a place to call home

June 13th, 2026

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STORY TIME

This album is filled with countless stories. From memories of my California upbringing, to falling in love and becoming a mother. It honors lineage and those who have shaped me. Many different places and people are hidden within its layers. Produced by my friend and fellow musician Ben Larsen, in his home-farm studio, with a window overlooking a great big oak tree. The many beautiful instruments that are heard throughout the album are from him and friends he brought in.

Each song has a unique and specific mix of instruments, the fullest accompaniment being on songs’ a common’, and the simplest one, a place to call home.

This namesake song was written on a beautiful winter evening, looking out over the Columbia River and Mt. Hood, a five-month-old baby on my back. The simplicity of the song called for a simpler sound— no harmonies, just lead vocal, piano, and violin. It is the last track on the record, a sweet closing that holds the underlying energy in its entirety: a reminder that home is as much emotional as physical.

Over the last year of releasing different singles, I have shared a little writing and photos to go alongside. They are meant to be a meandering, collage-style piece of work, to read as if you were opening up random pages in a long, full book of stories. These are just a very few of many, for life has a way of gathering layers upon layers of love.

sanctuary

(Official Music Video)

To become a place takes a long time. To become a people connected to each other and the earth requires that we begin the work of becoming our place. This is not an absent longing for what is not here, but the profoundly simple choice of saying yes to what is, again and again. It questions us to stay, putting hands and hearts into the soil, paying attention to the particular land and people we find ourselves connected to. Not to say there is no path for the wandering. The call of the open road is a force unto itself. It is a bold vocation to go, it was what brought me here. But what comes after the wandering? Perhaps less dramatic, there is a similar potency, albeit different, in staying. The journey of becoming a place takes us from the realm of dreaming and into the Dream: a world that sings back. It is a relationship, a slow cultivating of attention, presence, and, most importantly— love.

The Footprints a Place Leaves Behind

The imprint of our September arrival was still fresh in the late autumn air. It was November, and this strange place was just starting to feel familiar. The western red cedar and ferns danced with open oak forests, like the ones we knew back home. Gushing rivers now replaced the once dry riverbeds, and the heat of a California fall was now a rain-soaked memory. It was just past dusk. I had spent the better half of the day in the wonder of a miracle garden, picking everything I could before the first frost of the season. The cold came late that first year, and we made the most of it. The afternoon’s harvest lay on the kitchen counter, covered in dirt. This was my home now.

It’s funny how places stay in us. Everywhere I have ever been must live inside me, for I see their reflections wherever I go. Sometimes the particular angle of basalt in the sun catapults me back to the granite in Arizona, or the scent of pine blows in on a westerly wind, bringing me back to those summers in the high desert of Colorado. I sometimes even remember places I lived long ago, before I was even born.

There is a question now of belonging and what it means. I have no answer, and yet my quiet search does not waver. I have found some semblance of it, at times, reminiscent of all the places and people I have once been.