Hi everybody,
I’m happy to be sharing a new Fresh Wind session with you all today! It’s the first of these sessions that I’ve recorded with the podcast format in mind, and also the first to not have its premiere on KNCE 93.5 FM, the radio station here in Taos that I hosted the “One More Song” radio show on for 123 episodes between June of 2021 and April of this year.
I appreciate the patience of my subscribers, as I haven’t shared a new Fresh Wind session in almost three months. It’s been a period of transition for me in many different ways, and before I talk about the session with Taos’ Turiya LaLoba that I’m sharing today, I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve been up to in the time that’s passed since you’ve last heard from me.
Perhaps most notably, I released a new EP (or LP, depending on how you look at it) a few weeks ago. The title of the EP, “Everybody On The Breeze,” came from a line I wrote for a song that didn’t end up making it onto the record. There were a few lines in the song that didn’t quite land, or hold up enough, to be on the level for a song release, but that line from the bridge section ended up being a kind of poetic phrase that succinctly embodied the emotional energy of the collection of songs. A poetic commentary on the ungrounded nature of this moment in time, and the feeling that all the people I know seem to be in a position where far more energy than ever before is devoted toward just staying afloat on the violent winds of change blowing through our world.
I wrote about the genesis of the record in an essay that went out to subscribers of this Substack about a month ago, and today I’d like to share some thoughts and experiences that I’ve had since actually releasing this new music into the world. This is the first collection of original songs that I’ve shared with people in five years, and in a lot of ways I’ve been immersed in the process of reintegrating my life with the “professional” music world since the album came out last month. It’s been a strange reality to immerse myself in, and one that’s forced a reckoning with how I choose to define “success” in relation to the part of my life that’s devoted to making recorded versions of the songs that I write.
At this time, the primary platform that music listeners in my various communities listen to music on is Spotify. A controversial platform for a long time, mostly due to the extremely low rates they pay to the musicians, it has recently become even more controversial for a few reasons. Last year, Spotify made the decision to stop paying artists anything at all for tracks in their catalog until the songs receive more than 1000 streams during a yearly billing cycle. For many independent artists, this meant that their earnings from the platform went from very little to nothing at all. Then, just a few weeks ago, the founder of Spotify invested 600 million euros into an AI military defense company. This recent investment has sparked a new wave of established artists taking their music off of the platform, and I’m curious to see how far that wave extends. I have been a listener on the Tidal streaming platform for the past two years, and I highly recommend it for a number of reasons (high fidelity streaming audio, great curated playlists, monthly reports on your digital listening habits, amongst other things). While I don’t miss using the Spotify platform for my digital listening, and no longer have a paid account on the platform, for the time being I have kept my music on there for others to listen to.
In recent years, my monthly listenership on the Spotify platform has consistently fluctuated between 700 and 1300 listeners per month. A significant portion of that listenership comes from my cover of the Joanna Newsom song “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie.” I’ve been a fan of that song since I first got a copy of the record it’s on from Other Music in 2008, and in 2016 I recorded my cover of the song for inclusion on an album I made called “Beach Captain.” After I released the album in 2018, I discovered that (ahead of the curve as always), Newsom’s music was unavailable on the Spotify platform. Because of that, a large percentage of folks searching for “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie” were redirected to my cover of her song. At the time of writing, that cover has more than 6 times the number of streams than any of my original songs on the Spotify platform. And, after Spotify changed their payout methods for tracks receiving less than 1000 plays a year, it’s one of a handful of songs I have on the platform paying out at all. (After that payout method went into effect last April, my monthly payments from Spotify went down by ⅓ to ½ depending on the month.)
Since October of 2024, I’ve been writing a weekly interview column for Taos News. Sometimes I interview artists who are passing through Taos (like recent interviews with Squirrel Flower and Courtney Marie Andrews), but I mostly interview artists local to the Taos community. The column is also called “Fresh Wind,” and like the podcast sessions I record with musicians in town, the column aims to shine a light on developing artists in my community. During one of my recent interviews with a local artist, the subject I was interviewing shared that they had looked me up on Spotify and that he was blown away by my streaming numbers. He said something along the lines of: “You’re so successful!” When I shared with him that, in all of 2024 I received less than $50 from Spotify ($47.96 to be exact), their response kind of floored me. “Wow,” they said,” that’s amazing!”
This conversation is emblematic of the kind of bewildering experience the average independent recording artist frequently encounters while moving through the process of sharing their music with the world in 2025. The process of releasing “Everybody On The Breeze” brought me into conversation with more actively working musicians than I’d been in touch with for some time, and many of those conversations were heartbreaking. I heard stories of bands playing for thousands of audience members a night on European tours, and feeling grateful that they were able to break even on their touring expenses. Another artist I spoke to was in the midst of a month-long US tour, on which they optimistically expected to come back $15,000 in the hole. While the number of artists who are able to support themselves from their recorded music (even partially) continues to decrease, the essential role that music-making plays in many people’s lives remains unchanged. How to bridge the gap between these two divergent realities is, in many ways, the question I’ve been living over the past month.
