December 21, where we’ll hold space for grief at the holidays. “What To Do for Christmas” will make an appearance, and my friend Kelly Abbe will offer a sound bath and instrumental meditative music. And for the grievers, the criers, the bah-humbuggers, and the seasonally depressed, I’ve created a playlist of 25 sad/moody/off-kilter Christmas/holiday/winter songs, including this one, that you can check out here or below.

Come see me in Old Salem in January!

I have a show coming up on January 9! Come see me at the Muddy Creek Listening Room in Old Salem (at 626 S. Main St.). I’ve gotten to see some great songwriters here and am excited to be in this intimate space. You can get tickets here.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

I usually edit duplicate posts for my monthly email, and this time I accidentally left this segment intact from last month—here’s the update!

1. TV: The limited series The Beast in Me is intense, creepy, and a great watch if you can stomach violence. I love how the show blurs the line between heroes and villains, how it invites both its (more moral and courageous) characters and therefore us to reflect on how we are complicit in violence we don’t directly commit, and how (spoiler?? alert) it ends on a note of feminine solidarity. It also touches on some ethical themes around writing and criminal investigation. And Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys are great.

2. AUDIOBOOK: In preparation for the Advent series at my church, I’ve been doing some reading/listening. The resources we’re using for the season recommended Maryann McKibben Dana’s book Hope: A User’s Manual, and while my initial reaction was to roll my eyes (“Oh great, another self-help book about hope”), I was pretty quickly captured by Dana’s refusal of silver linings and willingness to hold hope and fear together. Written by an Episcopal priest, this book is broadly applicable but has its Christian-specific moments.

3. BOOK: The other book I’ve been reading for Advent is one I’ve picked up multiple times but haven’t yet tackled honestly—Obery Hendrix’s The Politics of Jesus. Hendrix examines the political and cultural context of Jesus’ time to help us better understand his life and teachings and to apply them to our own contemporary experiences of empire and oppression.

4. GAME: This is a new category for this segment! I know how to play chess but have never been good at it, and a while ago my girlfriend introduced me to No Stress Chess. If you are a good chess player, that name will feel like a serious misnomer, but I love it. Each turn, a player draws a card that tells them which piece to move, so you’re limited in what you can do and it introduces an element of chance into a strategy game. It’s a good way to learn chess if you’re new to it, or just to enjoy it without getting too serious about it.

Bonus: Meet Chonky the Tree!

I always get a real Christmas tree, and a few years ago, I started looking for trees in the 4-5’ range, not just in height but also in girth. This year, my partner and I found this, frankly, ugly tree and I immediately knew I wanted it. We’ve dubbed him Chonky and decorated him with vintage bubble lights and a chaotic assortment of ornaments.

Here’s what’s in this month’s Substack:

1. marking the recent release of the song “New Moon” and looking forward to the The Night album coming out in full on 11/7;

2. celebrating the listening party we made magical a few weeks ago;

3. sharing a demo of a new song reflecting on partnership through good and bad, in community;

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

“New Moon,” the second single from The Night album, is everywhere!

Just before the most recent new moon, I released the second single and final track off The Night album. “New Moon” is a moody meditation on the power of the moon, even in its darkest phase, and as I shared in last month’s post, both the song and the cover art (by Alice Jette) were inspired by a card from Charlie Claire Burgess’ Fifth Spirit tarot deck. The song was engineered, mixed, & mastered by Ethan Gingerich and features Fiona Burdette on cello and Pat Lawrence on bass, and I really love what Ethan did with some of the vocal production and mixing. There’s this cool trick we also used on my song “Dance It Out” where you whisper the lyrics and dub that over the singing—it’s very funny and awkward in the studio but is worth it for the effect in the end. Also, the bartender working the venue for the listening party said “That song slaps,” so I’m counting that as a positive review.

The entire album comes out this Friday, November 7, just after the next full moon. You can pre-save it now on Spotify and iTunes by clicking here.

Listening Party Reflections

I’m still feeling ALL the warm fuzzies from the listening party for The Night album! You all filled my local coffee shop not only with people but with an energy brimming with love, connection, and appreciation. The crowd was such a fun, weird (in the best way) cross-section of my life, with my parents and my brother and his partner coming up from Charlotte, a friend who lives in Chapel Hill stopping through on her way back from Asheville, church members showing up in support, friends from different groups, and even people I didn’t know who came with mutual friends just to be supportive. I think we created a pretty magical time together!

In case you missed it, here’s a summary of what happened: we gathered for a while and I invited folks to check out written descriptions of how each song on the album came to be as well as a little moon altar I had set with objects connected to my love for the dark and the night sky; I set the scene with a mini-monologue about how unoriginal it is to use the moon as a muse, weaving snippets of cover songs from a jazz standard to Neil Young to Death Cab for Cutie and more through reflections on the symbolism of dark and night—you can find all the songs I excerpted, and others that were suggested to me later, on this “Borrowed Light” Spotify playlist. My friend Cashavelly took this video of me transitioning from a Neko Case song to an REM classic:

Then we listened to The Night album front to back while I projected the album art (by the amazing Alice Jette) onto a screen. I’m proud that I kept the meat of the event under an hour, though folks did hang out longer!

I’m so thankful to everyone who came and to West Salem Public House for their hospitality. And my mom, who is an amazing photographer, took some really lovely photos. Importantly, she also brought me bread from the Italian restaurant where my family ate dinner before coming to the listening party, and one of the few photos I took was of the bread in her purse.

Together We Can Welcome It All In

When I set up the merch pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign for The Night, I included the option to commission me to write an original song. I wasn’t sure anyone would take me up on it, but one person did! It took me a few months for the ideas shared to percolate and for me to find/take the time to sit down and alchemize it all into music, but I finally wrote a song that I’m pretty happy with.

“Welcome It All In (Twilight)” is a love song from one partner to another, expressing both the particulars of their life experiences and the hope that together they can hold both joy and sorrow. It was a humbling process, being trusted with insight into vulnerable parts of their lives in this way. It was also musically fun to work on—the song began with straightforward cowboy chords, but once I started working on a jazzier sound, it opened up a totally different (and, I think, more suitable) tone, and I play with some progressions I don’t think I’ve ever used before.

The recording below is just a demo, roughly recorded at home, but I couldn’t resist adding some additional vocal parts at the end. I can envision this being performed live, with the audience joining in those echoes at the end—because in relationships, sometimes it’s important that the “we” include our broader communities of support, especially in times like these.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MUSIC: I’ve long been a Brandi Carlile fan, but I was not prepared for the emotional depth her latest project would deliver. Ever since the title track of her new album Returning To Myself came out, I’ve been both eagerly waiting for and sort of dreading the release of the full project. I say “dreading” because “Returning To Myself” and the second single, “War With Time,” are gutting, the third single “Church and State” was so timely, and I knew the album had more of that in store. This is some of Brandi’s best work, and I’m excited to keep delving into this new addition to her discography.

2. BOOK: I shared in last month’s Substack post how the Fifth Spirit tarot deck by Charlie Claire Burgess inspired both the song and the art for “New Moon.” I recently got their new book, Queer Devotion, and am enjoying both revisiting and discovering some binary-breaking perspectives on religion and spirituality.

3. MOVIE: On a recent vacation, my not-a-horror-fan girlfriend suggested we watch a scary movie together since it was close to Halloween. I opted for The Descent, the 2005 creature feature where the creatures don’t show up until more than halfway through, yet the movie is terrifying every step of the way. Spelunking will do that. The all-female cast was definitely a pro, and if you’ve seen the movie but haven’t read up on the alternate ending, it’s pretty interesting.

4. TV: I first saw Avatar: The Last Airbender years ago and recently have been finding it a good comfort/background rewatch. (Important note: I’m talking about the TV show, not the movie, which was so bad that I walked out of the theater muttering “M. Night Shyamalan is dead to me.”) This show has a ton of heart and weaves lore of different kinds of martial arts into practices of bending the elements—earth, fire, wind, water. I just love this show and was glad to revisit it after some time.

1. celebrating the release of “Thanks To the Night” this past Friday ahead of today’s Hunter’s Moon;

2. a reminder about this week’s pre-release listening party for The Night album this Thursday, October 9 in Winston-Salem;

3. updates on new merch (available at the listening party or online) tucked into some reflections on how art begets art;

4. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

“Thanks To the Night,” the lead single from The Night album, is out now!

Today is the Hunter’s Moon, the first full moon of autumn, and I marked the occasion a little early by releasing “Thanks To the Night,” the full moon track off The Night album, this past Friday. “Thanks To the Night” is a joyful anthem to childhood wonder, the gifts of the dark, and being unafraid. It was engineered, mixed, & mastered by Ethan Gingerich and features Fiona Burdette on cello, Pat Lawrence on bass, and a great crew of backup singers/shouters (Martha Bassett, Fiona Burdette, Jessie Burdette, Maggie Clark, & Kayla Parker). I’m thrilled with the single cover art, an original watercolor by Alice Jette that draws on imagery and themes in the song with a big, bright, full moon in the sky.

Come Hear The Night Album in Winston-Salem on October 9

On Thursday, October 9 @ 7:00 p.m., you’ll have the opportunity to hear The Night in full before it comes out. Rather than do an album release show, I’m electing to have a listening party so you can hear the actual recordings ahead of time. I hope you’ll join me at West Salem Public House on October 9—I’ll talk a little about the album, maybe play a relevant cover or two, and we’ll listen together through the not-quite-23-minute record with the lights out while we project the album and single art. (That’s the plan, anyway!) It should be a sweet time of art and connection, and I promise I won’t keep you out late on a school night. Hope to see you there!

