"Lyric driven, musical theatre-inspired folk rock that reflects on the highs and lows of life in a witty and vulnerable way"
The story of my music:
I’ve worked as a music director in the Chicago improv, sketch, and theatre scene since August of 2011. My work in improv and sketch especially taught me how to write songs quickly and improvise my way thru writers block.
In my work in sketch and improv I became skilled at writing music for other people’s lyrics but I didn’t always feel confident in writing my own lyrics.
In August 2016 my mom died after a long battle with Multiple Myeloma. Heartbroken, I found myself working thru a lot of feelings and feelings and intense amount of creative energy and so I set songwriting challenges for myself. Thru that work I grew confident in my songwriting, started to develop my artistic voice, and also found a tremendous amount of comfort and healing. I wrote something like 60 songs between 2016 and 2020 and started professionally releasing them in October of 2019.
What happened to all those unreleased songs? Well some I keep in the piles of rough drafts and lessons learned and others I have released exclusively to my Patreon
I describe my music as “musical theatre folk rock” or “what would happen if Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos and Amanda Palmer” wrote a musical. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with different genres and writing more comedy songs. I’m excited to see what comes next in my singer-songwriter journey and I’m excited to take my listeners along for that ride!
Giverny (October 2019)
My first professional release, Giverny, is a heartfelt ballad dedicated to my mom. I am originally from Iowa and grew up going on vacations to Chicago with my mom. We’d always make sure to see the Monet exhibit and somewhere on our adventures one year she said the phrase “this is the thing I love about good art- it reaches out to grab you.”
Less than a month after my mom passed in 2016, I went to go visit the Monet’s with a friend of mine. I walked into see the Monet’s and my sense of mom’s presence and my grief was so strong I had to GET OUT of the museum.
I sat with this moment in the back of my mind for a few months and then sometime in May of 2017 the idea for Giverny came to me. The song is a tearjerker that I play selectively these days but when I do there are transcendent moments where it calls my mom’s memory to the room. I think it resonates with anyone who has lost a loved one and connects with the power of art to connect across generations.
Power of the Unnamed Passion (October 2020)
"...a 2020 hug."
"...what would happen If Joni Mitchell and Joe Iconis improvised a musical."
"...a vulnerable, heartfelt journey!"
Power of the Unnamed Passion is a musical theatre folk rock concept album about those moments in life where everything falls apart and you learn to make new meaning. It is a collection of songs I wrote between 2016 and 2020 as I worked thru the loss of my mom and grew into my 30s. The journey of the album is one of performative joy and “everything is ok (but totally isn’t) energy to a more grounded mature joy where you realize that everything “is what it its and that’s ok.”
Tarot Song (March 2021)
in December of 2018 my friend Aidan McCormick gave me a tarot reading. (The cover art of this single is a picture of the reading). The first thing they said was “this egg full of swords represents your subconscious.” This reading was particularly eye opening. The message the cards had for me was that I would learn to guard my time and attention and connect with the things that light me up and as a result, find more fulfilling connections. 2019 was a year of healing and focusing my energy and in December of 2019 I was doing a songwriting challenge and got the prompt “she peeled back the layers and wished she hadn’t” or something like that and this song was born.
The track features cello by Dr. Kit Cellopunk who is also featured on my song, Empty wind. Click here to find out more about his work.