Petracovich Mockingbird on Melrose Place 12/8/09

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Mockingbird (free)

This song is featured on the 12/8 episode of Melrose Place in the scene where a dude breaks up with his woman to pursue his career. Who knew a sweet lullaby about a bird would mingle with Hollywood?

So, mockingbirds get their name because they imitate sounds they hear, like phones or tools or other birds. They're pretty cool. Could you do me a favor and imitate them? Retweet my tweets about this? Woohoo we'll get the word out!

Echoes of songs: PHASE ONE of writing

After I finish an album, there is an intimidating space.
I've talked and written about and played and played the last album,
and there is only silence ahead for the next.
Every time I wonder , "How did I do that?", and then I remember.
I went into the garden and stared.
I stared, for the hours I set aside for music, as long as I needed to.
To get over the fear, to be in the space, to stop trying.
To let things float in.
This time, I wait for my baby to come.
I have hours to spend, with tiredness, dreaminess, tears, contractions that pull me into a deep dark.
I remember to lift off the pressure of writing anything "usable".
Just sound
Just play.
And of course, press record.

I just worked on a piece, the piano sounding loud in G, singing, singing.
and then stopped to drink water and pay some bills.
As I answered an email, the song comes back to me in echoes,
It echoes like a distant siren, music from inside another house.
And I want to open it again, and add to it.
I am happy that I remembered how to do this!
The biggest and most joyous part of writing,
Letting ideas evaporate off of me, without my mind involved at all.
The first phase, just letting it out.

Touching Review from the Feminist Review

Feminist Review
The Feminist Review is a great bunch of writers and editors from around the world who review books, albums, by communities that remain on the margin. I'm really liking their recommendations and am honored to be included in their reviews. This one brought tears to my eyes, it's hard for me to hear about others' losses, to know that they keep going in the world. But I am so honored to be any part of a healing process for that. Feels good.

PETRACOVICH - CREPUSCULO

It’s a treasure to stumble upon new music that for one reason or another resonates deeply within you. I selected Crepusculo after learning that Petracovich singer Jessica Peters Malmberg had made the album while pregnant, and then tragically lost her son shortly after he was born. Grieving a recent miscarriage myself, Crepusculo did for me what only those rare special albums can: it comforted me, let me cry, helped me heal, and taught me to create a place in my heart for what I had lost.

Crepusculo (Spanish for “twilight”) utilizes the standard drums, guitar, and bass setup and is richly textured with a multitude of other instruments, including piano, cello, trumpet, harmonium, and banjo. Described as folk pop, this latest album from Petracovich accomplishes an earthiness that brings each song to life. The songs are powerful, thanks to masterful lyrics and Malmberg’s stunning voice that is at times soaring and smooth and later hushed and reverent.

“Heaven Help the Day” is the opening track, and it begins with an upbeat piano that propels the song to a quick crescendo. It’s a perfect match for the empowering lyrics about an absent father. Malmberg warns the father to beware coming back to the family, and if he does, she sings “I’d make you love me then I’d leave you all alone.” A compelling and driving banjo opens “Sleep It Off/Lie Down,” in which Malmberg sings out a challenge to “try to make me unsad/just try making me glad.” It’s a song that wonderfully depicts embracing sadness and revels in the beauty of fully experiencing human emotion.

While Crepusculo undeniably deals with painful losses, the beauty of the album is that there’s a sense of lightness and fun throughout the record. For example, in “San Rafael,” Malmberg dreamily imagines floating above traffic and “over dew and honey grass and sleeping deer; over rollers, hills with backs like dinosaurs.” A sense of whimsy threads itself through many of the songs.

What the music in this album accomplishes is a spirit of graciousness. It’s a snapshot of what it means to be alive, and that is a welcome solace. Crepusculo is an album for everyone that offers an unforgettable joy listening to each song as it magically unfolds.

Review by Beverly Jenkins-Crockett

Comment on Review HERE

Secret Songsketch: You Waited For Me

Download You Waited For Me

I wrote this song for Max's wedding, ( Max, the excellent drummer for Petracovich.) It was an honor to be asked to play, and to write a song for your friend that isn't total cheese is no easy task, but I love how it turned out.

This tune a mix of inspirations of Max and Ashley's 10 years and my own love story (I met my husband in Europe when in a wheelchair and he was the crazy guy climbing on everything.) It's all done on one mic on my home piano, captures a summer moment, and all my gratefulness for my dear love. Free DOWNLOAD

Heather, the wonderful cellist, and I played it on a beautiful July day in the redwoods with speakers 100 feet up the trees, the sounds coming down from the heavens, it was like fairyland.

Secret Words - Going to the Ocean

I wish I were going to the ocean today
To put my feet in water too cold for skin
And feel the expanse of breathing out forever

The gray sky going and going,
The spray on my face, telling me things
My heart seems to understand but not my mind,

Inviting me in, wanting me, and the baby inside.
I'd stand on the edge of the S shaped curve
And back away when it surges towards us,

The foam gentle on my feet
and nothing more powerful just yards away and down,
a growling undertow like a mama tiger.

Jessica Peters Malmberg

Secret Songsketch: Heartbeat

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The view outside my window changes every day as the Fall comes in.
Time with music to dream.
Time with a little baby in my belly.

I'd like to share these sketches as they come, rather than keep them hidden for so long.
And with them, the view outside my window,
and a couple of snapshots into life at the time.

The drum sounds feel like heartbeats to me, and I'm spending a lot of time listening to my baby's heartbeat these days, and she listens to mine. The beginning of our lives are all to the tune of the wonderful, thuddy rhythm of our mama's hearts. It felt very comforting to go into these sounds at this time of my life, 34 weeks pregnant.

New Video: Waterhouse

Director Jared Ingram shot this video for Petracovich a few years ago. He says "the song made me think of rain - the kind that starts with a few drops on the ground. And you wonder, is it raining? Did I just feel something? Then it starts to pour and you run for cover. And before you know it, the rain is gone. The sun comes out. And you just wanna take a nap."

The song, Waterhouse (from Petracovich's first album, Blue Cotton Skin) comes from a dream I had, of being a house, that was slowly filling up with water. It was a peaceful feeling, of blue coming in, taking out all of the contents, and then the house itself floating away. Being dismantled slowly and unemotionally.

I found the kalimba, an African thumb piano, to bring the mood of metal and wood, plunky like water falling, and Andrew Gikaumakus on the drums, big and hollow. Tad Wagner produced the tune.

My Dad is a photographer, but I'm still camera shy, and having several cameras at once, oooh, I had to really center myself. I sang along, at various speeds of the music, some slowed down, some speeded up, so Jared could edit with different speeds. It was a good challenge, fun, a little out of my comfort zone to be on camera, but that's always good. And Jared's a great director, low key, able to see the funny.

We started the shoot, the paint drippers started dripping from above, little tongues of cool paint hitting my hair, and then growing in globules and dumpings, it tasted chalky, a little stingy in the eyes, but kind of freeing just to let it happen, to get it all over me and act like it was the most normal thing.

And then, go to the bathroom, wash it out of my hair in a cold-water sink, and do it all over again for more footage!

I loved Jared's ideas, the washed out lighting, the use of color as a main theme, the drops that fall in time to the music.

When I went to the salon to get my hair cut, they said, "WHAT did you do to your hair?" It's all worth it for the glory of show biz.