FRESH WIND SESSION No. 41
Audrey Lobdell
Recording Date: 9 July 2025
Substack Premiere: 25 July 2025
I’m happy to be sharing another Fresh Wind session with you all today, this time from local Taos musician Audrey Lobdell. I’ve gotten to know Lobdell a bit more in the past few months, as she’s currently the drummer in the live band I’ve put together in town to play my original songs at shows around Northern New Mexico. She’s well known in Taos as one of the core members of the group Lady’s Mantle, and also as a Healing Arts Practitioner. She frequently hosts sound baths in different healing spaces around town, and is a heavily booked Reiki practitioner in the community. One of the things I find interesting about Lobdell is that her songwriting practice speaks from a very different perspective than that of her official healing work.
All six of her original songs that you’ll hear in this Fresh Wind Session (“Higher Ground,” “The New Year’s Song,” “Waiting,” “Jail,” “Carousel,” and “Fuck You”) deal with complex emotional states, and frequently address the darker emotional places that one passes through as relationships dissolve. We talk a lot in the interview portion of this podcast episode about the way that many healing practitioners shy away from the shadow side of their own selves. That’s not something that Lobdell seems to struggle with, and I admire that quality in her. It’s refreshing to encounter a healer who isn’t afraid to say “What the fuck?” over and over again in an interview setting - or to speak openly about the inevitably messy and colorful individuating journey she’s on, and the work she does to balance that with her mission of helping others.
Lobdell’s journey with music and sound has traversed through many settings at this point. Growing up in the Hudson Valley, she lived in a musical household - her father was even a popular local radio DJ! In University time, she studied percussion at SUNY Fredonia, and ultimately landed in New York City where she worked as a sound engineer and played in a number of bands. It’s only since she’s landed in Taos that she’s devoted herself to a personal songwriting practice in earnest, and this Fresh Wind session is the first place on the internet where her songs have been readily available to listeners. Local listeners will be delighted to hear these songs whenever they’d like, and those not familiar with Lobdell’s music are in for a treat.
