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family and beyond

Posted on Nov 13th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Taking a moment just now to appreciate anew how surrounded I am by family of the heart.

I was raised by amazing, brilliant, loving people that I'll always be close to.
It turns out I'm still being raised by amazing, brilliant people who surprise me with the force of their love every day--it's just that there are so many more of them now, more than I ever thought my heart could hold.

Tuesday through Thursday morning, I was surrounded by K's wonderful family--I hadn't realized until this week that there was a part of me who still didn't feel she belonged there, not quite. That's all gone now. I know that I'm theirs. Part of it comes from the loss we share now, certainly. In Mike's sweetheart Jackie, I have a kickass sister of the heart in Oklahoma, for life, who's asked me to please come and visit, regardless of the fact that the person who was our shared connection is gone. Without the chosen lack of paperwork to confirm such things legally, K's mother told me yesterday that she considers me her daughter-in-law, and that she refers to me that way in conversation. K's dad and I have always gotten along, and even if he hadn't worked on my truck bunches of times and played a show with me twice now, I'd still think he's awesome. But he lent me his guitar for the memorial service. It must be something about getting to play his Martin for two days, and watching him enjoy me playing his guitar, that banished the last traces of feeling like I didn't belong. Call it a guitar player thing. Laugh if you like. It was my mother's guitar that I first played, and it was my own father, gone five years now, who first made sure I ended up with a guitar of my own in my hands.

I woke this morning in Florida, in a deliciously comfy bed provided by Pagan phamily of the best kind--we're all long overdue for actual hangout time together, too. There's so much sunshine outside right now that it seems illegal. My host's daughter J. assures me that Florida has a whole bunch of sunshine. I'm looking forward to feeling its positive effects on my general self. I'm looking forward to music and laughter all over this house. I'm looking forward to recording in the guest room. I'm looking forward to sleeping in the same place for several weeks, for the first time in a long time. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner outside, under the live oak tree--Amy plans to hang it with lights for the occasion.

Tonight I will perform once again with two amazing women who are undeniably my sisters, by heart and spirit and song if not by blood, who share and laugh and dream with me and improve my life every time we get together, who sing with me without hesitation, whenever they can.

And that's just this week. There are so many more facets of this tribe I'm in, all over the world, each of them strong and proud, each of them different from the last and just painfully awesome. You all know who you are.

All I can think right now is this: how did I get so very, very lucky?

Good luck to each of you, in finding and keeping and enjoying your own motley, genuine family. May it be as vividly colored and as far-reaching as mine. May it fill your heart to bittersweet bursting; may it delight you and teach you and challenge you and lift you up, always.

Today marks ten months since my surgery, by the way. **LOVE**
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Tagged with: family, joy, music

I'm rather fond of green.

Posted on Jun 16th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/protest-against-the-june-2009-coup-detat-in-iran.html

Other ways to help can be read here.

Fear kills.
People are dying for what they believe in all over the world right now, and not just in Iran.  Iran's government is clearly running scared, and their people have become expendable to them--their people who are free thinkers just like us, their students, their mothers, their internet-savvy rebels.

Do what you can from where you are.
Hold the light.
Thank you. 
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Tagged with: Iran, Revolution, Green Revolution, Mousavi

New Song Available for Download Today!

Posted on Jun 1st, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Girl with the Lion's Tail awaits you.

Enjoy!

I realize that my bias is severe, but even so,  I hope you'll all agree with me: Tony Fabris has done an amazing job, in his capacity as recording engineer, of helping me create and perfect this song as it sounded in my head, mixing each vocal and each instrument to my every specification, in addition to meeting his June 1st deadline for producing the entirety of our friend Brooke Lunderville's album.  This will not be the only time we work together in the studio, he and I, I dearly hope.

Betsy Tinney's cello contribution to this piece is, as usual, breathtaking.  I don't know what I did before I had cello in my life.  So much emotion is contained in those five strings (and that's not a misprint--Raven is a five-string cello, not a standard four-string).  What amazed me most about the cello part that Betsy brought to this song is that from time to time, she not only evokes Lucia's emotions, but those of Lucia's husband Ludovico as well.  The scene in Palimpsest which inspired this piece involves Lucia cutting her ties with her husband, and his not wanting to let her go.  Particularly toward the end of the song, Betsy and her cutting, mournful cello work put me in mind of Ludo begging Lucia to come home with him.  This is absolute magic, and I never would have expected it.  Thank you, Betsy!

