A percentage of all new CD sales at this event will be donated to Living Beyond Breast Cancer.  Hope you can join us for the party!

Lori is survived by her husband, Fredi.  Some of you may know him as my bass player for many years when we were still based in NYC.  I have some idea about the emotional rollercoaster Fredi is lining up for in February.  I imagine it will be much like my May….

Lori fought ferociously for many years against the cancer that finally won the battle.  She was diagnosed at an early stage and a young age, and went into remission several times.  Over the years she learned to navigate the diagnoses and treatments, the hospitalizations and recovery times.  She learned as much as she could about her disease so she could make informed decisions and have some say in how her treatment and healing progressed.  She asked for help when she needed it and gave tirelessly of herself to others.  She connected with other survivors. I suspect that had a positive impact on her quality of life.  I know it made a huge difference in theirs.

Lori lived powerfully despite her debilitating disease.  She made music and traveled and loved and loved and loved. I will never forget my trip halfway across the country with just her and 18 month old Clara.  We drove to Michigan to visit her family on the lake.  We stopped at the Toledo zoo to kiss goats and made a game of finding playgrounds to let Clara wear herself out so she would sleep and we could talk. And talk. And talk. She was in remission then.  But somehow she knew.  I told her she was wrong.  She wasn’t.

Soon after we returned home Lori got the news: the cancer was back.  She was plunged back into a world of chemo and radiation, surgery and medications that made her feel like giving up the fight, but she never did.  She never did, and she always shared her story.  She wrote almost daily about her journey, her hopes, her dreams.  She put her dreams out into the world and many of them were made reality.  She got to be bat girl for the Yankees and met her idol, Derek Jeter.  She went to Disney and was even able to take her dream trip to Hawaii with the love of her life, Fredi, just a few weeks before her life ended.  She truly lived until the day she died.  You can hear about her journey in her own words in this video:

So come February this year I will be doing all I can to help raise money for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. On Feb 12^th I’ll be joining about 120 other yogis in Ft Washington, PA for the Team Twisters Barefoot Ball.  The Ball is the kick-off of Team Twisters fundraising efforts for LBBC. We’ll practice yoga and rally our energy to do what it is we intend to do: raise at least $30,000 before the big “yoga on the steps” event on the famous Philly art museum steps (made famous by Rocky Balboa).  I will also be donating a percentage of all sales of the new CD to Living Beyond Breast Cancer through February.

February 25^th is the official launch party for the new CD.  We’ll be celebrating with friends and fans at MilkBoy in Ardmore, PA.  I’m grateful for one more joyous occasion to tip the scales in a month of great joy and deepest sorrow.

If you have any good fundraising suggestions for me, I’d love to hear them…and LBBC would no doubt love to reap the benefits of them!!

“Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter, Meghan Cary, is a beacon of light in the world of female folk music….If female music fans add this one to their collections, then their house would be complete.” ~ Matthew Forss

Check out the whole review at Inside World Music.  Thank so much Matthew!

In my dream I sit on a three-legged stool with the heel of my boot hooked over the highest rung and the fray at the bottom of my jeans just skimming the snake skin leather.  The sound of pool balls smacking drifts in from the next room and mingles with the quiet conversation between two old friends across the bar.  In my dream I sit in the smoky room but it doesn’t sting my eyes.  I feel it mix with the sweat on my bare arms and rest in the back of my throat.

In my dream I lift a cold beer to my lips with my right hand and hold tight to the neck of my guitar with the left.  After a long refreshing pull, I set the bottle down and slide a pick off the sticky table beside me.  In my dream I begin to play in the back of this lonesome, smoky bar.  My fingers move confidently on worn wood and my pick strums an unhurried rhythm.  And I begin to sing.

In my dream I sing for no one.  Simply for the sake of sound.  And sorrow.  And release. And a hope of healing.  In my dream there is a need for this and it is fulfilled.  The fulfillment washes over me.  In my dream.

