Jennifer Kimball

Waylon and Toad residency

It's been a very long time indeed since my last message to this list. Yes, years? Where to begin. Happy New Year, firstly. And as always, thanks for your support over the years. Lots of good news from Somerville - I have a new solo record almost finished and plan to release it mid-May independently. Woohooo! AND I'm playing a Tuesday residency at Toad, one of my favorite local pubs, with three great friends and awesome musicians: Duke Levine, Kevin Barry and Kris Delmhorst. Come on down - it's free. And the beers are de-lovely.

And if you'd like to write me please use my new address
jenn "AT" jenniferkimball.com because jennifer "AT" jenniferkimball.com gets a silly amount of spam and I rarely take the time to sort through it.

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That I have some solo gigs feels like pretty big news to me. That I have a new record coming out in May is surely bigger news (...it has been seven years since Veering from the Wave was released). But the biggest news around here is that I had a BABY last March! I recorded this second album while I was pregnant. And now Waylon is now almost ten months old! Completely rocking our world. Crawling everywhere. FAST. Jamming on his uke - this involves some delicate hand swipes over the strings as well as some decided blows to the top of the instrument. Blowing bubbles in the bath. Clapping lots. Dee dee dee doe doe doe doe - pblpblpblpblpblpblpblpblpblpbl - aaaaaaaaaaaah. Surely, parenting is the wildest and most beautiful trip there is. Sometimes I still have to pinch myself to really believe that I am a mom. And then I remember how tired I am keeping up with my son - oh yes, I am a mom.

It seems like lots of music friends and acquaintances are having babies. A strange thing happened to me recently as I was surfing (WHAT, and not SLEEPING??) through some music sites. Didn't Sarah McLachlan have a baby? I read the bio for her new record. (I've only heard the one song that's on the web. Which is gorgeous.) And there it was 3/4 of the way down the page. Since her last record came out she lost her mom and she became a mom. She put music away and picked it up again. I read more. Her mother died of lung cancer when she was five months pregnant.

Pangs of recognition, sorrow,a disbelief. I couldn't believe how similar our lives have been the last few years. We have been through almost exactly the same experience. My mom also died. From lung cancer. In 2002. It was a devastatingly fast journey from diagnosis to death - all of two months. And even more sad for me, it was before Waylon. I also had let my solo career trail off while Maybe Baby, my band with Ry, sprouted wings and began to fly around town.

I know this is all a bit personal. But it struck me as uncanny. To be telling almost the same story. I think there are a lot of us out there. Daughters who are losing mothers to cancer even as they are becoming mothers themselves. This is life. Birth and death.

And that's the news from Somerville. It's snowing and sleeting here, but beauteous. Time for galoshes and galumping. As always, if you would like to be removed from this list, just reply and say so. Please remember to write to jenn at jenniferkimball.com. Touring will happen again - on a smaller scale. Songs will be downloadable from a revamped Jenn website this winter. In the meantime...

See you at Toad,
Jennifer