Merch and how Art Begets Art

Y’all Substackers get to be the first to know: my online merch store is back up and running! I have some of the same items you saw in the merch pre-sale/crowdfunding for The Night, plus some new items, including CDs of the album (actual CDs, not just a pre-order!), art prints of the single art for “Thanks To the Night” and “New Moon,” and T-shirts—one featuring the album artwork on a black tee and one with lyrics from “Thanks To the Night” and that single art on a mauve tee, both locally DTG-printed at House of Rodan.

I will admit that it feels a little silly for me, a largely unknown musician, to have a whole merch store, but as I explained in this very silly video, I just love merch/swag/stuff. I make and offer things I would like having myself, and I try to get creative with merch without breaking the bank (hence these shirts are print-to-order, not made ahead of time in bulk).

But really, my love of merch is evidence of how much I enjoy the fact that art begets art. I suppose this idea is adjacent to that of multiplying creativities, which I explored in my August Substack post. But the idea that one piece of art can generate many more is all shot through The Night album. And I think it’s a timely reminder that we need to be receiving and appreciating art and creativity if we are to put anything beautiful into the world ourselves.

The album and single art for The Night is perhaps the most obvious example in this project of how art begets art. Before I even started recording, I sent rough demos of the songs to Alice Jette, a local artist I found through a neighborhood art swap. It turned out she had done art for musicians before, and some of the themes I named as central to The Night resonated with how she’d already been inspired and creating. And now these three beautiful pieces of visual art are living, breathing, and out there, art that was made because of and for my musical artistic expression.

In one instance, there’s a whole other layer of art begetting art. The single artwork for “New Moon” (which, if you wanna know a secret, comes out on October 17—you can pre-save it now!) is actually inspired not only by my song but by another piece of visual art that served as a prompt for the writing of the song. Charlie Claire Burgess’ Fifth Spirit Tarot is my go-to deck; I love its creative, inclusive, and queer illustrations and interpretations. At the songwriting retreat where I wrote most of The Night album, I flipped through the deck to find the major arcana card known as The Moon, since that was our retreat theme. And the visual of that card became the setting of the song “New Moon.”

When I decided to make that song a single and to have artwork done for it, I reached out to Charlie by email to ask if they’d be OK with me having Alice re-imagine their piece in her style and with a new rather than a full moon. Charlie’s response was so sweet—they wrote, in part, “I personally think it’s so magical when art inspires art. It’s like the art continues to live and grow!”

The more I think about it, the more I realize this album has SO many examples of art begetting art. Another many-layered one is the song “Just a Painting.” It is, of course, about Vincent Van Gogh and his painting The Starry Night. But because it’s me, the song is also about Don McLean’s song “Vincent” (of which “Just a Painting” is at best a grubby step-cousin) and about one of my favorite episodes of the BBC television series Doctor Who—“Vincent and the Doctor,” season 5, episode 10.

Art matters. Even and especially now, art matters. Last week I was inspired by videos coming from the Global Sumud Flotilla, particularly a boat carrying several singer-songwriters who were part of the effort to bring aid to Gaza. I watched them sing and play guitar in the days leading up to their and most of the rest of the flotilla’s interception by Israel in international waters, and I was moved by how their work was about both meeting basic human needs—food, water, safety—and uplifting the “luxuries” of art, music, and creativity on behalf of a people under siege and in a world that is weary of bad news (but so rarely able or willing to avert it). And now we need to be contacting our representatives and working for the release of those detained so that their art and activism can continue to live and grow—there’s an easy way to email representatives on the flotilla’s website, linked above.

Today marks the Hunter’s Moon, October’s full moon, and in a rare occurrence, it’s also the Harvest Moon, the first full moon of autumn. If you listen to “Thanks To the Night” in the coming days, consider what you’ve been told you should be afraid of and why—and see what art might shine through the cracks and make more of itself in and through us all.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TINY DESK: I’ve watched MUNA’s Tiny Desk concert countless times since it came out a little over 2 years ago. The other night, I showed it to my girlfriend and fell in love with the songs and performance all over again. Check it out for beautiful live renditions of “Loose Garment,” “Stay Away,” and “Silk Chiffon” (what I affectionately call their yeehaw version, which I so wish they’d release!).

2. BOOK: I think adults need to read more children’s books. Recently, a friend pointed me to Cori Doerrfeld’s The Rabbit Listened. It’s a beautiful illustration of how to be present with someone in a tough moment (and, if you’re of a Judeo-Christian persuasion, it’s a pretty good companion to the second chapter of the book of Job). Plus, you may or may not notice that the human protagonist, Taylor, is never gendered in the book, which I kind of love.

3. SONG: I met singer-songwriter Laura Boswell at Folk Alliance International last year, and she recently put out her song “Homeland,” written after Hurricane Helene devastated her and my native North Carolina. The anniversary of Helene has impacted people in a variety of ways, and this song offers a portal to pain and hope for all those affected then and still.

4. POETRY: I’d been generally aware of Andrea Gibson’s poetry for many years before their recent death, but I never really got into it—which seems a little odd to me, as I’ve often made reading poetry a regular rhythm, and surely Gibson’s themes should resonate with me. But honestly? I think some of their work felt a little too tender for me to approach head-on. Since their passing, I’ve ordered a few of their poetry collections, and while I haven’t opened them up myself yet, my girlfriend has read a couple poems to me and played some of Gibson’s recordings for me. I’m hoping we’ll watch Come See Me in the Good Light together when it comes out next month.

1. info on a pre-release listening party for The Night album on October 9;

2. reflections on grief, who and what gets silenced, my newest tattoo, and using our voices;

3. a reminder to listen to my latest single, “Summer Song,” if you haven’t already;

4. an invitation to a show in September (not mine but something very cool!);

5. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Come Hear The Night Album in Winston-Salem on October 9

On Thursday, October 9 @ 7:00 p.m., you’ll have the opportunity to hear The Night in full before it comes out. Rather than do an album release show, I’m electing to have a listening party so you can hear the actual recordings ahead of time. I hope you’ll join me at West Salem Public House on October 9—I’ll talk a little about the album, maybe play a relevant cover or two, and we’ll listen together through the not-quite-23-minute album with the lights out while we project the album and single art. If all goes as planned, one single will already be out, with another on the way and a full album release date ahead in early November. At the listening party (and online by then), I’ll have merch available—definitely album and single art prints (previews below!), reflection mini-decks, and stickers, plus hopefully CDs and t-shirts…and in general, I’m hoping it’ll be a fun time. Hope to see you there!

On Grief, Silence, Tattoos, and Using Our Voices

It’s been a hard week. Yesterday would have been my friend and colleague Helen Ryde’s 60th birthday, but they died unexpectedly in their home last week. Helen was a well-loved advocate for LGBTQIA+ inclusion and intersectional justice in the United Methodist Church and beyond, and their death was a shock and a great loss on many levels. If you’re interested, you can read more about their life and legacy here.

I traveled to western North Carolina a few days ago for Helen’s memorial service, and that time held the predictable mix of emotions that comes with seeing beloved friends for a truly awful reason. After the service, a couple of us decided to go get tattoos, if not necessarily in Helen’s memory, at least as an act of grief and community.

I chose to get a tattoo I’d been thinking about for a while, this little sketch of a person screaming. I’ve used it on some of my Emorie Hush merch, and it’s funny to me to realize that for some of you, that may be the primary reference for this image (including my sweet friends who surprised me by wearing custom shirts made with it to a full band show I played last year).

The sketch is actually a Buffy the Vampire Slayer deep cut. It comes from Season 4, Episode 10, “Hush,” a truly iconic episode not just of Buffy but of television in general. The episode stands out for being almost entirely silent as our main characters (sometimes called The Scoobies) try to defeat the fairytale creatures known as “The Gentlemen,” who come to town and steal everyone’s voices.

In the show’s monster-of-the-week episodes, the Scoobies usually do some research and then share their findings about whatever threat they’re facing, but with their voices gone, they have to get creative with how they report back. Rupert Giles, the librarian, pulls out an overhead projector (and a boom box for some musical effects) to write and draw his explanation. The scene is actually pretty funny and worth the 3-minute watch (here).

In the fairytale that tells these monsters’ origin story, The Gentlemen are only defeated when the princess gets her voice back and lets out a scream (illustrated in my tattoo, visible in the video linked above around the 2:10 mark). In the TV episode, Buffy has to get her voice back in order to stop The Gentlemen from harvesting 7 human hearts for their macabre intentions.

It’s always a good time to think about who’s being silenced. Just this week, as discourse swirls around the killing of Charlie Kirk (and folks on both sides of the aisle disappoint me with their anemic understandings of what constitutes political violence), we’re seeing a variety of knee-jerk reactions around what can and can’t be said or felt, particularly by people on the margins.

Then, too, fear is threatening to silence trans folks and Black folks as rhetoric around trans mass shooters and threats to HBCUs in the wake of Kirk’s death heighten the already very real danger to these groups. And many have pointed out the hypocrisy of those rushing to condemn Kirk’s killing while never having condemned the political violence enacted in structural ways in our country, not to mention in Gaza and beyond—a different kind of silence.

I’m not here to offer another hot take on Charlie Kirk. I am here to lift up the immense grief and anger so many are feeling systemically and personally and to wonder how we use our voices to defeat whatever kills and silences. I say “wonder,” because I don’t have a real answer. Sometimes the only thing we can do with our voices is lament. But I believe that, too, is a worthy act.

I took my stage name from a family inside joke, after my great-grandmother. The upshot is that the name Emorie Hush is an intentional subversion of the ways people, in this case women, have been and are silenced, whether by suppression or grief or simply by being drowned out. It’s a reminder to me and to us that our voices have power, and we should use them—and use them responsibly. I’m still figuring out how, and music is one medium I’m using to explore that.

