*** FIRSTLY: Here is the transcript for the interview excerpt above with the fabulous
! It’s available at the following links as a PDF or a Word Doc. Want more? Become a paid subscriber to get access to the FULL interview below!Hello, Friends!
I hope this newsletter finds you well! It’s a gorgeous evening in Duluth, Minnesota. I have been writing all week and it feels so good! I am about halfway through Chapter 12 (out of 20)… My memoir is mostly chronological, and right now I just figured out how to operate the looping pedal Alan Sparhawk gave me by myself (I texted him the result, a small little clip that sounded like a symphony to me, at midnight). It’s been fun revisiting the positive parts of my life through writing. Haha, the scary / hard parts… Not so much! But I hope the stories I choose to tell in this book will be educational, helpful, or at least thought-provoking in some way… We shall see!
Anyway, I have a few announcements below, plus PAID subscribers will find a Zoom link for a hangout / pre-summer chat this Sunday afternoon at 3:30pm Central Time. They’ll also get the full interview video with my lovely musician friend,
, complete with captions (plus a transcript and audio). She initiated Paul and I into the wild world of touring way back in October 2016… It was a fun (rocky) run of shows!ANNOUNCEMENT ONE: SUNDAY SESSIONS IS THIS WEEKEND!
On May 19th at 2pm Central Time, I am thrilled to welcome Kim and Quillan Roe from old-time band The Roe Family Singers as special guests on my show! We’ll chat about their roots in traditional music, Appalachian clogging, making music as a couple, and about their latest album, "Sisters and Brothers". I’ll play a tune or two at the end. And after that, paid subscribers are invited to join me on Zoom for a monthly hangout session where we’ll talk summer plans and what’s filling our cups.
Tune into “Sunday Sessions” here on Sunday, May 19th at 2pm Central Time!
ANNOUNCEMENT TWO: I RECEIVED AN ARTIST FELLOWSHIP!
I am thrilled and humbled to announce that I am a recipient of the 2024-2025 Whippoorwill Arts Fellowship! From their website:
The Whippoorwill Arts Fellowship celebrates the musical accomplishments, extraordinary talent, community spirit and creative soul of artists. Whippoorwill Arts has awarded fifteen fellowships since 2018. The Fellowships were expanded to two-years in 2022.
2024-25 marks the fourth cohort of Whippoorwill Arts Fellows. In addition to a $25,000 grant towards a creative project of the musicians’ choosing, the Fellowship nurtures community space to connect, exchange, and learn together, modeling deep investment into roots music.
I can’t tell you how humbling and nourishing it was to receive not just the funds to do a dream project (releasing the Macbeth soundtrack at long last, touring the UK and studying traditional Celtic music in Ireland - I get giddy just thinking about it!) but it also felt like a confirmation that, yes, I am on the right path, as messy as it feels. I love the other artists who were chosen already (Angie, Jerron and Abel) and I can tell we are going to learn a lot from each other these next 18 months… Go check them out!
Here’s a little more about my project:
Gaelynn Lea will be using the funds from her Whippoorwill Arts Fellowship to mix, master, and produce her long-awaited album, “Music from Macbeth”, which includes the original music that she composed and recorded for the 2022 production of Macbeth on Broadway. This will be her "dream soundtrack" - the music will be presented as she originally envisioned it, unaltered by the necessities of staging. Once the soundtrack has been released, Gaelynn plans to schedule talks about the process of creating a soundtrack for this iconic play in schools around the US and the UK. As a second part of the Fellowship, Gaelynn intends to deepen her own relationship with the traditional Celtic music she loves to play and record by working with a few musical mentors in Ireland in the late Spring and early Summer of 2025. She is excited to learn traditional Celtic music firsthand from the folk masters of today. While she is in Ireland, she also intends to connect with other disabled artists to learn more about how Disability Culture is expressed in Ireland and to build bridges with disabled artists there. This cultural exchange will undoubtedly impact her future advocacy around accessibility and disability representation in the arts.
Read more here: https://whippoorwillarts.org/gaelynn-lea
ANNOUNCEMENT THREE: I LOOOOOVED PLAYING IN BOSTON!
My heart was filled to overflowing in Boston. In case you didn’t know, I went to play at Berklee School of Music last month for a concert arranged by the disabled musician and educator extraordinaire, Adrian Anantawan. It was an integrated orchestra called the Music Inclusion Ensemble, and its membership was comprised both disabled and nondisabled musicians. They played all sorts of music, including five of my pieces and two from the other guest artist, the composer Molly Joyce. I absolutely adored the experience (so much so that I am planning to write a whole Substack essay on that trip), but until then I wanted to share an interview we gave on GBH News the morning before the concert - it includes two of my songs! Listen / read here.
That’s it for now, Friends! I’ll be back soon with another post, but take care and enjoy the warmer weather. As always, thanks so, so much for your support on this journey!
Love,
Gaelynn Lea
P.S. for PAID SUBSCRIBERS: Get the Zoom link for this Sunday’s Substack Hangout and Watch the Full Interview with Jess Klein in the space below! Not a paid member?
