Ever since I was a youngster, I was held spellbound by the ballads and lyric poetry of Yeats, Poe, Kipling and Stevenson. My father would recite The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service,

to my siblings and I, on cold winter nights around the fireplace in Maine, until each stanza was emblazoned upon our memories.  

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With time, I became fascinated with the first known ballads of 12th Century troubadours and trobairitz, the poetry that made up a good love song, the words that capture the essence of a person. There is something about this desire to pay tribute to someone, to a moment, with vulnerability and honesty that has remained a compelling part of ballad writing all these years later.

 

As a young Opera singer training in New York City years ago, my mentor at the time, who was
the vocal chair at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, dubbed me

"The Wordsmith". I reveled in painstakingly translating and transcribing my librettos or art

songs into multiple English interpretations from their native tongue. My noteboooks were

always rife with the lines of Boudelaire, or Goethe, and I was always doing my best to get the essence of these songs just right through my earnest recitations. I would spend days, sometimes weeks feeling the words in my body, intoxicated with how they resonated in my

mouth and the stories they urged me to tell. So obsessed I was with delivering the hidden

meaning of the words, it sometimes overshadowed my technique for pure sound. I knew melodies

were of paramount importance, but words, stories, imbued every note I sang.  

I later realized that this was because I wanted to write them myself, not just interpret them.

 

I compose in a world of myriad sounds, but I believe, I chose voice as my main instrument over cello, saxophone, harp, or any other instrument, not because I don't find them magical, but

because I need words. I need a good story... 

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I write ballads now for friends, family, strangers... people I admire from a distance and the lives that inspire me. They are my little love letters to the human condition. "The Balladista" is both a podcast and a musical archive that explores the art of balladry throughout history and culture, while honoring the legacies of loved ones and strangers, both present and past. It is an

exploration of not just my own songwriting, but the songwriting journey of many others, each chasing the craft of any great narrator, in search of the intrinsic musical essence of those we love.

It is both elegy and euphoria, celebration and reflection, humor and pathos. 

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And to all my fellow wordsmiths, I believe if crafted with care, inside every good ballad, bound

up in the poetry of a great song, we can find the truth of a person... those qualities that matter most when all else falls away, and those are the real stories that live on.