The first song I wrote on guitar:
Added 2022-11-14 20:00:05 +0000 UTCThis song is what I would constitute as the first guitar song I ever wrote. I had just dropped out of college. I was 19. I looked like this.
I started playing guitar because I wanted to be a folk singer like Jenny from Forest Gump. Like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan.
After dropping out of college, I moved in with my boyfriend of the time, Jacob, and HIS ENTIRE FAMILY about 20 minutes outside Marshfield, Wisconsin. Look it up, I dare you. They were super rich, super catholic so I had my own bedroom on the top floor next to his sister and his parents. I felt like a weird maid, with my twin bed and small window compared the massive 8 bed, 4 bath home that sat on a 3 acre lot. I had no phone, no car and worked the graveyard shift at a Family Video in town. We had to wear dresses and I often worked alone with lonely single dads asking me out while renting p*rn.
This is the era that would breed Half Wolf and Wisconsin was the petri dish. The era that Courtney Barnett released "Sometimes I sit and think..." and Carrie Brownstein released her memoir. It's when I would listen to Mitski, Patti Smith, Sleater-Kinney on a cheap ass record player so loud to just to piss off his mom. But I was also learning how to play "Girl from the North Country" and "Folsom Prison Blues" on guitar. These energies grew this weird punk-folk mold that I would soon bring to Minneapolis.
I always come back to these recordings when I need to remember who the fuck I am after some bullshit session or some vague email from an industry executive saying "I don't sound ready". It's a reminder that I started making music to get something out, to transmute dense emotions and flash my teeth when I started to feel domesticated.
In 2016, I made this SoundCloud account to be hard to find on purpose. It was a place for me to put finished songs and share with super close friends. Two years later, in 2018, my first manager sent me an email asking about these demos. Which would be the most important email of my life so far.
These songs are the beginning. Feels right to start here.
Soundcloud link:
