Lygia -

You keep breathing and days
eventually pile up behind you
and there you are wondering
how much you didn't do.

There's no excuse really, but
one of those things was to thank
you for the use of your halls
a couple of weeks, or months, ago...

Man, trees. Sure wished I lived
in the trees. Maybe one day.

Anyway, thanks. It was a lovely time.
Always wind up glad to get there.

Lygia, the CD.
It's exquisite. Beautiful doesn't do it.

Anyone who can sing like that, and then
have the ability and gift to get into
your kitchen with those songs - it's
really pretty scary.

I keep hearing a crying steel guitar
back there in spots. However, I personally
would not want to see the songs get cluttered
up too much. A little guitar and you singing
fills the bill to the brim.

Guns on the Wall - now that's beautiful
with that harmony back there - gives it
a lifted ethereal sound. That one is huge.

I've heard you do banjo a little slower
before which I think I like better. (slowed it down :-)

Loved the chord changes on The Only Way.

Wish I was one of those big guys with a big
cigar and big connections. Get you hooked
with some help.

Please keep going. Understand you'll be at Steve's this weekend. Hope you can relax and make some headway.
I might call just to bug you.

Just Love,
dg

Dear Lygia,

Wow! I was blown away by your CD! Where do I start?

Your writing is superlative. I found many of the songs to be extremely moving.

Your singing is lovely. I had no idea you are such an exceptional talent.

The playing is solid, but unobtrusive; it supports the lyric perfectly.

The production is top drawer. It's truly as good, or better, than anything out there.....

......Congratulations, and good luck with it,

..............Jim

Lygia,

Thank you so much for all those
wonderful words and songs -
Steve let me listen to what you have so far and
I just sat there and cried. I love it.
Tears of great gratitude and great joy.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart -
I love you,

Jerry

Lygia is pronounced Leeja... (like Lisa with a "j" in place of the "s"). It's a Phoenician name that means "the caretaker" however, the name came to me by way of the fact that my mother is Italian and wanted to name me Lydia but feared that, in America, it would be pronounced Lidia, Lid for short ... and that would not do ... So, when my parents saw the movie "Quo Vadis" not long before my birth, and there by were introduced to the character of Lygia, my mother's dilemma was solved and I had my name ...

I'll often feel a song coming through the pull of a strong longing. Soon something resonates: a comment, an experience, an observation, a memory... I usually make some kind of note of it. Then, within a week or two... rarely more then that, the new song will begin to come forth.... Other times songs just demand to be written with an immediate urgency.  Most often, the melody and lyrics come together. I pick up my guitar, choose a tuning (I often play tuned down a 1/2 step, or open G I love as well, and I love my drop e capo on the 2nd fret of the 1/2 step down tuning….  or I’ll go with the regular tuning with or without a capo…  so, I get an idea of the guitar sound that feels right, hustle out what I'd already written down, get out paper and pens (or my computer up to a preset song format), set my little recorder on pause and start playing, singing and writing. The music will develop and it flows and goes from there pretty directly. A period of working with the song follows that can be pretty lengthy until it finally feels done and, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t…. Finally, I begin singing it outside of my studio and it moves out however and where ever it does from there...

Some songs are taken on by other people as their voice for what they need said which is such an amazing experience and honor...  Response is a part of the music for me; such an intimate, gratifying completion:  thank you.

The songwriting experience can feel incredible and astonishing and magnificent. When "Anchored To Tears” came … I just loved the imagery …  I hadn’t known how I was going to express what I wanted to until I heard myself sing it.  I love that experience.  "I fall like rain deep into the trees ('till a pretend me takes hold") Guns On the Wall....   To be able to get to a place where lyrics flow on melodies through my heart and soul and voice, to feel as I do and be able to articulate what I feel in music... is such an amazing experience.  I attribute my ability to “get there” to the gift of the depths I was forced to reach as a child experiencing terror, fear and betrayal... the confusion and isolation that I lived left me floundering in such lonely awareness and senses... an intense and deep place that my music continually brought me through.  But, I don’t know if that’s what got me to the ability to go where I get to go, it just seems like it and I like the whole silver lining thing.  I feel music saved me and I continue to feel blessed by the gift of what I feel and express for myself and others through “my” songs, and that this is the "something valuable" out of life experiences one would never choose to endure. I feel that the songs matter and I’m told that they do.  And I get to experience the gift of them as I discover them as I’m writing them and again when I give them through performance or my recordings.  I can’t imagine my life without this….  It’s very hard to explain or speak of but, there, I tried. 

Some songwriting experiences are eerie and overwhelming, as in "Feel My Love." I had begun a song years and years ago.... At the time, it was a song about yearning for someone you were in love with, who was temporarily away. However, in late August of 2001, I was consumed with the need to find that old song that had the line "my cup of china flowers trembles into morning hours"...  about drinking tea alone from a china cup in the middle of the night, while missing someone.  I did find it, in a big boot box full of old binder paper, paper bag scraps... bits of songs I'd started or even "finished" but had yet to become their own: and there it was. Once I had it on my music stand, it evolved into a different theme: one of suddenly losing your partner to death. Not three days after completing the song, and while I was still in the refining stage, September 11th "happened". It was shocking, being there in my little studio with this song during the aftermath of September 11th. A friend of mine refers to the song as "the one that's like, I'm sleeping in your t-shirt"... that line doesn't happen to be in the song but that is the song... none the less.

I was raised in California, south of San Francisco, out a winding road into the Santa Cruz Mountains, 72 stairs and 3 paths down the side of a canyon... in an old summer cabin turned family home by weekends of sneaking all the building supplies up the mountain (in the old '47 Dodge pick up truck) when the building inspectors were out of sight ... to get that little house to stick to the hill, grow alittle and have some decks to play music on and visit with friends. We were tucked into a forest of Redwoods with some Oaks, Bays, and Madrones and a creek at the bottom of the canyon with lots of room to run and roam and imagine.

Daddy played banjo and guitar and his best friend, "Uncle" Guy, played guitar and wrote songs (Daddy's Banjo.) The activity at the house I grew up in was people comin' down the steps as they drove home from "over the hill" at about dinner time, Mommy throwing another chicken in the pot, Red Mountain wine and Buckhorn beer and music, friends and laughter. I started playing guitar with Daddy and Uncle Guy when I was 10 (they'd show me how to do the chords and then send me to my room to practice until I didn't squeak) and was given my first guitar the next year when I was in the 6th grade. I grew up listening to so many family friends playing music (guitars, mandolins, banjo, flute, even a dulcimer and a little piano occasionally) and singing ... singing, singing, singing ... and many of the songs where songs that Uncle Guy had written... so I think that made me very comfortable with the songwriter in me. I began "making up songs" about life, family friend's divorcing, friendship, heartache and celebration and betrayal from the time I could play three chords that "went together"....

We had a lot of characters around when I was growing up and we spent alot of good times around the fire pit in the lower yard or the living room up in the house playing music and carrying on. There's a lot of stories... like, getting the piano down the stairs with skinny Andy and a long 2x4 acting as the brake (not to mention where we got the piano in the first place!)... or how Mommy would take peoples' watches away when they arrived for a party ... or how Daddy would often lay back and take a little nap and people who were new to us would think they'd over stayed their welcome but, people who knew us would reassure them that this was just part of the night: he'd be up and playin' his banjo again real soon.

Things weren't all rosy..... We, obviously, all have our trials and consequences. The most severe and life altering for me was that of being tricked, betrayed, raped and then discarded at 12 years old which resulted in, among other things, a profound disconnect from any experience of being loved, mattering or included in my family and the community of schoolmates and friends that I had "belonged" with (Guns On the Wall.) Fortunately for me, I already had my music and, from that point on, it was me and my guitar in the woods....that was my one thread from the outside world into the "real" me and the thread that I followed, years later, to go find me and try to bring me out. I'm still working on that. Back then though, as a child, I was changed ... I became less welcome in "my mother's kitchen"... and, at sixteen, I left home and was on my own. I managed to graduate high school early while working and put my music on hold as I got by in the real world. Eventually I did take to the road with my music, traveling around the country, living out of "Little Bit," my Toyota station wagon. Performing in California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Cocoa Beach and Key West Florida, Georgetown, Washington D.C., Columbus Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky.... and more... But, still living with such demons and destructive beliefs for myself .... I, very reliably, destroyed every opportunity for "success" that came my way. Circumstances eventually brought me back to California and back into more day jobs and relationships. I woke up dead again, this time in Washington State, and left again and discovered the awesome nights and full days crewing on a 37 foot sloop... Sailing from San Francisco down to the tip of Baja... Played music port to port all the way until I was playing in Cabo... Circumstances again brought me back.... I caught a ride back up to the San Francisco Bay area, and this time I stayed... again moving away from my music. I got some education and training... became a working girl again in the paramedical field (as an X-ray tech., and then later an Ophthalmic Tech., a Medical Examiner, a Phlebotomist) .. within all that, I married and started a family, which being the pathological nurturer that I am, combined w/ some pretty high need circumstances of my children, became my life....  Eventually I finished the shell of an unfinished workshop into a studio for myself:  wired it, insulated, mudded, floored, built shelves (high enough for my guitars and equipment to fit under w/ holes for all the wires, I'm very proud of my shelves :-)  which gave me a private place where I could step away from being mom and the hub of our family and, once again and finally: bringing me back "my music." So, that brings us to the Hard Alee CD and the music that I am now working on to complete a second album. I'm looking into the digital world now, my songs from the Hard Alee album are currently available, individually, through itunes and rhapsody, and a bunch of other digital sources, and I'm trying to learn what I can do to make this next album more digitally available even before it becomes an actual cd.  Email me from the feedback page if you would like to be notified once I have more music available...  or to come hear me perform...

Thanks so much for coming to my web site and taking the time to check me out.

 Take care......

 Love,

 Lygia