Michelle "Vixy" Dockrey played shaker on this track, as I was uncertain of my own ability to lay down a good, strong, steady shaker track myself.  It was the least she could do, as she is a consummate musician and vocalist, but this tiny favor from her nevertheless has helped the dream of this song come true, and I love her for it.

Thanks, always, to Cat, for inspiring me so.  Our tour ends in a day, but I have yet more songs coming to accompany her delightful and sinful book.  Keep checking the album page throughout the summer.  I'm hoping to complete at least two more songs as part of the tie-in album.  Tomorrow Cat and I perform the Palimpsest Road Show one more time, on the deck of a tall ship in the New York harbor.  Location info is on my tour schedule page.  I hope you'll join us.
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Tagged with: new song, downloads, palimpsest, quartered, tour

Someone's Carole King

Posted on May 28th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Sjmjtrain
"Next to mine and Phil's, she knows your voice best," Emily told me, holding her tiny 5-week-old daughter Harper in her arms.  "We listen to your CDs all the time!"

I remember vividly the music my mother and father played for me when I was very small.  There was a surfeit of classical music, for which I'll always be grateful:  Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky (my favorite), Dukas, Gershwin, Copland, Wagner, Rossini, Haydn, Dvorak...the list goes on. 

There was the music my mother loved and sang to me, sang along with when she played it for me:  The Beatles, Carly Simon, John Denver, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & the Papas, Marvin Gaye, and Carole King. 

There was the music my father loved passionately, which half the time had no words, but almost always had a horn section:  Ray Charles, Canadian Brass, Dizzy Gillespie, Chicago, Dave Brubeck, and Louis Armstrong. 

I came to love all of this music on my own, and I've been adding colors and flavors and elements to this childhood baseline, pun intended, ever since.

In the past few years, so many of my friends and fans have had children, have been raising children, have sent loved ones off to war, have gone to war.  Stories come back to me on the wind, or spoken with love and smiles:  whole groups of soldiers falling asleep to my music overseas, comforted for a while; a small knot of the newest generation of great thinkers and movers and shakers, with me for their lullaby as well, every night. 

This is why I sing.
This is why I do what I do.
I will never tire of these stories, this news.
I will never stop smiling at the wonder of the power music holds, the good that it can do.

I may never grow out of the humbleness that comes over me when I hear from a soldier, or from someone who loves him/her, that his/her whole squad is rocking out to, or gets rocked to sleep by, an album of mine, in a hostile place where, in my mind, they really should not have to go, where comforts are few.

I may never be able to speak of how amazing it is to know that there are mothers who love my voice and my work enough to feed it happily to their own children, to let my work influence their own life's work, the way that my mother and father fed their favorite music to me.

I am someone's Carole King. 

This is my happy thought today.  This will carry me through a whole lot of despair, should it ever come.  I am doing what I set out to do.  I am making a difference.  I am making someone's life better by being myself, sharing my art. 

What more could I ever want? 


Today is my lover's birthday.  Happy 34th, Kevin!  I love you, and I'm so glad you're here.
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Tagged with: epiphany, small revelation

GBMojo CD Sale! Help out the Traveling Fates!

Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Fatesdaac
Just got word from Ginger, so I'm spreading it.
Go help my girls! If they don't get enough money for their tour, we might not get to meet up again as the Traveling Fates next month, and I will be a sad, sad Sooj.

Hullo from GBmojo!

We wanted to let you all know where we're at with the Summer Tour Fundraiser and Sale: An effort to raise the dough we need to hit the road this summer!

OUR GOAL: Raise $1,000 by Saturday 5/23/09

OUR STRATEGY: Have a big ol' sale by offering you crazy savings on GBmojo Merchandise AND open up our Online Tip Jar for donations in ANY amount! (No really, any amount from $1 and up!) :)

RAISED SO FAR: $490.00 (wahooo! THANK YOU!)
STILL TO GO: $610.00
DAYS LEFT TO DO IT: 4!!!!

To get your limited-time-discount merchandise, come see us at
http://www.gbmojo.com/buymerch.cfm

If you'd like to make a secure donation to our online tip jar (in ANY amount), you can do so by cutting and pasting the following link into your browser. Remember: many pebbles, big pile. Even a little goes a long way when you multiply it by the power of the people!
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=5580706

Thank you for all you do! We'll be looking for you soon out on the road.

xoxoBekah&Ginger
GBmojo
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To all of the Ravens in the Library contributors

Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
and also the editors, supporters, and each of you who purchased a copy.
If you have anything nice yourself to say, please feel free to comment.