After I moved to New Mexico in the summer of 2020, I became committed to learning how to record my own music. Between 2006 and 2019, I had primarily worked with engineers in professional recording studios. And, while I learned a lot from those experiences, it became clear to me over the course of that run of years that eventually I would need to learn the process of recording my own material. On one hand, there was the high cost of working with engineers and producers. But, on a deeper level, I came to realize that, for me, I would never be truly happy with someone else’s vision of how to present my songs. I would need to learn how to do that myself, and the Covid pandemic became the catalyst for beginning that project in earnest. That learning process is a large part of why there was such a large time gap between releases for me from 2020 to 2025. A lot of attempts to record my own songs fell flat, but each failure to capture my sonic vision for a song also brought a lot of lessons. I’m by no means yet at a place where I’m fully happy with what I’m making (and I don’t think I’ll ever be fully satisfied in that sense), but “Everybody On The Breeze” is without a doubt the record of mine that comes closest to the kind of sound I hear for my songs in my head.
When I was preparing for the release of my new EP, I chose to set very reasonable goals. Rather than putting a large push behind this collection of songs, I instead aimed to get the ball rolling again on the ecosystem of sharing music with the world. It was a case of dropping a pebble into a pond to see how the water reacts, rather than trying to change the pattern of the water’s flow. And, it’s been actually a very sweet and moving process/experience so far. One of my favorite local Taos writers, Arielle Christian, wrote a mystical essay about my creative process. New York music writer Jeremy Shatan wrote a very positive review of the record for his AnEarful Substack. I was interviewed twice on the radio here in Taos, once on the daily morning show, and once for a more esoteric program called “Resonance,” where I discussed the album and also played a few of the songs that I have in the works for the next release. And, most excitingly, I’ve put together a new band to play my songs live.
When I sought to plan the record release show for “Everybody On The Breeze,” I knew I wanted to try and put together an ensemble of musicians to play the album live. After a number of inquiries, I put together a kind of all-star (from my own sense of the musicians I like in my community) group of local musicians. The group features Michael Virga and Robert Quijano on electric guitars, Audrey Lobdell on drums, and myself on bass - with all of us joining in on vocals. This was the first album I played all of the instruments on (except for some choice additions from Ben Lanz, who mixed the record) - so, when we started the process of rehearsing the songs in my home studio, it was a real thrill to hear all of the instrumental parts being played live. Much like my decision to keep the goals for the release of the recordings small, I intentionally asked the musicians for a commitment of just one show when we began the rehearsal process. I’m thrilled to share that all of the musicians involved want to keep playing together - and, right now I’m in the process of booking our trial run of dates together: a show once a month in August, September, and October. Here are a few photos from the release show, which happen to have been taken by Turiya LaLoba!
In terms of playing shows outside of New Mexico, I’m still looking into some dates later this year in California and New York (basically, the places where I know people). But, like all the other aspects of my musical life these days, there’s a lot of weighing options and trying to decipher what really makes sense. I’m hoping to play for folks on both coasts soon, though! I haven’t played a concert in NYC in eight years, which is kind of wild to contemplate. In terms of my musical practice and process, I’m more interested in keeping up with the process of bringing my songs to fruition in the recorded medium than anything else. Since last October, I’ve been one of the organizers of a bi-weekly song circle here in Taos. And, that group has served as a very fruitful catalyst for me to try and write a song I like at least every two weeks. Earlier this week, I started proper sessions for my next release. I’m excited to share that I recorded demos of eight new original songs that I’m really vibing with at that session! For the rest of this summer, I’m aiming to conduct 1-2 recording sessions a week, bringing those songs to life in my home studio.
Thanks go out to all of my subscribers who purchased one of the “One More Song Radio Memorial” T-shirts drawn by Rafi Abrahams and printed by Sarah Hart here in Taos. There are still a few shirts available on Bandcamp for purchase - and, now you know (in full-disclosure mode) that each individual t-shirt is the equivalent of nearly an entire year of Spotify receipts. I so appreciate your support!
My goal is to share a new Fresh Wind session on Substack every new and full moon this summer! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to continue with that project in the long term, but there are still a number of musicians vital to the scene here in Taos that I haven’t had the pleasure of documenting yet. Turiya LaLoba, whose session I’m sharing today, is an artist I’ve hoped to document for some time in this podcast format. For the past few years, she’s been sharing her original compositions via the Lady’s Mantle band here in Taos. And, her songwriting voice is quite fresh and hard to describe.
For readers and listeners based in Taos, LaLoba may read as an archetypal Southwest character. But for my coastal subscribers, this Fresh Wind session with her will offer an insightful glimpse into a different kind of musician than they might be familiar with. From 2017 through 2022, LaLoba lived a nomadic existence - traveling the country in vans and buses. Then, after she came to Taos in 2022 for that year’s Tribal Vision Gathering, she, in her own words, “just never left.” In addition to her work as a musician, LaLoba is also a writer - currently at work on a memoir, as well as a Substack where she shares penetrating and revealing stories from her life. It was a real pleasure getting to record her songs and talk with her about her life.
The next Fresh Wind session will be with Audrey Lobdell, LaLoba’s bandmate in Lady’s Mantle, as well as the current drummer for my live band. Look for that on the next new moon!
Sending lots of love,
Richard Aufrichtig
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FRESH WIND SESSION No. 40
Turiya LaLoba
Recording Date: 25 June 2025
Substack Premiere: 11 July 2025
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