How are you using your voice? How are you being silenced? When and where are you choosing silence, for better or worse? How might you be participating in the silencing of others, whether intentionally or not?

Have You Listened to Summer Song?

“Summer Song,” the top (only?) contender for the yet-to-be-introduced Grammy category Most Romantic Song To Mention Bug Spray In The Chorus, is available everywhere. You’ll want to send it to your crush with “this could be us” and an invitation on a camping trip. The cover art is an image of the ace of cups, a tarot card symbolizing new love and relationships as well as the start of summer—just in time for summer to end (or, if you live in North Carolina like I do, to wade through the daily confusion of whether fall is here yet or not, which is what we do this time of year).

An Upcoming Show (Not Mine)

I don’t have any Emorie Hush shows on the calendar until March 2026 (working on it!), but I want to extend an invitation to a show I’m excited to be playing as part of a band. Cashavelly is holding a special, intimate show at Camel City Playhouse on Saturday, September 27, marking both the 10th anniversary of her first album, The Kingdom Belongs to a Child, and the 1st anniversary of her fourth and most recent album, Meditation Through Gunfire (which I got to play the album release show for last year). There are only 75 tickets available, so get yours now and plan to join us.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TV: I kept hearing about Arcane and finally started watching it with my girlfriend, who got a few episodes in on her own and then realized I’d probably enjoy it. She was right! It’s an animation style I’ve not watched a lot of, but between the visuals, the storyline, and more, it’s such an immersive and evocative world. I’m still early in season 1 but am very invested in Vi’s and Powder/Jinx’s narrative arcs and everything else unfolding in the social and personal dimensions of the story and all the lore we’re slowly uncovering along with the characters.

2. BOOK: It’s been an audiobook month for me, and one listen I’m nearly done with is the novel James by Percival Everett. The premise alone is deeply compelling—a retelling of the classic Huckleberry Finn story from the perspective of Jim (James), the enslaved man in Mark Twain’s original. It’s been on my list for a while, and the anti-racism team at my church is hosting a discussion of the book this Sunday, so I was grateful for the prompt to follow up on my intention to read it.

3. MUSIC: As with last month, the musical artist I’m featuring here is one I learned about through playing on The Martha Bassett Show. Grace Pettis was a guest on our most recent show in Elkin, and her powerhouse vocals, excellent songwriting, and personable nature endeared her to me immediately. I’ve since listened a good bit to her album Down to the Letter, especially the boppy little anthem “I Take Care of Me Now.” And we in the show’s house band enjoyed joining her on “Joy” and “Working Woman” live!

4. BOOK: Like I said, it’s been an audiobook month, and the other one I’ve been listening to is the queer romance novel Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner. It took me way too long to recognize shared traits between the main characters and me and my girlfriend, afnd I got weirdly weepy when late in the book they started talking about neurodivergence in ways that intersect with my own journey of self-awareness—but on the whole, it’s been a fun, unapologetically queer, sexy read, which I love.

1. musings on how creativity can multiply in beautiful ways and some questions I’m asking myself about what that might mean for organizing and resistance;

2. a pre-save link for a surprise single, “Summer Song,” that comes out next Friday!

3. reflections on recording The Night album and some vague notions about release timing;

4. an invitation to a show in September (not mine but something very cool!);

5. and my monthly segment, Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Some Disorganized Thoughts on Creativity and Resistance

Creativity has always been important to me, whether in music, in my work in the church, or just in everyday life and rhythms of self-care. Often if I’m feeling in a funk, I’ll check to see whether I’m consuming more than I’m creating, and if that’s what’s happening, I’ll try to put down my phone or turn off the TV and make something. I can get caught up in perfectionism at times, so music isn’t always the medium I turn to for that kind of thing—sometimes it’s better for me to engage in a random craft I’m not very good at (and not trying to be very good at) so that my creative side can play without the pressure of performance.

My girlfriend does pottery, which is one of the things I thought was really cool about her when we first met (as my therapist said when I told him, “Artists are hot”). She makes beautiful and functional things—please enjoy this incredible moon bowl she made, which will be the centerpiece of Emorie Hush merch tables especially with The Night album coming out—but she also makes silly things, cutesy things, slightly inappropriate things. Lately I’ve been making pottery with her sometimes, and it’s been really fun both to share in something that’s important to her and to find a new way to express my own creativity. I discovered I like making little critters out of clay—like this orca air plant holder, tiny snake coil bowl, and mushroom with a snail on it.

Dabbling in pottery even returned me to a form of low-stakes creativity I hadn’t engaged with in a while: macrame. Back during the pandemic, I made a gazillion plant hangers that I still find tucked unused in random corners of my house. This time, my foray into macrame started when a pottery piece my girlfriend made to hang on a wall cracked, making it too fragile to hang by a nail, so I made a macrame holder for it. See if you can recognize the design that technically isn’t safe for work but about which you can plead ignorance if you need to (sorry not sorry).

The other day, my girlfriend was commenting on how fun it’s been to make things together. She said it’s like my creativity combines with her creativity to make a whole new kind of creativity. I love that—together, we make things that neither of us could or would have made on our own, bouncing ideas and different perspectives off one another in generative ways. We’re hoping to explore this further at the intersections of my songwriting and her experience working with kids.

The idea of our creativities multiplying and making something new got me reflecting on whether it’s a microcosm of something we might need more of in community life, in organizing, and in resistance. As I type this, my mind is spinning with the news of federal troops in the streets of Washington DC, the killing by Israel of Anas Al-Sharif and other journalists in Gaza City while the enclave starves, the Supreme Court challenge to Obergefell v. Hodges that threatens the right to same-sex marriage, devastating cuts in my local public school system amid a massive budget crisis, the fear that continues to proliferate in queer and trans communities, immigrant communities, Black and brown communities, and more. It feels overwhelming and impossible because it is.

One temptation I’ve seen and felt is to focus, to pick a cause and drill down on addressing it, filtering out anything else. There is wisdom to setting priorities, but as my church leadership has wrestled with this in reflecting on how to show up in this moment in history, I’ve cautioned us against narrowing our attention to one or two marginalized groups or issues. Humans simply do not fall into such neat categories, and differing oppressions are always intertwined. We only get free together.

I get it, though—we’re worried that if we try to follow and respond to every problem that comes up, we’ll dilute our efforts. And there is a danger of expending all our energy in the outrage cycle of endless bad headlines and threats to human rights and dignity. But there’s a scarcity mindset underlying that approach, and it often overlooks the resources found in building broader community and leaning into partnerships. And I wonder if the lesson of creativities multiplying can apply here—can my passion, rage, hope, and skills in one area connect with someone else’s in a way that makes a bigger impact even than the basic sum of our efforts? How can we lean into the strengths and stories of one community and align them with other groups’ different strengths and stories to multiply resistance, care, and impact?

I see the glimmers of potential answers in my community, in organizing efforts and mutual aid circles and, yes, in expressions of joy and play, big and small. These, too, matter, even and especially in the midst of despair and terror. They may be harder to access, and it’s easy to overly romanticize the whole “joy is an act of resistance” sentiment (I’m reminded of and convicted by this satirical headline on the topic), but at its core this statement is, I believe, a very toothy truth about refusal, humanity, and connection—and how we need joy, play, and creativity to connect and to fuel our resistance.

Surprise Single Alert! Pre-Save “Summer Song” Now

While in the studio recording The Night, we had a little extra time, so I decided to record a song I’d had in my back pocket for a few months and which needed only sparse instrumentation (which ended up including a vibraphone, an instrument I’d never played until I recorded on it for this song—a classic Sarah move). I wrote “Summer Song” back in April, after going camping with my now-girlfriend in the very early days of getting to know each other. If they ever introduce a Grammy category for Most Romantic Song To Mention Bug Spray In The Chorus, I’ve got that award in the bag. “Summer Song” comes out next Friday, August 22, and you can pre-save it now on your platform of choice by visiting this link. You’ll want to send it to your crush with “this could be us” and an invitation on a camping trip. The cover art is an image of the ace of cups, a tarot card symbolizing new love and relationships as well as the start of summer—just in time for summer to end (or, if you live in North Carolina like I do, for summer to come back around after the deliciously deceptive “false fall” we just experienced).

Reflections on Recording The Night

Of course, I wasn’t in the studio just to record “Summer Song”—we got a whole album tracked, and I’m excited to share that aside from some vocals I’m about to go back in to redo, The Night is in the bag! I had a lot of fun planning and preparing for recording, and although I was super nervous, that just melted away after a rehearsal with Pat Lawrence (bass) and Fiona Burdette (cello), the two instrumentalists I brought in for the record. They’re both brilliant musicians and brought my songs to life beyond what I had hoped and imagined.

I’m especially excited for y’all to hear some of Fiona’s Ben Sollee-esque cello playing—let’s just say there’s a reason I planned studio time around her being back in town from Connecticut, where she now lives! We recorded in Ethan Gingerich’s studio, and he’s always great to work with. I play guitar and piano on most of the songs as well as singing, and I got to have Martha Bassett add some harmony vocals, with Fiona joining her for a fun echo part on one song. We also did a little gang vocals session on the last day of recording, where friends Jessie Burdette, Maggie Clark, and Kayla Parker joined myself, Martha, and Fiona—it was super fun and they sounded great! (Even on the yelling parts, previewed here.)

