Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Meghan Cary’s music-career debut was an unintentional triumph. In 1998 she won Billboard Magazine’s esteemed Critic’s Choice for Best Newcomer for her first album New Shoes. Up till then she was a theatre actress with over 100 credits for her work in the U.S. and Europe and she had a successful voiceover career. When her fiancé Matthew Black unexpectedly died, she picked up his guitar and cathartically wrote her debut, followed by two other albums (which got raves from Global Muse and KozmicBlues.net), and dove into a successful folk-circuit music career with an ambitious D.I.Y. touring schedule. Her smoky voice, emotionally-dynamic singing, and vulnerable writing garnered favorable comparisons to Natalie Merchant, Shawn Colvin, Indigo Girls, and Stevie Nicks.  At a gig at CBGB’s Gallery Meghan met her husband who was in the opening band. The two married, relocated, and had two children. Initially Meghan tucked away her music career, worrying it would interfere with being a devoted mother, but as the journey of motherhood unfolded she realized being a good mother meant being a complete person and began to understand what an enriching symbiotic relationship music and motherhood could have. On January 31^st, 2012 Meghan Cary releases her first album in 6 years, the slinky and aptly titled, Building This House.  Her fourth album chronicles her rebuilding her life up from her painful past to her current joyous present, being happily married with two children.

The buoyant “Building This House” opens the album bursting forth with the infectiously propulsive groove of a musically sophisticated band with the taste and maturity to lay back while laying it down. It’s a track far removed from the dark and raw emotional perspective of her previous albums—it’s reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. This exclamatory euphoria permeates the gospel-flavored “Live!” and the let-down-your-guard, boldly optimistic “Invitation.”  In 2004 after her third album, the living-room concert document, Live At Your House, Meghan took 8 years to refill the well and the newly found optimism inherent in her current writing is fueled by the blessed complexity of being a mom, a wife, and a musician. On the haunting and gothically majestic “Darker Song” she reveals her state of mind before her rejuvenation.  Her blunt succinctness chillingly captures her feelings of being worn out from the road and emotionally wrung out from visiting and revisiting the well of her grief with the lyric: These words once were rivers now dried up with age. She bravely confronts moving on from Matthew with the gently unfurling winsomeness of “Through Walking” and the heartbreaking lyrical declaration “I’m making plans and they don’t include you.” “My first CD was born out of loss and I had a lot to write about with that. Onion Dream [2000, her second CD] was about trying to figure out where I wanted to go now that my future had been completely rearranged;  it was the faltering steps into being a different person. ‘Through Walking’ was a turning point of the writing I wanted to go into this record:  I’m done being a widow. Done defining myself as someone who lost and I wanted to move on. Building This House marks a new section because I’m creating anew as opposed to mourning what is lost.”

Though Meghan built a home with a family she never officially closed the door on music. Like any career-minded parent she grappled with growing as a professional while raising kids.  Her multi-instrumentalist husband Peter Farrell (The BlackTails) is an active musician and the two first met January 31^st 2002 (that fateful date is commemorated by Building This House’s January 31^st, 2012 release date) at a Meghan Cary show. “He kept me in the game by meeting me just when I was getting tired of the whole touring life and the hustling necessary to make a career in music happen. And, as cliché as it sounds, I was finding myself ready to settle down and have kids,” Meghan candidly explains.

Meghan and Peter gigged together after they met, and even after they had kids they did spot dates. “The music’s evolution ran parallel to our building a life together and starting a family,” Meghan says. That evolution accelerated when Peter was auditioning bassist Jocko MacNelly for a jazz combo to play standards. Meghan heard something special in the two men’s interactions and with the addition of Western African and Afro-Caribbean grooves of Quint Lange, Meghan found she had a band that could organically share in the creative process. Previously Meghan operated more in the folk-purist vocal-and-guitar sense though on her second album Onion Dream she used live-band textures to layer her earthy compositions. “It’s a whole different vibe creating with a band,” Meghan says enthusiastically. “This was a whole new way of making music. I was bringing in half-written songs and writing them in the room with the band.” Not only will fans note her rejuvenated writing and the fuller sound, but the biggest surprise is the sense of groove and tasteful harmonic sophistication that refreshes the three-chords-and-the-truth nature of Meghan’s humble folk-singer origins. “Lost You In The Light” and “Thursdays” are powered by ethnic-flavored beats and impressionistic chord changes that convey a refreshing jazz-pop sensibility. Repeated listens reward with a multitude of well-placed textures from Hammond organs, folk guitars, blues guitar fills, and nuanced percussion touches. Building This House was produced by Meghan and Peter with invaluable input from Pennsylvania Forge Recording Studio’s chief engineer Ron DiSilvestro who also handled mixing duties.

In the eight years between albums Meghan had a key revelation by seeing herself reflected in other mothers. “I met other mothers who seemed so frustrated and underfed by their daily lives as moms. I realized that following my muse made me a better mother and that motherhood made me a better musician,” she says. And many of Meghan’s fans are mothers; she hopes to inspire them to have similarly empowering realizations by supporting Building This House through the innovative Google Online Concert series.  “My kids go to bed quarter of 8 and I can’t leave because they’re here; I’m sort of tied to the house when not mothering,” she says laughing. “Why not do internet concerts? A lot of my fans are in the same situation, so I’ll give them a concert right in their house. One of the things I hear back from listeners is ‘I come to your concerts and think, “‘I can do this, I can have a life and be a mom.’”  I believe you can feed your own soul while raising great kids,” Meghan says affirmatively.  “Being a parent can actually fuel my creativity and inspire me to live even more fully the life I’ve dreamed for myself.”