Dear contributors, angels, saints, mischief-makers, miracle workers,

Today marks exactly four months from my surgery.
I am well, whole, and sane, largely because of you.
I just finished a cross-country tour which I likely would not have been
able to undertake at all, without the generosity of my amazing friends and
benefactors, namely yourselves. Not only have I been surrounded by
healing energy all this time, I have been freed from the shadow of my
first terrifying grown-up debt.

At every opportunity in my live performances since I got back on the road
in late January, I have pointed out the unprecedented wonder which is the
Ravens in the Library anthology. Obviously I can't describe all of the
magic which makes up the book in my patter between songs on stage, but I
give it my best. My fans will back me up on this, I hope.

My one regret is that I cannot at this moment thank each of you in person,
let you read in my eyes what it means to me that you came to my rescue
when given the opportunity. I, small girl with guitar who runs around
singing for her friends and stealthily making a living at it, deserve all
of this magic, all of these wonders? Some would say no, but you have said
yes. The fact is that this anthology is so incredible, so unbelievable,
that I am still reminding myself here, now, in the spring, that it's real,
that I can hold it and read it, as can everyone. And so, my words of
gratitude can never be enough.

What I can do, which I hope will add up to something like 'enough' one
day, is keep singing, keep adding more interesting art to the world, just
as each of you do. Wherever I go, I can keep telling the story of how I
was once rescued not so very long ago, by an army of magicians and
avengers and artists and wordsmiths, most of whom gave of their talents in
spite of not knowing me at all. This in itself is an incredible tale, but
at the end, I can always pull the actual, tangible book from under my
bard's cloak, to prove it true.

I fail horribly at 'damsel in distress', but hopefully I won't get a
chance to practice it further.
Thank you for all that you have done.
With more gratitude than my body can hold,
S. J. Tucker
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New Album Downloads Out Now: Quartered - Songs of Palimsest

Posted on Feb 25th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Attention Citizens of Palimpsest!
Let the music be your guide.

Hope your Mardi Gras was splendid!

Palimpsest is the newest novel from Catherynne M. Valente, in stores 2/24/09. Quartered is its official companion album, and it will evolve and grow, a work in progress available via download only, as author and composer tour the United States together, across the season of Lent and beyond, from February 25 to April 30 2009. Check back for new songs each week.

What if there was a place beyond terror, beyond passion, where your obsessions come to life? Where your secrets walk the streets? Where the only law is desire? What would you do to get there? Past the edge of the world lies a city of the mind and of the flesh: Palimpsest

Catherynne, Dmitri, Kevin and I will be touring together in support of Palimpsest and Quartered through the end of April. I suspect I will be writing more new songs about the book during that time. The fact that this companion project is download-only gives me complete freedom to record and upload new material as I complete it. Considering that my medical adventures at the beginning of this year really set me back so far, compared to when I actually wanted to have the initial six songs completed, realizing that I had given myself all the time in the world was a great relief. I could fly on this happy thought: I don't have to stop writing about the book at all. If more songs come, they can join the rest as soon as I get them ready.

Here's to living in the future.

Please enjoy the new tracks (they're unmastered right now, but they won't be forever) and know that I appreciate hearing your thoughts. If you have any questions for me, those are wonderful, too. Most of this is entirely new territory for me, and I've never deliberately put myself into such a place before. Believe me when I say that your feedback is important There is even a track which features Cat herself--it won't be the last if I have my way.

This isn't the final album art, either, but I've been getting good responses from it. :D

I will be performing all of these songs at the launch in NYC tonight. If you are on the fence about attending, I hope that will sway you to our side. Newly posted early this morning is "Train Suite I, Ambient Mix."  One more new piece will appear sometime today. Its name is "The List Falls Away." Check the album page for it and keep checking for new songs each week.
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Tagged with: new album, downloads, palimpsest, quartered, tour

Those Who Know The Way

Posted on Jan 5th, 2009 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Prepare to fall in lust with a book you can only crave until Mardi Gras.

Palimpsest Trailer




Catherynne maintains that her muse and mine have been dating for quite some time now (The two Orphan's Tales tie-in albums I have made are plenty indication--see http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/music.php ). I don't blame them at all. My muse continues to come back to me after long, sordid adventures abroad with her lover to whisper new and fantastical music in my ear and firmly connect my hands and body with laptop, headphones, guitar, microphone....so I can only imagine that the sex they have is mind-blowing. If there is a city where our two muses keep their summer home, I think it might be a good bit like Catherynne's Palimpsest.


