It’s All About the Pants.

One snowy December night back in Vermont, my daughters created real magic. They took a pair of white painter’s pants - the ones with the tool-straps and extra pockets on the sides that come flat and stiff from the paint store - and planned a surprise. They knew these had always been my favorite, affordable, go-to pants since I was a teenager. My daughters circled round, carved out blocks by hand, mixed up some fabric paint, and printed guitars and moons all over the pants.

Let me explain.

I started playing guitar when I was seven. And I have always had a passion for the moon, and everything in the sky. I have collected songs all my life, and performed music in all sorts of styles and places. When I was a teenager in northern Virginia (wearing an earlier incarnation of those painter’s pants), I used to host backyard jams. My friends and people we’d pull off the street would come together almost every weekend to jam on our front porch, where we would plug in and spill out into the grass and make a lot of noise at the cows that grazed across the fence. We and the music evolved and grew, we gawked at the moon and wondered together, and many of us went on to become professional musicians.

This was a time that was deeply formative for me musically. But as much as I had a passion for it, I put off my own music career. I went to college and graduate school. I worked and lived in several countries as well as the US. I got married and raised two strong young women, and revived a 250-year-old farm in Vermont (shameless plug newdayfarmvt.com). When I moved to Austin, fresh after what feels like several lifetimes, the wide skies and pure potential inspired me and I went out and bought an electric guitar.

Then came the pants.

After I was presented with the magnificent pants, things stared to move. I found welcoming jam sessions and master classes. I took bass lessons and dusted off my piano chops. I found myself in demand - playing in three bands at once and doing solo gigs. And I wore those pants to every gig. I got more compliments on these pants than anything I’ve ever worn before. And I got to play outside under the moon more times than I can count.

Then the real magic happened. New, original songs started dropping down on me more and more as I did my best to capture them in real time. Those pants connected me to an earlier time that was musically rich for me, and they brought that magic into the present reality. An old friend from those teenage backyard jam years happened to introduced me to a producer friend of his in Austin, who turned out to be not only a huge talent, but also a great collaborator for my music, who understood my layered influences. So I turned a new leaf as a recording artist. And it’s all thanks to the magic painter’s pants.