Once I punch up some of my vocal parts, Ethan will mix and master the album, and I’m looking ahead to a release schedule this fall. Right now, the plan is to put out two lead singles, one around a full moon and one around a new moon, with the album coming out near the following full moon—tentatively that’ll happen in October-November, but stay tuned for more specifics. I’m also planning to hold a listening party before the full album comes out so that folks can hear it ahead of time, so I’ll announce that date as soon as it’s confirmed. I’m planning to reboot my online store around the time I start releasing singles, so you’ll have the chance again to buy things like album art and mini-decks, but there will be some new items as well.

Most importantly, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has supported The Night album so far, whether pre-buying merch, donating toward recording costs, or simply cheering me on in the process. It all means SO much to me, and I really hope you like the album—I’m pretty proud of how it’s shaping up.

An Upcoming Show (Not Mine)

I don’t have any Emorie Hush shows on the calendar until March 2026 (working on it!), but I want to extend an invitation to a show I’m excited to be playing as part of a band. Cashavelly is holding a special, intimate show at Camel City Playhouse on Saturday, September 27, marking both the 10th anniversary of her first album, The Kingdom Belongs to a Child, and the 1st anniversary of her fourth and most recent album, Meditation Through Gunfire (which I got to play the album release show for last year). There are only 75 tickets available, so get yours now and plan to join us.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MOVIE: For the last several summers, my church has done a movie series where we watch kid-friendly movies on Wednesday nights and then tie in themes from each into the following Sunday’s worship and sermon. Several of our movies this year were new to me, including Moana 2. I like this a lot, not least because it has themes of solidarity and how cross-cultural organizing is a threat to the powers that be…and, you know, it’s fun and funny too.

2. BOOK: Joanna Lowell is a local writer I’ve known for a while as a human, and a few years ago I got into her romance novels and have been obsessed ever since. Her latest release, A Rare Find, is a queer enemies-to-lovers tale involving archaeology, buried treasure, and gender nonconformity, and I am loving it.

3. MUSIC: I discovered Annie Stokes’ music as I do so many artists’—when they come on the Martha Bassett Show as a guest. Annie released a new album in April and just came back on the show last week for a second time, and her song Twenty Three in particular is a coming-of-age bop that I love.

4. TV: Recently, we put The Great Pottery Throw Down on in the background while doing pottery (fitting, right?). I didn’t really pay attention at first, but soon it hooked me, and I love seeing the potters’ creativity, technique, successes and failures, and getting invested in their individual personalities and journeys. A very soothing and enjoyable watch.

Anyway, the moon is in waxing gibbous, approaching Thursday’s full moon, which is relevant to my music—here’s what’s ahead in this month’s Substack:

1. an update on recording plans for The Night album, and a boost for the final days of the merch pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign (which is SO close to meeting its goal before the next full moon!);

2. an invitation to a songwriter’s circle in in Greensboro this coming Sunday afternoon;

3. a rough recording of a new song I wrote after saying goodbye to my soul dog Crash;

4. and my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

The Latest on The Night Album

Turns out I’m pretty terrible at running a crowdfunding campaign—please enjoy this self-deprecating video I made after the stumbling start to The Night album merch pre-sale!—but I’ve had a good response to early offerings of album art prints, stickers, downloads, moon portraits (see above for one example, shot by Sam of Steel String Photography!), and especially The Night mini-deck, which I’m particularly excited about/is probably the most unique item I’m offering. The pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign runs through this Thursday, July 10, and I’m SO close to my goal of $2,500—if you haven’t already donated or gotten something fun, click here (I promise this link works!) to do so.

After Thursday, I’ll assess which items will be back at a permanent spot on my Emorie Hush online store and which might be exclusive to the pre-sale. I’ll warn any vinyl lovers that I’m nowhere near a critical mass of orders to make those worth pressing, so if you for some reason just NEED The Night on vinyl, uh, go order a couple hundred or something. :)

I’m very excited to have studio days on the calendar NEXT WEEK, which means I’m working on arrangement ideas and trying to prep as much as I can.

Show This Sunday, July 13!

This coming Sunday, July 13 @ 4:00 p.m. I’ll be at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, joining Kristy Jackson and Vicki Genfan for the 37th edition of Songwriters @ Scup. I’m told we each get in about 6 rounds, so I’m taking requests as I make my setlist, and I’d love to see you there.

A Song for Crash, or Any Grief

Last month, I shared that I had just said goodbye to my best dog of ten years, Crash, and that I was trying to write a song for him. Well, I somehow succeeded, and in a way that tickled my songwriter brain (which perhaps made it feel a little less raw)—I intentionally crafted a song that both speaks to specifics of adjusting to life without a dog, and which I think could apply to many other experiences of loss or grief. Here’s a rough recording of “Lost at Sea.”

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. TV: I hadn’t watched a medical drama in a while, but several people recommended The Pitt and I finally got into it. It’s 15 episodes set over the course of one 15-hour shift in an underfunded emergency department, and I’ve been enjoying it (and also crying some). One thing that struck me is that the mass casualty event—because is it a medical drama if there isn’t one of those?—is something that feels entirely too realistic as something that could happen anywhere.

2. MOVIE: Not long after my girlfriend learned I’d never seen the 1996 movie The Birdcage, she sat me down to fix that. I found the comedy, about a cabaret owner (Robin Williams) and his drag queen partner (Nathan Lane, who, importantly to my millennial brain, is the voice of Timon in The Lion King) pretending to be straight to impress their son’s fiancee’s uptight, conservative parents, very funny and charming, even if the premise is a bit sad when you think about it and there were definitely a few 90s phrases that startled me to hear in 2025.

3. MUSIC: My church did Christmas in July this past Sunday, which meant I got to do some unseasonal decorating last week. To get in the mood, I put on Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas, which I adore and commend to anybody.

Everything is on fire,

but everyone I love is doing beautiful things

and trying to make life worth living,

and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,

but I believe in that.

It’s another month without a super deep reflection to share, but in the spirit of Gill’s words, carry on for…

1. an invitation to support my to-be-recorded concept album The Night through a merch pre-sale/crowdfunding effort;

2. reflections on the incredible show I played with the Martha Bassett Band and the Piedmont Wind Symphony, featuring beautiful arrangements by David Huang Mailman of 3 of my original songs;

3. an invitation to a songwriter’s circle in in Greensboro in July;

4. and my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Support The Night Album

In January 2025, I participated in an online songwriting retreat (hosted by the amazing Dar Williams & friends) where the theme was “The Moon.” The daily prompts led me to write four new songs, all of which, to my surprise, I actually liked. And while they were all different, there were common thematic threads: the sacred dark, the gifts of the night, childhood wonder, beauty and grief.

After the retreat, I continued to work on these new songs and revisited some older ones with resonant imagery. A semi-cohesive whole began to emerge: a 9-track album (with 6 full songs & 3 musical interludes), each track corresponding to a phase of the moon. I’ve been developing the concept, test-driving songs at live shows, and reaching out to fellow musicians and local visual artists to help realize the vision for this album.

This is The Night album, and I would love for you to help me record and release it.

(I shared a little more about the backstory for The Night in last month’s Substack, in case you missed it.)

On Wednesday, June 11, the time of the Strawberry Moon, I will launch a merch pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign with the goal of raising $2,500 for The Night album. This campaign will run for just under one month, until the Buck Moon on Thursday, July 10. And, if you’re reading my Substack, you can access the campaign early by clicking here.

$2,500 is, as you might guess, less than this project will cost in total. I set that target amount in part because it felt achievable and in part because I have a full-time job and am committed to investing my own resources in my music. The goal of this merch pre-sale/crowdfunding is partly to defray the cost of production, recording, and merch, and partly to invite you all to participate in this process. Most of this money will be going directly to other local creatives—musicians, visual artists, my recording engineer. I’m running this all DIY, with no crowdfunding platform, so the link to this campaign will go to what will eventually become the store page of my Emorie Hush website. You can choose unique merch to pre-purchase, and there are a handful of bigger perks and the option to give any amount toward the project.

A lot of what you can pre-order will involve going on faith for now, but soon I will start sharing actual previews of some of the merch. Depending on how the next month goes, a number of these items will likely show up for purchase again at a later date along with other goodies that aren’t yet available, but some things will be unique to this campaign. I’ve tried to be thoughtful about curating merch that folks will actually want and am happy to take feedback and ideas for the future.

I’m inviting you into this effort with a deeply felt tension around the fact that we are living in strange and unstable times, to say the least. Maybe your money is going to support causes that feel not just important but life or death in this political moment, or to simply getting by. If a musician’s crowdfunding campaign doesn’t feel like a priority right now, I completely understand. And, I know that art matters more, not less, in times of social and political upheaval, and that all I can do is ask. You can also support my music by listening, telling your friends, coming to shows, and sharing on social media—all of that matters more than you know.

Thank you in advance for your love and support. I’m excited about this project, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Sweet Symphony

I still haven’t recovered from May 31, when I joined the Martha Bassett Band in a special collaboration with the Piedmont Wind Symphony. The program was eclectic and entertaining, and it included arrangements of 3 of my original songs for wind symphony by the amazing David Huang Mailman. It was thrilling and humbling to play “Hot Pepper Queen,” “Ain’t I a Woman?” and especially “The Plow” with such a huge group of talented musicians. You can access the livestream recording above, and the selections are marked with timestamps throughout if you want to see and hear a specific song.