Often it would end here and that would be enough.  But sometimes the rest would come.  The connection, the completion of the circuit that is how music flows. The conversation ceases between bartender and buddy.  The pool cues hold steady for a moment as players register the music.  One heart opens to the bending tones and others fall like dominoes into the blanket of sound and sorrow.  And for one moment we are all completely present, completely entwined. In that moment I have a sense that I am where I belong.

This dream found it’s way into my mind long before Matthew’s Martin found it’s way into my arms. Long before I sat in a broken down house in the mountains to write “new shoes”. I retreated into this dream back when I was still certain I would heal people with medicine.  I wonder how far I might’ve traveled from my truth…dreaming it, longing for it but never knowing it was mine…if the universe hadn’t sent a big old freight train crashing into my living room forcing me out onto the uncharted and ever so real world where I could realize if just for a moment that tomorrow is not a guarantee and I could turn finally and face the Truth and in that one moment leap into the abyss.

I leapt.  I landed on a three-legged stool in the back of a dusty bar and I have seen no need to look back.

Everything happens in May. My sister told me yesterday. On May 5, 1995 Matthew died and my world was turned on it’s head. I grabbed the rope and didn’t drown despite the rain that would not let up for 6 weeks after Matti’s last day on earth. I climbed aboard the life raft that was music. I played through my pain and never thought to put the guitar down once it passed.

Everything happens in May. On May 15, 2011 my sister’s 12 year old son, Joey, died. Her life has been turned on it’s head. She is swimming for the rope and the rain keeps falling down and I’m praying that she’ll reach it and knowing if she doesn’t there are a dozen people poised to dive in and haul her out. We won’t need to. She is strong.

Everything happens in May. And the rain keeps falling down.

The writing has been inspired by relationships…a few too many bad ones, no doubt, but relationships all the same.  People.  How we love them, how we think we loath them when really we still love them but just can’t accept the reciprocation (or not) of that love.  People are messy. They don’t behave.  They say the wrong thing at the right time, the right thing at the wrong time.  Nothing just when you can’t stand the silence for one more second.  People are what we’ve got to bounce life off of so we can see all it’s corners and crevices.

The playing was caused by and would not exist were it not for people.  My music doesn’t live until it finds it’s way into your listening.  You have always been an integral part of the music.  it would not be were it not for you.

Then there’s the recording.  That’s always been a tough one for me because it was so easy to feel alone with the music in the studio.  I missed you especially – your listening.  I’m alone behind the double layers of glass playing these tunes, hearing them back in my own private cans. There are of course other musicians in and out of the studio to over-dub this and that, and there are producers and engineers…some of them folks I consider to be VERY dear friends – so don’t get me wrong, I’m not really alone – just always felt that way.  Maybe you’ve been there.  The sound of your lone footsteps in a crowded room.

In the studio everyone has their own (very important) job. The Engineer, producer and even the session players have to be able to stand outside of the music so they can judge it and nudge it (and me) and make it all better from “out there”. But my job is inside the music.  And I guess in the studio I’ve always felt lonely in there.  Hmmm….this is harder than I thought to explain.  Maybe because last Saturday was so different…

Saturday at Forge Recording (http://www.forgerecording.com) was nothing like anything I’d ever experienced in the studio.  It may be the closest I’ll ever get to the live recording we did in Nyack. When the click began to roll and Quint and Peter lit into the opening riff of “Responsibility”, I was anything but alone.  Jocko and I joined in two bars later and the music was alive! Living through these amazing musicians who had helped breathe life into it from it’s infancy.  We were in it.  Inside the music.  But we were all in there together.

And then the music would stop and we’d step out of our iso booths and gather in the control room to listen back.  To listen from the inside.  Because the engineer was really good at his job.  He took care of the outside picture while we listened for the heart of the tune.  It was there.  We put it there.  And it stuck.

This record is going to be amazing.

We’ve been documenting the process in pictures.  I’ve got a great slideshow of shots that I’ll try to share somewhere.  Maybe on my facebook pagehttp://www.facebook.com/meghancary#!/.  I’ll let you know where they go when I’ve figured out how to do it.  Meanwhile, if you want to check out some video:http://www.youtube.com/user/meghancary.  And if you want to keep up on things via facebook, please feel free to friend me!