Five Years of Sorceress

Happy Birthday 🧙‍♀️

Five years ago today, Sorceress, my (accidental) pandemic album, was released into the world.

Album cover, shot in front of the wood pile on my Aunt’s ranch in Argyle Texas by my good friend Kari Rosenfeld

The world stopped for all of us, and all my tours were canceled. So, I spent a lot of time doing things on the internet for this record - an album release show from home, tons of Instagram live type things, zoom interviews…those were strange days, weren’t they?

Since I didn’t get to tour this album, I really didn’t know if people were into the songs.

My first few tours on Time Ain’t Accidental I think the only song from Sorceress I played was Wind on Tin. I remember doing a solo show in the UK over the fall and I asked if anyone had requests. People yelled out “Infinite Scroll!”, “Loves Not Hard to Find!”, “Gulf of Mexico!”. I was shocked! It was genuinely thrilling and so sweet to know that people were wanting songs off Sorceress, and I was extremely embarrassed to admit I couldn’t remember how to play them.

So I relearned my own songs. And on my solo tours lately I’ve been including Sorceress (the title track), Infinite Scroll, and Wind on Tin in my set. One day I should really do a Sorceress tour, proper, the tour that never happened - and play the whole record. Maybe we will do a 10 year anniversary.

We shot the album cover during a full moon in August 2019 out on my Aunt Viki’s ranch in Argyle,Texas. Here’s Aunt Viki, she rules:

I grew up going out there and her place means so much to me, so I wanted to do the photos there. I went with two of my best friends in the world - Kari Rosenfeld, who shot the photos, and Jonathan Riddel (who is basically my brother) giving us a hand.

It was a hot Texas night and it felt magical being out there. This shoot was one of the very few times I’d ever been on that land without my family, and something about the whole experience was spiritual in a way.

Here are some outtakes from the shoot:

Sorceress album shoot

I went back and listened to my original demos for this album.

It’s so cool for me to hear how the songs started out. I remember thinking I needed so much help to get the songs to where they needed to go. Now, I look back and realize - no I didn’t. The songs were there. I just needed confidence. I needed to trust myself. I didn’t need to outsource a million opinions and have a ton of people helping me.

But, it takes time and experience to realize that as an artist. And I am very very hesitant to ever go here, but I will in this case - it’s hard to realize that as a woman in music.

For paid subscribers, I’m including the original demo of Sorceress, the title track from the album. And we are gonna go behind the paywall now because I’m talking about the true story of making this record. It was rough. I hope it’s helpful for anyone out there who has been intimidated in a studio setting.