Upcoming Show

I’m looking forward to joining the July edition of Songwriters @ Scup, held every second Sunday at 4pm at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro—check out that series, which always has a great lineup, and come see me July 13.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MUSIC: I first met Heather Maloney more than a decade ago when she performed as part of a concert series that Martha Bassett and I started (pre-The Martha Bassett Show!); Heather has since been a guest on TMBS several times and was back last week touring for her album Exploding Star. This is a grief album, a powerful witness to her processing the death of her father, and we got to have a great conversation backstage about the ability of music and art to give us safe spaces to feel the scariest feelings and meet others in their grief and sorrow. When it came out, I got obsessed with the song “Familiar Face,” with how it offers no resolution or comfort but a stark—yet beautiful—depiction of the loneliness of loss.

2. MUSIC: My girlfriend recently introduced me to mama nous, who writes “cool songs for kind kids (of all ages!).” Her songs are often repetitive with mantras about handling feelings and relationships, and while they’re written for kids, they’re great for adults too. If you need a soothing musical companion for (re)parenting others or yourself, check it out. I particularly love “worrying has never changed a thing,” “ocean of emotions,” and “bully brain.”

3. MOVIE: Every summer for the last few years, my church has done a movie series where we watch a family-friendly movie together on Wednesday nights, and then themes from the movie inform the preaching and worship the following Sunday. We’ve got our lineup ready for this summer, so I’m working through some of the movies I haven’t seen yet, including Frozen 2. I had heard good things about it, and I get why—there’s a lot to unpack there around colonialism, family, and more! Plus there’s an adorable little salamander guy I just love.

In Memory of Crash

To end on a bit of a sad personal note—this past weekend, I made the decision to put down my soul dog, Crash, who I’d had for over a decade and whose physical and neurological state had been deteriorating for some time. It was hard and right and my house feels very quiet and empty. I’m trying to write him a song, but I get the feeling it might take a while, and that’s OK.

1. a pre-introduction to my to-be-recorded album The Night, and why I think the themes and content of this collection of songs matter in this political moment;

2. a reminder to check out the live video of my song “Star Chamber,” and a fun interaction at a show that came from it;

3. a rough recording of a happy song I wrote recently, because that’s a thing that’s been happening;

4. info on two upcoming shows—a symphony gig (!!) and a songwriter’s circle in July;

5. and my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

I’ve Never Been Afraid of the Dark

In January 2025, I participated in an online songwriting retreat (hosted by the amazing Dar Williams & friends) where the theme was “The Moon.” I wrote my first complete song on the first evening of the retreat, winding my way through a series of suspended chords I’ve always loved in the key of E and ending up with what I plan to make the lead single of a new album I’m calling simply The Night.

That first song (of four I would write that weekend, birthing the idea for this album), “Thanks to the Night,” pulls threads of childhood and more recent experiences related to the gifts of the night and how, while my anxiety brain is afraid of many things, I’ve never been afraid of the dark. From a memory of learning about and creating triboluminescence (the effect by which crushing certain kinds of candy causes their crystals to emit light) as a kid, to a camping trip where my headlamp caught the reflection of some unidentified passing creatures’ eyes in the dark (much to my fellow campers’ dismay and my delight), to the surreal experience of seeing the Northern Lights with my own eyes by the side of the road in Weston, Missouri last fall, this song reminds me and tells others that there is beauty in the dark that daylight can never offer.

Sometimes when introducing this song, I name the way we often use “light” and “dark” as synonyms for “good” and “bad”—how that’s all well and good until those categories get mapped on to skin color. In recent years, I’ve aimed to tread more cautiously with metaphors like these as part of a commitment to anti-racism in my ministry and life. It’s not that it’s never OK to use these ideas—one of my go-to song lyrics in recent months comes from Crys Matthews’ song “Sleeves Up” when she sings, “It’s a little darker now, but that’s all right / It makes it easier to gather up the light.” That’s powerful. There is power in the poetry and reality of darkness and light.

And, I think it can be important to challenge the moralization that can emerge from a non-critical application of these categories. At the very least, it’s good for us to diversify our language for and engagement with qualities of light and dark. This is far from a new idea—from the sacred nature of St. John of the Cross’ dark night of the soul to Howard Thurman’s The Luminous Darkness to last Advent’s focus on The Holy Dark from Cole Arthur Riley of Black Liturgies, and much, much more, the idea of the dark as wholly bad or frightening has never gone unexamined.

In a political moment when Black and Brown people are being erased, dismissed, and degraded through official policy in addition to ongoing systemic injustice; when racial profiling is taking precedence over due process especially for immigrant communities; when white Christian nationalism is taking front and center in the places of power and influence in our nation and in the world—it matters that we tend to these metaphors and how they shape our imaginations and realities. And these days, I’m into seeking the less obvious and sometimes marginalized sources of beauty, wisdom, and wonder in the natural world and in the people around me.

I’m working on plans to record The Night this summer and hope you’ll stay tuned for ways to support and participate in the process of making this album.

ICYMI: Watch the Video for “Star Chamber”

In case you missed it, our video project featuring a live performance of my song “Star Chamber” went live a few weeks ago for National Park Week! The song is about a trip I took to Mammoth Cave National Park, and The Ramkat and Karbon Workshop teamed up to film and release a video in support of public lands, parks, and the rangers and staff who steward them. Check the video out, and while you’re there, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

A fun addendum: at last week’s songwriter circle, one audience member told me she found me through this video and that she used to work at Mammoth Cave—and she brought me a beautiful piece of artwork depicting Star Chamber! Thanks Missy, you totally made my night, it was great to meet you.

I’ve Been Writing Happy Songs (?!)

A funny moment at this month’s songwriter’s circle had to do with the prevalence of sad songs in the singer-songwriter genre. The other artists on the bill (Spencer Ayscue and Sarah Sophia) each have quite the roster of sad songs, and while I am usually firmly in that camp, I’ve been writing happy songs lately. When I confessed this on mic and started to introduce one of these new songs, Sarah Sophia literally booed me, which was hilarious (and 100% something I would have done in her shoes).

The story behind the song I played goes like this: about a month ago, I went on a date, and I knew I liked this person when she mentioned she’d never been to a North Carolina beach and I immediately thought, “I want to take you to the beach.” Since that’s not a very chill thing to say on a first date, I went home and wrote a song about it instead (which was arguably even less chill). Long story short, she’s my girlfriend now, she did eventually hear the song, and we’re going to the Outer Banks later this month. Here’s a rough recording of “Take You To The Beach.”

Upcoming Shows

On May 31, I’ll be on this special Southern Harmony show with the Martha Bassett Band and the Piedmont Wind Symphony—and a couple of my original songs are on the docket for wind arrangements! I am SO EXCITED to be part of this really special show and to hear some of my work presented in this way. Please come join us at Wait Chapel on Wake Forest University’s campus in Winston-Salem if you’re around on the 31st.

Looking further ahead, I’m on deck to join the July edition of Songwriters @ Scup, held every second Sunday at 4pm at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro—check out that series, which always has a great lineup, and come see me July 13.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. BOOK: Everything Is Tuberculosis has been on my TBR since before it was published, what with infectious disease being one of my special interests (and being a fan of John Green). Especially since my song “Star Chamber” references tuberculosis (because even Mammoth Cave is, as it turns out, tuberculosis), I was motivated to get into it, so I now own a hard copy and am listening to the book on audio (read by the author). It’s a fascinating book and a real indictment of the health inequities in our world that make this treatable disease still so deadly.

2. MUSIC: I’ve been a fan of Olivia Ellen Lloyd since she was first a guest on the Martha Bassett Show years ago, and she recently returned for a third time and we got to back her up on the title track of her new album Do It Myself. I love this record and have had several of the singles on repeat, from “Every Good Man” (“behind every good man, there’s a woman who’s tired”) to the instant classic “You,” to, yes, “Do It Myself,” and it was a thrill to hear and see those songs and more live.

3. BOOK: I got obsessed with Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn series years ago—I tell people it’s for Harry Potter fans who aren’t TERFs (“Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”) and who want to see a Black female protagonist in action—and the third book, Oathbound, came out this spring. I’m finally getting into it after a busy season without much reading time and am so excited to see what happens. These books bring Arthurian legend together with deep wrestlings around race and the legacy of slavery in America, all with a hefty dose of magic, queer visibility, and suspense—all set in North Carolina, which is very fun.

Carry on for:

1. info on (and a preview of) a live video project of my original song “Star Chamber” recorded and set to be released for National Park Week;

2. some cool things for your calendar, including 2 songwriter rounds I’m playing in;

3. my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently;

4. and, if you get all the way to the end, a photo of me in gender-bending Spike-from-Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer attire.

A Hole in the Ground in the Middle of Nowhere Kentucky

A few weeks ago, I gathered with some friends at The Ramkat in the middle of the day on a Saturday, not for a matinee show (though we need more of those!) but to film a video. Not a traditional music video shoot, this was an effort to capture a live performance of my song “Star Chamber” with some audience participation.

The project came about because Richard Emmett, co-owner of The Ramkat, is the Program Director for the Blue Ridge Music Center, part of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. He had been in conversation about ways they could uplift positive messages about national parks, public lands, and the staff that steward them in order to counteract the negativity and discouragement stemming from DOGE cuts and other policy changes that threaten national parks and forests (among many other things).

So when, at the March show at Gas Hill, I introduced my song about a visit to Mammoth Cave National Park with a comment that it didn’t feel political when I wrote it but it did now—because the song would not exist without the great park rangers I followed on tours of the cave (one of whom used the charming phrase “a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere Kentucky” to refer to the longest cave on earth)—the gears started turning.

