“Jaroso” is a six song story of heritage and healing, recorded in a small adobe church on the border of New Mexico and Colorado.
STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS
LOST IN AMERICA
“Lost in the America” is the love story of my free-spirited parents. They met in Crestone, Colorado and traveled the country together for years- living in the mountains and in cities, experiencing the world first hand. My Dad always told me they were just “two dreamers lost in America”, but theirs was a different kind of American Dream. So when people ask me about my life, I tell them that this wild heart is by inheritance and I thank my mother and my father for passing down the unwavering will to live freely.
GOD SPEAKS
The refrain line of this song was sparked by a reoccurring encounter with a coyote, while I was living alone in the mountains of Colorado. I left Nashville about seven months earlier and was looking for a new place to put down roots, but in this process I began to feel very alone and my courage became depleted. At some point I called my dear friend Judy Rodman back in Tennessee and told her about the coyote that was visiting my house each day. I had decided this coyote was an omen showing me I needed to lighten up my heart and see the good that was all around me, and her response was, “Well you know what they say Leah, God speaks in a language we understand, and you understand coyotes, so there you have it.” The song itself summarizes the formation of my spiritual beliefs during my childhood- marked by clear rivers and rugged coastlines- and what that all means to me now.
MORE LIKE YOU
“More Like You” was the first song I wrote during a three month artist residency in Taos NM. My producer Erick Jaskowiak and I recorded it one year later with the very piano I wrote it on, in the 100 year old adobe casita where I lived. It was a full circle experience. I didn’t intend on ever showing this song to anyone because it felt too raw and personal. When my mother was in her mid 20’s, around my age now, she lived and worked on a cattle ranch in the San Juan Mountain range, and I always idolized this about her. Looking back at the last decade of my life, I’ve found myself in many of the same places that I grew up hearing stories about from my parents, and I’ve had to ask myself- as the songs states- if I’ve been chasing after these stories, or if I’m really writing my own…The process of getting to know someone after they are gone is mysterious and forever changing. I knew who my mother was as a caretaker, but I didn’t know the rest of her separate from the identity of motherhood. When I was writing this song, I was contending with guilt that had been buried for years. Guilt over her sacrificing so much to raise my sister and I, and then not getting to pick up where she left off when she died at a young age. But despite all of this and how much I’ve missed her these past ten years , I know my relationship with my mother is never really over. I am not a repetition of her story, I am a continuation.
64 SOUTH
That summer in New Mexico I grieved the distance between who I was and who I thought I’d be at that point in my life. I moved from Nashville thinking I wouldn’t go back, but I wasn’t sure where to call home. Traveling around all these beautiful mountain towns in New Mexico and Colorado, I’ve never felt so free and I’ve never felt so alone. I was doing a lot of deep healing, but also running from my demons, as we all have, and falling flat on my face. I quickly learned I couldn’t outrun those parts of myself that I felt so ashamed of. I couldn’t outrun the ways in which I felt I’d failed. I reached a point where there was nothing to hide behind any more. So this song is really about finding grace. And the process we have to go through to raise up that white flag of surrender, in the fight against ourselves.
THE WOMAN YOU RAISED
When we recorded this song, the wind was blowing strong and you can hear some of it at the beginning and end if you listen close. We tried waiting for the gusts to die down before doing a vocal take, but the howling was persistent. So we decided to hit record despite the wind and I sang while looking out one of the small lancet church windows, at the miles of prairie and snow covered mountains on the horizon. I think mother’s spirit lives in a lot of places, but i can feel her most when I’m in the southwest. The church was filled with peace when I sang this song and so was my heart.
OH DRY THOSE TEARS
This is a lullaby composed by a woman named Theresea Del Riego in 1901. I loved the melody the moment I heard and knew it needed to be on the record as the closing statement. I don’t think we ever stop needing to be sung lullabies. Because we never stop needing to be soothed. Its the nature of this human experience. Its breathtaking and its heartbreaking, but its all worth it. I recorded the song on the Wurlitzer grand piano from the old adobe casita in New Mexico, where I lived the summer before, writing, healing, and ultimately choosing to see the beauty of this life. Making this record meant so much to me, and I hope listening to it means something to you. May the songs serve you. Thank you for listening to my story.