So much has happened...
After touring for
We are Wyoming we moved to Santa Rosa, an hour north of San Francisco. We focused on playing in the Bay Area for a while, converted our garage into a studio for me - the first time I've had a private space for music. Baby grand piano, red walls, computer and mics, it's bliss. Here Iwrote and wrote for the 3rd album...
We headed to Portland for Feb/March 2008 and recorded what will be the next album, staying with my sister and her big dog Theo. With John Askew recording and producing, it was a great time, fun and peaceful, playing tunes, talking, and eating up a storm. I've been playing with a great drummer, Max Diez from Audio Outsend, and Tad Wagner added amazing guitars, Heather Houseman on cello. The best thing about it was that I was pregnant with my first child, a mystical and beautiful feeling. He is woven through all of these sounds, with love and wonder.
We finished the album in good time, and took a few months off for my belly to grow. In the hot summer of 2008, I had a blast in my home studio recording songs for the winter season, sweating and imagining the cold and the dark. I like the songs in minor keys, the darker ones. I like bringing out the good memories of the season, the Christmas eve service in the little wooden church my family belonged to, no lights, just candles, no mics, just walls, people singing in the candlelight, I loved that part.
The Portland album was mastered and my baby was born the same week. It seemed like everything in my life, these amazing creations, would converge in space and time. Otto Charles was born August 22nd, 2008. And when he came out he wasn't breathing. After a great deal of whisking away and a few days of tests and wires, we found that an "event" occurred a few days before his birth, and his brain was really injured, and he wouldn't have long to live. Our hearts broke and broke and broke. Our baby, who we loved more with each second passing, would have a very short life. So we decided to make it the best possible, and we took him off the machines and took him home and spent every last moment holding him and singing to him. I became a mama, my husband an amazing father, our hearts grew so big to know this beautiful soul that came to us, our child. We had 3 days with him and when we couldn't stay awake any longer, when our eyes closed, he passed on in our arms at dawn.
This has changed everything. Becoming a mom is enough of a perspective shift, a huge change of order. Singing my son to sleep, singing to comfort him, singing to help him die, both destroyed me and made me find this place of pure love, of genuine being. I have never felt like I was really singing until that time. And now, still, I feel music as a source, a connection, that is in everything, and I don't need to try hard to do it, it is just in me, it just IS me. Big goals, numbers of albums sold, people at shows, are hard to care about. But music, I love more than ever. My son is such a big part of my heart, my life, everything I see now, and I hope to keep my heart soft for him, I hope to keep singing to him from that place that he showed me.
I am sad a lot. I find peace too. I realize that I will die and that life is here for me for now, what will I do? How will I be? I have 40 or 50 years to be here and what is this all about?
And so I have this beautiful album that I love, and I'm figuring out how best to release it. I hope to get it out in the next few months. I am excited for people to hear it, because it was an amazing time for me to make it, and such a sacred space was held for my baby and the music in the rooms it was made in. These songs mean so much now.
Those Christmas tunes are posted at Petracovich.com for free download! The album is called Old Long Since/Winter Songs.
I hope you have a beautiful winter season. I hope the solstice and all the dark holds you within yourself in a peaceful way. Thank you for your wonderful support and for listening. It is an honor for me.
I'll be keeping this going about once a week - check back for more info... I've got lots to say about life and music and recording and the road.
Jessica
We had such a good time recording with John Askew in Portland. We split our time between Type Foundry and Secret Society as we were tracking. I played this awesome old rickety piano with tons of personality and the ghosts of many song-filled fingers hovering over it. Type Foundry is in an industrial sort of area, as you can see, with an awesome bridge sprawling out over the river right beyond the driveway. The floors are wooden, the light is from the window, pretty rare for a studio to have natural light. Max is playing the drums and he nailed it. We had so much fun. We ate so much! Being pregnant I just couldn't get enough. I made everyone else gain weight too! Secret Society is all red and plush and new and quiet, sort of the opposite in feel of Type Foundry, a great balance to strike for our project. Up at the top, that's John on the left, me (Jessica) in the middle, and Max on the left. 