This is what started all of the new schemes and dreams I have been working on this past month, folks--the train, the electronica, the tour I'm taking with Catherynne this spring. "It feels so strange to be planning a book tour without you," she said to me, many months ago. "You don't have to," I replied. And here we are, exalting this incredible, sensual thing. Please do make sure you get a copy, so that all the city's secrets may unfold for you, wash over you, get under your skin.

The song here is my own "We Are Shangri-La" which was written about Black Rock City, but which embraces Palimpsest with its full heart. Enjoy. Savor. Prepare.

and do check that sneaky url at the end to see what the hell it's about.

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Tagged with: palimpsest, beauty, interstitial hotness

Don't You Wanna Take A Ride With Me, Through My World?

Posted on Dec 18th, 2008 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
I would like to officially announce an amazing new project that author Catherynne M. Valente and I are undertaking.

Catherynne and I, together with our support crew, are launching a nationwide adventure, woven throughout dozens of cities and countless points on the internet, culminating in a train ride that will not be forgotten. You could -be- on that train with us, and a few other special guests, as we ride The City of New Orleans.

Find out more about the train, below...

This "Off the Map" adventure is based on Catherynne M. Valente's
upcoming urban fantasy novel: Palimpsest. You may recall SJ Tucker's work
based on Ms. Valente's previous books (The Orphan's Tales), and they're
collaborating again, but in an entirely different fashion.

Participants in the adventure will be party to a number of unique and
exclusive 'finds' throughout the next couple months. Expect to
discover new original music by SJ Tucker, special recordings of
readings from the book, and beautiful artwork from a variety of
fabulous artists. Keep your eyes peeled on the various websites,
blogs, forums, podcasts, and social interaction sites where you have
heard or seen Catherynne M. Valente and SJ Tucker or her music in
the past. Clues for the adventure could appear anywhere - even in
your own city... even in this post.

The game will begin with the new year and is expected to extend into
mid-summer 2009. The highlight of this adventure, however, takes
place on the weekend of March 19th to March 23rd, 2009.

We're telling you about this NOW, because it's a huge event and you'll
have to act soon to get involved and because there are advantages to
getting a head start over everyone else in the country.

SJ Tucker and Catherynne M. Valente invite you to join them as they
Ride the City of New Orleans.

Expect a beautiful train ride from Chicago (or Memphis) to New
Orleans, a dramatic Friday night about town with SJ Tucker and
Catherynne M. Valente, a full Saturday to explore the city, and an
exclusive, super-special musical performance on Saturday night.

This trip package includes round trip tickets on AMTRAK's City of New
Orleans, two nights stay at the group destination hotel, and a VIP
pass to the weekend's entertainment.

Your VIP pass will also apply at a special event in Chicago on
Wednesday the 18th, if you happen to be in town. It may -also- be
applicable at other special events that we have in the works.

More details will be revealed according to the needs of our upcoming adventure.

Ticket pre-sales have now begun. Space is very limited, so contact us
immediately if you're interested in attending and we'll try to reserve
a ticket for you.

Sign up for the trip at: http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/neworleans.php

Special advance pricing for tickets purchased before December 26th, 2008

* $295 per person, for participants starting in Memphis
* $395 per person, for participants starting in Chicago

Standard pricing for tickets purchased before January 16th, 2009

* $395 per person, for participants starting in Memphis
* $495 per person, for participants starting in Chicago

All of these prices are based on double occupancy. Please purchase
tickets in pairs or let us know whom you would like to share your
accommodations with.

Discounted sleeper rooms on the train may be available. Please let us
know if you are interested, and we will include you in our block rate request.

Contact K' Wiley for more details: kwiley@skinnywhitechick.com

bonus: so far, participants currently include such shiny folk as Alexandra Erin, creator of Tales of MU, golden-voiced Vixy of Vixy & Tony, cellist Betsy Tinney, Scifi song genius Brooke Lunderville, and fire-spinning mastermind Kevin K' Wiley.
Catherynne and I are stoked. Join us!
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Tagged with: my fandom rides in style, tour, exciting news, once in a lifetime

Experiments can only bring results.

Posted on Nov 30th, 2008 by Sooj : Free-range Bard Sooj
Here is a challege for you.  An assignment, for those of you currently in romantic relationships which either already include delightful physical activity or are headed toward being physical.  Hopefully, this is something that will make you smile.

Make a list, or guide, of everything that turns you on, and how to do it; all your preferences, zones, delights, kinks, and fantasies.
Email it to your lover(s).
Discuss every word with each other, in trust and in calm, via email and in person.

Communicate.

Put it to use.

This post is dedicated to all lovers who've already asked.
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Tagged with: love, relationships, experiment, assignment, don't be scared
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