Hello!
Thanks so much to everyone who shared their kind words about last week’s Fresh Wind session with Lonnie the Cloud ft. Spudnick!
I really appreciated hearing from so many of you, and am especially grateful to those who chose to become a paid subscriber of this project.
For only $7 a month (or, the cost of a special latte), you too can support this project of mine! Annual subscriptions are also available, for those with foresight and means.
I’m excited to share that an article about my various art practices (including this Substack!) was just published this morning in Taos News. I’m surprised and honored to have made the newspaper’s cover as well as the cover of the arts supplement! You can read the article online at the following link.
For now, let’s get to this week’s Fresh Wind session…
FRESH WIND SESSION No. 21
Hayley Harper
Recording Date: 9 November 2023
KNCE 93.5 FM Premiere Date: 23 November 2023
Substack Premiere: 25 January 2024
With a voice somewhere between Dolly Parton and Angel Olsen, singer-songwriter Hayley Harper made quite a splash on the local Taos music scene in the summer of 2023. Performing at nearly every venue in town over the course of the season, I had the opportunity to experience her music in a number of different settings. In each of them, her voice easily cut through the noise. Without fail, the raw, heart-aching nature of her songs brought her audiences to quiet attention. With a lighthearted way of being, Harper is a well-known person on the Taos scene. Perhaps her most public role before she began to play shows was as the photographer and social media director for Taos Mesa Brewing and their Mothership venue. You can explore her photographic work (both personal and professional) at this link.
In a sense, Harper’s decision to share her voice and songs with the community was an unmasking - for some, a revelation. I found it to be a naked expression of her inner life of deep feeling.
2023 was not the beginning of Harper's musical journey, though. Growing up in the Sacramento, CA area, she sang in a number of bands, giving life to other people’s songs. A stint in Oregon saw more musical collaborations come and go. It wasn’t until the Covid lockdown that Harper became inspired to learn the guitar to back up her powerful voice, and to start writing songs of her own in earnest. As she revealed to me in the interview portion of this Fresh Wind session, her real vision for her songs is to perform them with a band - one that bridges the worlds of country and post-punk.
In the time since recording this session last fall, Harper moved down to Albuquerque - in part, to immerse herself in that city’s larger music scene. It was a true honor to capture some of her original tunes in a recording studio for the first time. Over the course of her Fresh Wind session, you’ll hear six Hayley Harper originals: “Majestic Parade”, “Valley of Fires”, “Swords”, “Ghost Songs”, “Bad Habits, Dark Houses”, and “Dearly Devoted”.
The following stanza from “Majestic Parade” feels like a proper lyric entry-point for my readers:
Words often feel so cheap against the feeling
Of a love that’s offered up into the wind
Sorrow has a funny way of always playing
On my fears of beginning, beginning again
If you want to eat the fruit, you better tend the vine
If you want to look for sin, well she ain’t hard to find
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