FRESH WIND SESSION No. 31
Glenda Fletcher
Recording Dates: 9 July 2024
KNCE 93.5 FM Premiere: 14 July 2024
Substack Premiere: 19 July 2024
While I’ve had many artists record a Fresh Wind session featuring their vocals accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, Glenda Fletcher is the first artist that I’ve had on One More Song whose music is firmly rooted in the folk tradition. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Fletcher found herself influenced by the music of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and especially Joan Baez. When I first heard her perform, I felt that her music would have fit right in at Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival, which I attended almost yearly while growing up in the Hudson Valley in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In Taos, Glenda is best known for her work with The Fletcher and John Trio, previously Fletcher and John - a collaboration with John Moulton and now also Moulton’s son Max. Since 2001, the group has self-recorded and released 5 full-length records, all of which are available on their website. The group was formed shortly after Glenda moved to New Mexico in 1996, originally settling in the Dixon area.
Growing up in North Carolina in a musical family, often hearing her great-grandmother play the lap steel guitar, Glenda’s first musical foray focused on piano and organ lessons inspired by her grandmother’s acumen on those instruments. In her early teens, when she heard a friend’s older sister performing an acoustic guitar, she became immediately smitten with the instrument. Songwriting followed shortly after, but it wasn’t until she moved to New Mexico in her early 40s that she began taking the task of sharing her musical art seriously. Speaking of that time, she told me: “I sort of made a deal with the universe that if I could just figure out how to make a living and not give everything to that, I’d never put music last. I don’t have a set practice, except to say: if I pick up my guitar every day, and I play no matter what, things start to happen.”
Transitions, or times of change, are a major source of inspiration for Fletcher. And the two most recently composed songs of the six that feature on her Fresh Wind session were written in the wake of one of the biggest transitions of her adult life, the end of a decades-long relationship. The first of those two, “Farm”, came to her in a dream. The second, “A Talk With Love” was written as part of a show I organized on January 2nd of this year where I commissioned 15 songwriters to write a song on New Year’s Day and perform it live the following evening.
On that cold winter’s night, Glenda’s song brought many in the audience to tears. During our recording session for this session, I found myself just as moved as I was when I first heard it in January.
First time listener’s of Glenda’s music are in for a treat with this session. And, those who are more accustomed to hearing her perform in the context of her long-running trio will find something unexpectedly intimate in this rare solo outing. Those local to Taos can catch The Fletcher and John Trio usually once a month at The Adobe Bar at the Taos Inn. Their next performance at the venue is coming up on Saturday, September 7th.
13: Fresh Wind Session No. 31: Glenda Fletcher