Album Notes

Eureka…the “aha” which comes from deep surprise and relief. A 51 year old mother of 2 teenagers, with too much of what passes for the past behind her, she works on the CD for over 4 years. Songs from 25 years ago, when she was a singer-songwriter in the “Village” …one of the featured artists on “The Cornelia Street Café” album—which incidentally one can buy now for one dollar on eBay, but who had other great songwriters on it, some of whom she is proud to call her friends: Michael Fracasso, Lucy Kaplansky, Tom Intondi (deceased), Jeff Gold, David Massengill… Songs from 10 years ago, when a miracle unfolded before her heart. Out of a divorce and with a 4 year old child, she becomes a nanny for a firefighter and the 3 year old daughter he adopted from the Republic of Georgia, some 15 months before. During that first year with his little girl, struggling to find ways to get in to her world, and ways to bring her out; songs were born as she fell in love with his daughter and him, and they all became a family. An extremely blended family.
This record could not have been made without the third deepest love of her life, the land, especially Western Montana, and the rivers and lakes and seas of this precious planet that sustains us. Many of the songs are about the land: “Kankakee,” an oral history of the river that ran less than a mile from my grandmother’s farm in Northern Indiana; “Mighty Rivers,” a song written in Watersmeet, Michigan, lands of lakes and loons, and of course “Eureka” a tale of lost love and lost dreams and lost bison on the old Kansas Trail. “Cowgirl’s Lament” a prayer which was answered by the man she married. Other songs of love, desire, and regret are sung purely (no overdubs here) and arranged simply: like a lone cowhand, strumming a guitar under the stars, lit only by a campfire on the blackest night on the prairie… and the fire within. Happy trails to you …until we meet again.
Martha White @ Cowhand Music