ABOUT THE ALBUM
This album is about the beauty, the pull and the dissonance of grief. And love. Each of these songs were written at a distinct juncture in the process of grieving the death of a loved one. And love. And the power of music to heal and transform as well as wound and bite.
A word about the source of this work and the origin of Soar.
On March 16, 2016, Pedro "Shambho" Perez-Cabezas chose to end his life and living. That night, Ash ended her shift at the deli at 10:00PM, Ash spoke to his childhood best friend, Michael. He didn't say what had happened but shared that he was dead and that his father had been the one to find him. That night, she walked home from Williamsburg to Crown Heights, Brooklyn at a snails pace, landed in her bed and slept through the night like an immoveable stone. The next night, she dreamed. She dreamed of a family of folk musicians. In the dream, she began singing the chorus to "Soar," and each time the song became sad or defeated the folk-man, sitting on her right smacked her on the arm. "No," he said, "that's not what this is for." She continued to sing, as she reached the chorus again, the family of folk-musicians and their warm living room disappeared and she was singing out into the horizon, standing at the shoreline, as a seagull flew from her and disappeared into that horizon. She thought, "Maybe that's him," and "Goodbye." That morning, she woke up with the chorus of the song in her mind and, over time, pulled the rest of this song out of that semi-wakeful state.
Ash says, "everytime I play this song, I have chills all over my body. I have played in live events where the moment I started to play this song, children ran up to the platform with money, stuffing it into plastic cups they found on the ground. The song sits in the break in my voice and it is nearly impossible for me to sing it well or anywhere near as strongly as I do the other songs on this EP. It's good not to be strong sometimes."
There is a moment in the recording of this song when, after a long and sustained build, everyone cuts out but the keys and bass. "This moves me, especially," she says. "Douglas P. Murphy (our bassist and the EP's co-producer) and I met in 2017. He asked me if I was related to Jack Straw from Witchitaw and a mutual love, respect and profound appreciation began. Initially, it looked like I would work with Doug on his material. And then, after dropping in on one of our Dark Blue rehearsals, Doug shared that his father had committed suicide that summer.
This album is not about grieving the loss of someone whose committed suicide, explicitly. And, even though it's not explicitly about that, there are moments where the unique questioning and pain associated with that experience peeks out of the music. This music is for all of us; it's for you and it's for me. It's an experience. And we hope you are moved by it.