I always thought that people in their thirties had it together: a stable relationship, a steady day job, and a real sense of who they are. I thought I would have it together. My thirties have been spent single parenting, falling in and out of love, wrestling with voices from the past and struggling with the idea of the future. They have been full of change and growth, deep love and profound loss. They have been humbling and utterly human. They have given me a story to tell; so much of a story, that I decided to write an album and a book about my experiences.
I started writing an album in the first few years of this transformative decade. When all was said and done, I had thirteen songs about my life, some of the most intimate I'd ever written. I gathered up some of my beautiful and talented friends to make an album. I wanted to maintain a lot of creative control in the recording process because the content was so personal and I wanted a lot of say in how it sounded, so I asked my friend Lucas Morton to produce it with me and play on it. I hired musicians Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk (Grammy award winning producers for Kacey Musgraves' Golden Hour), Todd Lomboardo (Instrumentalist on Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves), and Peter Groenwald (of Hush Kids) to play on it.
As I finished recording the album, I still felt like I had more to say about this period of my life and I wanted to go deeper than a three minute song could take me. So I decided to write a book. It is entitled Thirties: The Album in Portrait and Prose.
"The stories in the book and album are not all wild or awe-inspiring. Many moments may feel quiet and every day, but I believe that in moments like these, where our minds drift and our hearts ache, deepest truths can be found. Each of the thirteen songs on the records has a companion piece, a story and photos, a vignette to bring you to the place of its origin. It is my hope that as you experience this album and book, you are able to find beauty and value in parts of your own life that you may not have expected."
-passage taken from the preface of Thirties: The Album in Portrait and Prose.