Since I haven’t recorded the song (YET), Richard got our mutual friend Mike Bennett and his wife Jill from Karbon Workshop to come film a live performance of the song with a small crowd singing along on the chorus. It’s a weird little song—wordy verses about the history and geology of the cave that reference (1) my parks passport, (2) how the cave’s history intersects with the history of slavery and tuberculosis (because Everything Is Tuberculosis), (3) how the history of slavery and tuberculosis intersected with each other inside the cave, and (4) a bridge that genuinely makes me a little weepy because learning about underground rivers really did alter my brain chemistry and how I relate to the ground beneath my feet. Oh, and a very sing-a-long-y chorus. Here’s a preview clip:

We’re putting it out into the world for National Park Week (April 19-27) and hope you’ll watch and support our national parks and public lands—subscribe to my YouTube channel or check my social media for the shareable link soon. And stay tuned, because the plan is for “Star Chamber” to be part of a recording project this year. Until then…

Two Upcoming Songwriters’ Rounds + a Symphony Gig??

We had such fun at the March show at Gas Hill with Migrant Birds that we now have a songwriters’ round planned there for May 7, featuring myself, Spencer Ayscue of Migrant Birds, and Sarah Sophia—who was at that March show running the merch table but is an incredible singer-songwriter in her own right. I’m really looking forward to sharing songs with these folks I’m fond of as people and as musicians.

And further out, I’m planning to join the July edition of Songwriters @ Scup, held every second Sunday at 4pm at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro—check out that series, which always has a great lineup!

Also coming up, I’ll be on this special Southern Harmony show with Martha Bassett and the Piedmont Wind Symphony on May 31—and a couple of my original songs are on the docket for wind arrangements! I am SO EXCITED to be part of this really special show and to hear some of my work presented in this way.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. BOOK: I had The Serviceberry on my to-read list because I loved Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and then a friend told me (a) he had done a book study on mutual aid using it and (b) it’s a short book. I read it in a sunny afternoon sitting in the open hatch of my Subaru behind a DMV waiting for my turn to update my driver license (long story), and I appreciated the synchronicity it had with other things I’d been reading and thinking about, as well as new dimensions it offered around gift economies, ecological wisdom, and indigenous practices.

2. BOOK: Another book! Slayers Every One Of Us is the new book by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs, ex-wives who started a podcast about Buffy the Vampire Slayer while they were still married and kept it going even through their divorce. For the podcast, Jenny wrote an original song recapping every episode—all 144 of them—plus a full album for the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” and a hefty handful of jingles. I got to attend the book release for Slayers Every One Of Us in Torrance, CA…among other things (see below for more…). I read the hard copy on my flight home and just finished listening to the audiobook.

3. MUSIC: On my list of upcoming concerts to attend is Japanese Breakfast, the indie pop band fronted by Michelle Zauner, who also wrote a book I really enjoyed, Crying in H Mart. In preparation, I’ve been listening to the new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) and commend it to your ears.

4. MUSIC: OK another album! Lucy Dacus’ Forever Is a Feeling is just so lush, so queer, so beautiful. I love it. And I just snagged tickets to one of her fall tour dates!

I Went to Buffy Prom and I Liked It

This may not seem related to music but actually it is (isn’t everything?)—the hosts of the Buffy podcast I mentioned above (newly published authors of Slayers Every One Of Us), one of whom is a favorite songwriter of mine, Jenny Owen Youngs, hosted Buffy Prom earlier this month at the high school where the show was filmed in Torrance, CA. I’d been meaning to visit some folks in LA, and it was my birthday weekend, so I got a leather trench coat, let my friends dye my hair, and dressed up as everyone’s Problematic Fave, Spike the evil vampire AKA Blondie Bear. You can see me and some of my new Buffering pals in one of the photos in this Hollywood Reporter article.

1. reflections on how art make us feel known, and the ways that can be thrilling, affirming, terrifying, and challenging (including a little about my experience attending my first Folk Alliance International conference);

2. a look back at my most recent shows, and a look ahead to one on the horizon;

3. a rough recording of a new song;

4. and my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.

Feeling Known and the Power of Art to Comfort and Confront

In late February, I spent about 4 days in a music fever dream called the Folk Alliance International (FAI) Conference, held this year in Montreal. It’s a global networking event attended by artists, industry reps, and more. I had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be a wild and transformative experience.

FAI is sort of relentless—the days are filled with speakers and workshops, the evenings with official showcases, and then there are the private showcases. The private showcases took over 4 floors of the hotel, 4 floors where every room had the beds removed and makeshift stages set up, with musicians cycling in and out until 3 a.m. or later (earlier?). It was overwhelming in the best way possible.

I was lucky to get adopted by a great group of folks, many of whom are part of the artist collective The Greensboro Sound—this photo captured most, but not all, of the crew from our crowded but cozy AirBnb as well as Room 904, The Daydream Room: Emily Stewart, Laura Boswell, Tom Troyer, Laura Jane Vincent, Sam Thorn, and Colin Cutler, all amazing musicians and people (including Ashley Virginia, who wasn’t there for this photo). I got to meet a ton of other great people, including fellow volunteers and other performers.

One aspect of FAI that I didn’t anticipate was being in close proximity to people whose public personas are familiar, even beloved, to me. Multiple times over the course of the conference, I started sentences with, “You don’t know me, but…” Moving around the halls and rooms of the FAI conference, I ran into

a pianist and songwriter I’ve followed for over 2 decades, whose songs I’ve learned to play and committed to memory

the host of a podcast I’ve listened to faithfully for almost 5 years, from before they changed their now-better-known name

a musician whose original song was an impactful part of a worship service I led a few months ago in a tender moment for our congregation

a poet and her singer-songwriter wife whose social media posts on reckoning with both queer and Christian identities was in my feed since long before I wondered if I might have a similar journey

and more. A year or so ago, I wrote a song whose chorus begins, “You don’t know me, but…” The line that follows is, “You make me feel known.” It’s a sentiment that emerged from a half-remembered quote about the grief we feel when famous creatives die, that we mourn not because we know them but because they make us feel known.

In the song, there’s a note of caution to myself and others who may be prone to miscalculate the nature of a relationship to an artist. It’s a reminder not to assume I know someone just because I know their artistic catalogue or their public persona. The second verse takes a playful jab at my tendency to think I have a crush on one musician or another when really what’s happening is that their art makes me feel less alone.

But mostly, the song (and, by the way, you can see and hear my performance of an early version of said song on the Martha Bassett Show, featuring Rex McGee on fiddle, here) is a letter of gratitude to all the creatives who have cracked themselves open enough to let out some light, by which I see myself better. It reminds me to strive to do the same with my own music.

Of course, what we see by honest light is not always what we want to see. Good art doesn’t just affirm us where we are, it gets in those cracks and pries open things we’d rather let lie—all for the better, ideally, but the process can be painful. I had more than a couple of moments like that at FAI, like when

another artist’s bold confrontation of specific forms of injustice in a song put a magnifying glass on the courage I want but still lack

a song performed in a showcase pressed on an emotional bruise I had been working hard to cover up and ignore

one person’s songwriting called me to question ways I am (or am not) showing up for myself and others

and more. Let’s just say I was emotionally exhausted afterward, and my therapist got a real download in our first session post-FAI! That much light in so short a time was a bit blinding and disorienting, but I’m grateful for it all the same. And it’s helped sharpen the focus of all my creative work—not just my music, but the parts of my church work that involve words and ritual and more—which isn’t about avoiding or soothing but about caring, comforting, and confronting.

Especially in this political moment, we need bold and tender artists and creatives to keep us honest and human, to shine the light of making people feel known, even and especially when the knowing is hard. I’m not there yet, but I’m grateful for those pointing the way.

Holy show schedule, Batman!

The first week of March was a wild ride between a busy time in church work and a 3-day run of gigs. On Wednesday, March 5, I played a super fun show at Gas Hill Drinking Room in Winston-Salem, opening for my friends Migrant Birds. On Wednesday, March 6, the Martha Bassett Show kicked off its 8th season at the Reeves Theater in Elkin with a great show featuring Housewife, Sam Robbins, and Shanna in a Dress. And then on Friday, March 7, I got to participate in the first edition of the new First Friday Silo Series at The Back Table in Greensboro, hosted by Tom Troyer and featuring Agis Shaw, Viva La Muerte, Katie Blvd, and Emily Stewart. I still feel very green at performing solo (and, frankly, I don’t like it very much!) and am continuing to figure out what feels good and right in what and how I play when I’m on my own sharing my songs, but it’s been great to begin working out some of those kinks and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s invited me to play or come to a show and listened and let me know what they think. Right now the only thing on my calendar is a songwriter circle I’m playing in May, but I’m working on scheduling some other shows, so keep an eye on my social media and/or my website for updates on that front.

Wanna hear a new song?

This is sort of an experiment, but isn’t this whole Substack thing? Or really this whole Emorie Hush thing? Anyway, I’ve been writing a lot of music lately, and I’ve been mulling over ways to share new songs before they get fully recorded and released, aside from playing them live. So, here’s a voice memo recording of “Perfect Stranger,” a newer song using my freshly learned jazz chords. I’ve been getting good responses when I’ve played it live, so I figured I’d share a rough version here. This song is sort of about when you’re thinking about getting back in the dating pool but don’t really want to yet, and sort of about how you can idealize people at a distance and fear what might happen if you got a closer look (and, implied but not stated, if they got a closer look at you):

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. MUSIC: One highlight of my time at FAI was seeing Vienna Teng’s official showcase. I’ve been a fan of her music since I was in high school—so, over 20 years. I’d seen her perform before, but not in a very long time, and she had recently released a project called “We’ve Got You.” It’s in 3 parts—sort of. She played it live, so I got to see it unfold in real time, but there are 2 different songs, both entitled “We’ve Got You,” one with the parenthetical subtitle “(i - Spark),” the other “(ii - Comfort)”. The first addresses someone at the forefront of social movements, the person who rallies the masses to fight for justice. The second addresses that person when they are in need of care, on the verge of burnout. When Teng performed this project live, she played each song, then revealed that she had recorded the first song when she performed it—and then she looped it back for us while playing the second song over it. The third track in this project is called “We’ve Got You (∞ - Two Truths),” and it is both songs played at the same time. Before she performed this dual song, Teng named the reality that there would be moments where things felt busy and crunchy, but that was part of the point—because that’s what holding the fullness of our humanity is like in reality. I was so moved by this concept and by the live performance, and I commend the music as well as the videos, workshops, and advocacy work that Teng offers alongside the project.

