Hello dear friends,
Day 4: Notes from the road - Anneke Van Giersbergen Solo Support Tour + news:
I’m writing to you from the road, as I sit near a large window in the hotel restaurant, coffee with oat milk, my journal and reflections of the beautiful show last night in an old church in the center of Wrocław. This is my fourth day on my first totally solo tour. Just me, my guitar, some candles, and my car. No band, No stage hand, no sound guy. And, I’ll consider doing this more often. It’s rare to take trips alone weather a tour or any “get away.” Be alone in a hotel room. Hours alone in the car with your thoughts and observing life around with with a little more attention.
And while I have a little more time to reflect. I want to express to you how incredible it is to be able to come together in our common human experience through the expression of music.
I’m feeling extremely grateful today that I have such an opportunity to share this experience with you. When I’m on stage looking at all the faces Ive never seen, I still recognize you. As a soul. Just like me. Going through this experience with no guidebook and no ability to know what lie ahead. It’s pure chance that, over the millions of years since humans began evolving that we are all here together at this exact moment. How incredible?!
If not for each other, what is this all for?
These are all points of observation I’ve poured into ‘Human’
And I’m happy to tell you that the 3rd single will be yours tomorrow.
‘Currents.’
This recording is very special to me and a little different in quality from others on the record.
This song is just me and my guitar. And if you’ve ever done any recording you know, so much emotion gets lost when you record part’s separately. Which is the most common way to record in studio: guitar first and vocals on top. Most of what I write is about emotion in the moment, and connected with the movement of my body as I play the guitar. It’s one machine and can’t be broken.
I tried many times to record it in the studio in various ways. But if I’ve learned anything over the years. It’s that - I HATE the studio. (Sorry producer friends.) an on this record I ended up recording a lot of vocals in my home studio. Alone. With my thoughts. Experimenting without worry about judgements or most importantly time.
Each try was completely missing that… thing. That spirit. That authenticity.
After a year of pandemic and banging my head against the wall in my emotional state and hyper-fixating on the creation of the album to an unhealthy degree. I stopped everything and went to Peru for an Ayahuasca journey. I was there a month. And in that time I didn’t play. I didn’t sing. I didn’t access social media, barely. It was like a detox. A scrubbing of the soul. Painful. And so deeply important.
I returned to Poland in an extremely vulnerable state. (If you feel the pull to have such a journey, be sure to also plan and equal amount of decompression / reintegration time.) I returned straight to work and even played a concert in Puławy days after my return. Needless to say it was a completely dissociative experience. My foundation of who I thought I was has crumbled. And I’m very unsure of where to stand, not to mention connect with the music I’ve been making.
It was a terrible concert. (For me)
In an attempt to reconnect to my music thst I feel I needed to rebuild a healthy relationship with, I set up my zoom recorder in my large roomy living room. Stood in the center of this room, guitar on my shoulders and hit record. After so long of not playing, in thst moment I felt every word and every swimming sound, I reconnected with that itness that I had out there in the first place.
I got it.
No need to re-record.
This is my take. My moment of being absolutely dissolved in music. The place I feel the most at home.
If you’ve made it this far in my “note” to you.
Thank you.
Tomorrow you will be able to hear the result of this deep experience.
Thank you for listening, thank you for reading and thank you for never stopping the internal exploration of self.
Love,
Moriah
pre-save:
https://ffm.to/MoriahWoodsCurrents