In my last three or four posts for 2016, I’ve written about the art of conversation, and I’ve focused on old friends. Because some pretty exciting things have been happening with my current New York friends, I thought I’d shift from old to new, and from conversation to collaboration.

Over the winter, Benjamin and I started working with our friend and neighbor, Vita, or V as she likes to be called. At first, V was my voice teacher, and I loved her approach. She listened to me, focused on what I wanted to learn, and gently pushed me to try new things with my voice. One day, I asked her if she’d be interested in playing guitar with Benjamin. He was looking for some strings and a vocalist, and I had told him that V was cool, a very nice person. I thought it would be good for him to have this partnership, but V had other ideas.

So she came over, and we had a listening party to end all listening parties! We shared our work with her, and she shared hers with us. Several times, while she wasn’t looking, Benjamin and I would lean in close and mouth to each other, “Oh my god!” We were amazed by her voice and her writing!

That night, with the snow all sparkly around us, we made a pact. We would work together, not as a duet, but as a trio (thankfully, V insisted that I join). We began rehearsing and writing together, and this part of the collaboration was exciting! In case you’re curious, and why wouldn’t you be, here are a few ways in which we put it down…

1. V lies back against our sofa with her guitar and strums. She sings sounds, vowels sounds mostly, and she records her melodies when something strikes her. She sends these audio recordings to my phone (go technology!) and I try to write lyrics to match her pretty sounds. I email these back to her, and we begin.
2. Sometimes I write poetry that I think could work as lyrics, and I give it to V. I trust her with my work like a mother trusts a good nanny. She hears melodies for my words and sings them back to me. She never changes the meaning or the tone. In fact, often her singing brings out something in the lyrics that I didn’t realize was there, some deeper emotion or sentiment. She gets it.
3. Benjamin listens to V’s guitar melodies, and he always hears bass lines to compliment them. He plays them for her, she likes them, and then she sneakily gets Benjamin to sing harmonies too.
4. V encourages me to stretch beyond the poetic rhythm or line breaks that I hear and move my work more into song structure. She also tries to get me to sing, but I’m still shy. I know she won’t give up.
5. I say things, things that I think are kinda normal, and for some reason, V hears them as lyrics.
6. We all encourage each other to trust our imperfections, or to trust where our voices break (to quote my grad school thesis show).
7. We sip cocktails and listen to music we love and respect. Our collective taste is all over the place—from PJ Harvey to Tom Waits, Ryan Adams, Bon Iver, Emmylou Harris, Kate Bush, Sam Cooke, DeYarmond Edison, Michael Manring, Norah Jones and many, many more. We get tipsy, dance, laugh, and write some more!

Fast forward to six months of all of the above…

After rehearsals and lots of collaborative writing, we are now Born in Snow. We performed together in early summer 2016, and we spent the remainder of the season in the recording studio. Soon, we are going to release four singles, or snowflakes as we call them, so please check back in. We are excited to share! And for more on us, you can also visit us at: http://facebook.com/borninsnow. Thank you!