2. AUDIOBOOK: I picked up Questlove’s Creative Quest on audio because it was a book club selection at FAI, and while my volunteer schedule didn’t allow me to attend the discussion, I really enjoyed the book. Questlove’s story and creative path was fun to learn more about on its own merits, and he offered some helpful insights about boredom, curation, and how leaning into different mediums can boost creativity in other areas (a good example for him being how his interest in food has informed his musical pursuits).

3. BOOK: Over the last month and a half (with some falling behind and catching up), I’ve been participating in an online crash course in liberation theology, and as part of that I’ve been reading theology professor Joerg Rieger’s book Theology in the Capitalocene. I’ve really appreciated how this book makes distinctions between liberal and liberation theology, how it links ecological destructions to struggles around class and race, and the way it analyzes power and solidarity.

4. TV SHOW: I love a good survival story, and I have been obsessed with Yellowjackets since its first season aired in 2021. Season 3 is underway, and I just love how scary, funny, shocking, and human it is. There are so many A+ acting performances, and while I love hearing all the fan theories about what’s going to happen, I’m just along for the ride and enjoying it.

If you made it this far and are still reading, you’re a champ! Maybe one day I’ll get more concise. No promises though. Thanks for reading!

1. reflections on vulnerability (the core theme of my next single) and how hard it is to stay soft under empire;

2. updates on my new releases, including a snippet of “Hollow Bones,” and the tiniest bit about a project I’m starting to dream about and work on;

3. info about THREE upcoming shows in the Triad;

4. Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently, apparently a recurring segment here.

Vulnerability, Oxygen-Filled Bones, and Staying in Formation

A few months ago, I was sitting on the porch at my grandparents’ mountain house, playing guitar on a mild evening as the golden hour light draped itself over the lake. I was working to coordinate my singing with an unfamiliar rhythm of fingerpicking, focused on where each beat of my voice fell in relation to the movement of my fingers, when I was interrupted by a dull thwack from the far end of the porch.

I stopped playing and looked up to see a small bird sitting dazed on the porch swing. That golden hour was reflecting beautifully off the window, and they’d flown right into it, bouncing off onto the swing.

Now, I have a confession: I am a little bit afraid of birds. I mean, they’re basically dinosaurs. But this one was very small. And gorgeously green. And seemingly hurt. I went over and gingerly picked it up. I don’t know what I was going to do to be helpful, but it seemed like the little bird (a Tennessee warbler, I would learn) shouldn’t be alone while it got its wits back.

The bird wobbled slightly in my hand and eventually on my shoulder, doing little more than blinking its eyes and working its beak slowly for several minutes. Eventually it attempted flight, flopping down onto the floor of the porch. At first, it allowed me to pick it back up, but then it seemed to come around more fully and, with a startled peck at my hand, launched itself into the air and flew off into the branches of a nearby tree.

I wrote my next single, “Hollow Bones,” after being struck by a fact I know I had learned at some point but had never really thought about: that birds have hollow bones. For whatever reason, in that moment 6+ years ago, that sounded dreadful. And it sounded like a pretty good metaphor for vulnerability. Hollow bones—breakable, but necessary for flight. Vulnerability—a guarantee of pain, and the only way to authentic connection and love.

I’m thinking about vulnerability with a little more complexity than I did when I wrote this song, probably because we are in a moment in history when so many people are vulnerable in the sense that they are at risk. Immigrants, trans and nonbinary folks, Black and brown people, women and people capable of pregnancy, anyone who voices dissent—all of these and more are vulnerable right now.

There’s a difference between the kind of vulnerability that is forced on you by oppression and empire, and the kind of vulnerability we’re invited into on the journey of staying human. It’s one thing for a bird to have hollow bones and another thing for someone bigger to crush that bird in his hand.

And this is what empire does, right?—exploits and extorts any ounce of vulnerability, humanity, fragility for the purpose of domination, shame, and control. It’s hard to stay soft under empire. I never want to grow calloused to the tyranny around me, but the price of staying tender toward the suffering it produces is agony, and the stakes are so much higher for so many right now. Failing to protect yourself from the toxicity can be deadly, but turning away from it entirely is not an option.

But I think, and I hope, that our only options are not either to build walls around our hearts or to surrender to empire’s crushing force. And the answer might actually be in a more accurate understanding of bird bones than I had until recently.

It turns out (as this Discovery Channel article tells me) that birds’ bones aren’t just hollow, they’re pneumatized—a word I’ve never heard until I was writing this. Birds’ bones have air sacs in them that allow them to take in oxygen whether inhaling or exhaling, which is key to their ability to fly. I love the way that article put it: “they need so much oxygen to fly that their lungs actually extend into their bones.”

And it turns out the hollow-ness of bird bones doesn’t make them lighter or more brittle—their bones are actually denser than those of other species, so much so that their skeletons weigh the same as that of a mammal of comparable size. It’s the density that makes the pneumatization possible.

Maybe this is a decent metaphor for what I’m seeing among experienced organizers, those who have lived and labored through oppression before, and how they’re responding to the threats facing us now. They aren’t letting every breaking news story throw them off kilter, nor are they ignoring what’s happening. They have built practices and networks that are dense and strong, but not at the expense of their humanity, of spaciousness and room to breathe.

The rest of us can learn from and follow their lead in letting our lungs extend into our bones, making space for all the grief and terror without letting our values, our worth, our joy crumble. I’m not saying it’s easy—in fact, it’s really, really hard. Because, well, it’s hard to stay soft—and strong—under empire.

The important thing that we need to remember is that we don’t do any of this alone. The Tennessee warbler flocks during migration, and their flocks are often multi-species. There is strength in numbers for these little birds, as there is for us. As Beyonce said, let’s get in formation—and let’s stay there, no matter how much the powers that be try to make us scatter and abandon one another.

Gaining a more accurate understanding of bird bones has kind of undermined the premise of my forthcoming single—but I’m OK with it, because it also give me hope for alternative ways to conceptualize and practice staying human. And goodness knows we need more of that right now.

“Dance It Out,” the debut single from Emorie Hush, is out, and “Hollow Bones” is coming soon!

My first single as Emorie Hush. “Dance It Out,” featuring guitarist and producer Russell Kelly, is everywhere as of January 24, 2025! You can listen to it basically everywhere. It’s been fun to repeatedly get the feedback, “Wow, it’s poppier than I expected”—that’s Russell’s production! I shared this to Instagram, but here’s a little journey through the evolution of “Dance It Out” to the sound you’ll get on this release:

I’m also excited that a second single, “Hollow Bones,” will be coming out very soon—on Valentine’s Day, to be exact! Pre-save/pre-order it now, and here’s a little preview of the song:

And it’s just in the baby stages, but I’ve been writing for and working on ideas around a concept EP I’m calling The Night. A lot of the material came out of an online songwriting retreat led by Dar Williams, where the theme was “The Moon.” I’ve been recording rough demos of some songs I wrote during that retreat, and a few older ones I’ve reworked since, and have already been in conversation with some local creatives about photography and visual art elements I’m hoping can develop alongside the music. It’s all very exciting, if a little daunting! If you want a live preview of a song or two off what I hope will become The Night, then you should…

Come see me live in Winston-Salem AND Greensboro!

If you happen to be reading this on the day it’s posted (February 10, 2025), I’m thrilled that tonight I’m participating in Siren Series Jazz’s Valentine’s-themed edition and will be singing two songs, a Marvin Gaye cover and a new original! I’m grateful that Karon, Diana, and the guys are allowing me to test drive an original for the second time as I dip my toes into more jazzy songwriting. Come see us 6-8:30 p.m. at Footnote Coffee & Cocktails!

I’m looking forward to supporting indie-folk outfit Migrant Birds at their show at Gas Hill Drinking Room on Wednesday, March 5 @ 8:00 p.m. They’ll be playing some of their lesser-performed material, and I’ll be debuting several new songs and potentially some reworks of old ones I’ve been honing. Y’all will also get to meet Cordelia, the Cordoba C9 parlor guitar I got for Christmas. Get tickets now!

Later that same week, on Friday, March 7, I’ll be part of a multi-artist lineup at The Back Table in Greensboro. I’m really looking forward to playing on the other side of the Triad and would love to see any Greensboro friends there. Check back on social media or my new website—oh, by the way, Emorie Hush now has a website!—for more details soon.

That does mean I’ll have three days in a row of music performances (this happened to me last April too), since The Martha Bassett Show, where I’m in the house band, starts back up on March 6! We’re on season 8 of this very special live radio show, and the lineup is looking pretty amazing for this year—join us sometime!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. BOOK: On Tyranny - This little book by Timothy Snyder came out in 2017, but I read it the weekend before the inauguration this year. When a friend asked me afterward if it made me feel worse or better, my answer was, “a little of both”—which feels true for most things I think are useful in this political moment.

2. PODCAST: You’re Dead to Me - This BBC podcast came recommended by a friend—the premise is that each week the host is joined by a history expert and a comedian, and they talk about a particular figure, topic, or time in history. I randomly selected the episode on the history of timekeeping for my first listen and it absolutely blew my mind (and inspired a half-finished song), and I’ve enjoyed conversations about Boudica, Blackbeard, Paul Robeson, LGBTQ Life in Weimar Germany, and more since.

3. ALBUM: The Returner - People have been telling me to listen to Allison Russell’s 2023 album for a while now, and I finally did after learning she will be the keynote speaker at the Folk Alliance International conference in Montreal (which I’m attending next week!!). I don’t really have words for this album except LISTEN. It’s an incredible work of art. I had an audible reaction to the powerful song “Eve Was Black.” Absolutely amazing.

4. SONG: Sleeves Up - Yep, two musical selections this month! Crys Matthews put out this anthem on January 20, 2025. Crys is a powerful folk artist I’ve admired for a while (she’s twice been a guest on the aforementioned Martha Bassett Show!), and “Sleeves Up” was a timely encouragement and reminder that “It’s not a marathon, it’s not a sprint, it’s a thousand-day relay race…” Whew! Thank you, Crys.

And bonus…since it’s February, I am of course getting Dar William’s song “February” stuck in my head on the daily. Did you know I was part of recording a really beautiful cover version of that song? Check out Martha Bassett’s version of “February” to hear it (and to take a moment for the memory of Alex McKinney, whose dobro and pedal tones are forever in my head thanks to this chapter of my musical life).

1. a brief introduction and a little more about my hopes for this Substack,

2. some musings on the new year and dancing weirdly for social change,

3. information about songs I’m releasing and shows I’m playing in early 2025, and

4. a few things (a book, a podcast, a movie, and an album) I’ve enjoyed recently.

Hi there!

In case you don’t know me, I’m Sarah Howell (she/they), a pastor/musician based in North Carolina. My full-time job is being the pastor of a quirky, progressive church in Winston-Salem, and I do music on the side. I’m a member of the house band for The Martha Bassett Show and occasionally play with other groups/artists; Emorie Hush is my solo-ish musical project. Besides church and music, I love dogs, books, biking, running, game nights, road trips, getting stamps in my National Parks passport, crafting (not well), spending time in the mountains of western North Carolina, listening to TV recap podcasts, making sourdough bagels, and seeing live local music whenever possible. I’ve always loved to write, but for the last many years I haven’t felt much inspiration to do any more writing than my preaching and other pastoral duties require. That’s starting to change, and I’ve found myself both writing more music and wanting to do more longer-form writing lately. At the same time, I’ve been performing and am about to release music under my stage name Emorie Hush, and I figured I ought to have some kind of newsletter but didn’t want to do something boring and admin-y. While this Substack will be where I share updates about my music, the bulk of it will be doing some deeper meaning-making around creativity, community, and change. I hope you’ll read and let me know what you think.

The Fool, Dancing Weirdly, & Social Change

On New Year's Eve, I did a single-card tarot pull and got The Fool. The first card in the major arcana, a symbol of new beginnings, it seemed kind of perfect for the last day of the year as I looked forward to 2025. The Fifth Spirit Tarot deck I often use depicts The Fool as a young person nonchalantly stepping off a cliff. Moving into a new year can feel like that, for better or worse.

2024 was for me a lot of things, and moving into it certainly felt like walking off a cliff. The year began with my spouse moving out as we began the formal process of ending our marriage after a decade-plus relationship. I was extremely burned out on ministry but didn’t know what to do about it. And I was wanting to focus more on music but was full of insecurities and anxieties.

I felt very much like I was stepping out into thin air with no idea what, if anything, would catch me. Thankfully, that new beginning opened itself up to me in the most beautiful and surprising ways over the last year, but only because I took the step of making some big, risky changes—pursuing divorce, taking spiritual renewal leave, going on tour with a band, and launching my solo music project.

I love Jessica Dore's book Tarot for Change, and in her chapter on The Fool, she talks about change as requiring us to break rules, and how dancing is a fool's task with the power to shake us out of stagnant systems. She relates an indigenous folk tale about people trapped in ice who must dance wildly until their body heat melts them to freedom. The ecstasy and foolishness of their dancing is their salvation.

Dore’s use of the metaphor of dance felt very timely for me—though I myself am a terrible dancer—because I am about to release “Dance It Out,” the first single under my new-ish musical project, Emorie Hush. Made in collaboration with guitarist and producer Russell Kelly, “Dance It Out” is an upbeat, synth-y pop tune whose lyrics carry a multi-layered message about stepping up to and directly facing conflict, whether in personal relationships or in matters of justice. It was written in May of 2020 and references the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements.

A social justice dance-pop song might sound strange, but if you think about it, music and dancing have always been part of movements—at least, ones worth being a part of. Art, creativity, embodiment, and expression are necessary in the fight for justice and in the relationship building required to win. And breaking rules of decorum are part of how we shed light on and start to change unjust systems.

In a latter chorus, “Dance It Out” references the fall of Jericho, a story from the book of Joshua where the Israelites march and blow horns around the Canaanite city for seven days until the walls crumble and victory is won. The image came to me instinctively as a perfect example of how collective movement—a kind of choreography—can not just signal values but make actual change.

This story has been used (and probably originated) as a nationalist myth, and as a pastor in a moment in history when Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism are more visible and deadly than ever, it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge that when referencing the fall of Jericho. But this story has for centuries held liberative resonance for Jewish communities, and it was claimed by enslaved Africans and continues to be held up by their descendants as a narrative that promises freedom. I lean on their wisdom, naming my position and privilege as I receive and pass along that vision of liberation.

I imagine the Israelites looked pretty foolish marching around the city walls. About The Fool, Jessica Dore writes, “Change at any level...requires two things: that we be courageous enough to dance weirdly...and that we be willing to feel whatever angst or uncertainty that brings.” In this political moment, there is a great deal of angst and uncertainty, and part of the work before us is discerning what is discomfort to be worked through and what is danger to be reckoned with.

I’ve observed in many contexts a tendency to conflate discomfort and danger in ways that reinforce an unjust status quo. So often, white folks and others in positions of relative privilege interpret their own discomfort as danger—while dismissing the very real danger marginalized groups feel, downgrading it to discomfort we demand they bear silently. Those of us with privilege need to build our tolerance of discomfort and uncertainty for the sake of solidarity and justice, and we need to believe marginalized people when they tell us they are in danger—and then take action.

While this is serious business, we don’t always have to be so serious in how we relate to ourselves, to one another, and to the problems facing us today. One thing danger and injustice will try to do is to steal joy, especially from those on the margins. To dance in the face of dehumanization might seem foolish—and it is!—but it is also a subversive form of resistance. With the enormity of the problems facing our country and world, not to mention the terrors of our own individual lives, a weird little dance seems as good a place as any to start.

“Dance It Out,” the debut single from Emorie Hush, coming 1/24

I am VERY excited to share that after a long process of producing, recording, and procrastinating, I’m about to release my first single as Emorie Hush. “Dance It Out,” featuring guitarist and producer Russell Kelly, comes out January 24, 2025! You can listen to a little snippet above to get a feel, and if you’re a Spotify or Apple Music user, you can pre-save it now. And yes, that’s a photo of me from my short-lived ballet/tap career in the 90s; half my hometown wore that costume at some point!

If you’ve read this far, you can be among the first to know that a second single, “Hollow Bones,” will be coming out just a few weeks after “Dance It Out”—on Valentine’s Day, to be exact! So stay tuned for that song, which is another collaboration with Russell Kelly. If you’d like more frequent updates on what’s happening with Emorie Hush than this Substack can provide, you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Come see me live in Winston-Salem in March

I’m looking forward to supporting indie-folk outfit Migrant Birds at their show at Gas Hill Drinking Room on Wednesday, March 5 @ 8:00 p.m. I’m extra excited about this show because I’m just coming off an online songwriting retreat that was very generative for me, so there will be some new songs on the set list! Get tickets now—advance ticket sales make a big difference to small, local acts.

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently

1. PODCAST: Jess Klein’s Big Table - The amazing singer-songwriter (and my friend) Jess Klein hosts a bi-weekly conversation with artists and activists about the intersections between ancestors, art, and activism. I particularly enjoyed the recent interview with Erin McKeown and always find inspiration both personal and artistic in the podcast. Jess also has a great song called Big Table that’s available on Bandcamp as a benefit for World Central Kitchen.

2. MOVIE: Klaus - I know the holidays are behind us, but put this on your seasonal watch list for next year—or watch it now, because who doesn’t need a little cheer in January? Klaus is funny, charming, and genuinely moving without being saccharine. Set in a fictionalized version of Svalbard, Norway, it weaves a new Santa Claus origin story in with reflections on friendship, grief, purpose, and joy. This is going to be an annual Christmastime viewing for me.

3. ALBUM: Open Book’s Leaning In - I met Rick and Michele Gedney at the 2016 Writing a Song That Matters retreat with Dar Williams and immediately loved the music they made together as Open Book. When Rick died suddenly in 2023, Leaning In was in progress, and Michele released it in September 2023 with one of Rick’s last paintings on the cover. Their songwriting, harmonies, and organic sound is mesmerizing and the album is a beautiful legacy of Rick’s multiple talents and of his and Michele’s love. The song “January Knows” in particular is timely this month.

4. BOOK: Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary - I recently joined a book club and heard the members rave about Project Hail Mary, one of their reads from before I joined. I got a library copy and was instantly captivated by Weir’s writing (I’d read short stories of his but never a full book—yes, The Martian is on my list now), the creative structure of this story, and the genuinely funny, sweet, terrifying, and awe-inspiring things that happen. Also, wow, so much science so seamlessly woven in to the fiction!