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Wren’s Celtic-inspired folk music evokes the lands and waters of the many places she has called home. Celebrated for her pure and original vocals and the “naturalness and philosophical bent" of her song-writing, Wren's atmospheric and intimate folk music speaks to dreams, the cycles of nature, archetypes & myths, and the dance of solitude and intimacy. Her albums are largely place-based, inspired by her lifetime love of the Salish Sea, her year in Galicia, Spain and, most recently, by her journey to recover from chronic illness, which has taken her from a small cabin in the woods in Washington's Methow Valley to Arizona's Sonora Desert in pursuit of healing. Her third album, released in February 2021, is a musical exploration of four seasons in the Methow Valley and the heroine’s journey.

~ February 20, 2021 ~

Wren sits on the banks of the Methow River, feet submerged, her fingers smoothing a stone. Western tanagers make final, looping flights across the water, yellow bellies bright in the twilight. She opens her hand to show me the salmon-hued stone, musing about her new album’s namesake. “This river, and these stones, gave me something to hold onto, to flow into, when it felt like my life and my health as I knew them were disintegrating.”

It’s summer now, but the story of Pink Stone begins in late fall a few years prior when friends invited her to house-sit their cabin in Washington’s Methow Valley, a place of epic mountain peaks and wild rivers in the traditional territory of the mətxʷú people. Worn-down and out of songs after years of battling a mysterious health crisis, she accepted the invitation and left her old life behind to stay for a time at their remote cabin the woods, lovingly called Moose Lodge.

Over the wintry weeks that followed, she wandered the banks of the river and the hills of sagebrush and brittlebush aimlessly, asking the land around her for answers. What was the purpose of the illness? What new way was being revealed? In the evenings, hunkered down by the wood stove and plucking at her neglected guitar, she discovered an unexpected freedom in the solitude from other humans and a deepening relationship with the natural world. Little by little, the songs returned, and with them, the glimmer of a new path forward that would eventually carry her far from the valley and her home in Washington to a fresh chapter in Arizona’s high mountain deserts.

The body of music and writings that emerged from that first month, and grew over several years of extended returns to the valley, became Wren’s 3rd album, Pink Stone: Songs from Moose Lodge (coming 2020), produced at Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana by David Weber (Moira Smiley, Carrie Newcomer, Straight No Chaser) and featuring Jason Wilber (John Prine band), Krista Detor, and world flutist Gary Stroutsos. At times both melancholic and joyous, the ten-song album showcases Wren’s emotive vocals and classical-guitar accompaniment, bolstered by roots/Americana instrumentation and soothing textures of electric guitars and harmony vocals. 

To accompany the album, Wren is releasing a 98-page Companion Book of essay vignettes, journal entries, illustrations, photos, and lyrics born from her time in the Methow.

“Those were some of the loneliest years of my life, but they were also imbued with a palpable magic,” Wren says, “and I’ve spent the period since obsessed with how to capture that feeling in a song. How to transport the listener to the warm cocoon of a cabin where I felt free to move at my own pace for the first time.”

Here, Wren is referencing Bill Plotkin’s book, Nature and the Human Soul, which provided her with guidance and fuel for her creative work at Moose Lodge, alongside Maureen Murdock’s book, The Heroine’s Journey. She considers the finished project a rough portrayal of the life phase Plotkin calls “The Wanderer in the Cocoon.”

“I was often alone but I wasn’t unattached,” Wren says. “My human romances merged with this greater relational experience of place and resulted in a collection of songs about the paradoxes of love and intimacy, where the land and the river often become other characters in the story.”

The resulting music runs like water through the dark, offering warm arms for starless nights and messages of resilience for difficult times.

***

Pink Stone follows in the steps of Wren’s two earlier place-based albums. Her second album, Stitch an Ocean (2016), was a “love-letter” to Galicia, Spain, where she lived for a year in her early twenties. Featuring her interpretation of two traditional Galician folksongs in addition to originals, the album ranked in the top #40 albums in the Folk DJ Charts and two songs ranked #33 for plays. Her first album, Bone Nest (2013), deemed “a perfect soundtrack for our misty Pacific Northwest winters” by DJ Kitty (KSER), was deeply inspired by her coming of age with the plants, animals, and landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up on traditional Duwamish territory.

Wren has shared the stage with artists such as Mandolin Orange, Bill Staines, and Pepper Proud, and has performed at venues such as the Virginia V Steamship, NW Folklife Festival, the Santiago de Compostela Congressional Palace, and the Tucson Folk Festival.

Guest Credits:

“She” on The Last Picture Show by Jonathan Root

“The Last Picture Show” on The Last Picture Show by Jonathan Root

“Turquoise Sky” on The Last Picture Show by Jonathan Root

"Inside Affairs" on Dreamer’s Whip by Dykeritz

"Call the Mountain," on Our Past and Present Futures by Devin Sinha

Words from Listeners

“Part woodland sprite songstress and champion of all things living and part activist for the world …cast in warm melodic tones and poetic lyrics.” – Char

“I think the core of what I enjoy most about [Wren’s] music has to do with retelling the story that we have this amazing friendship with nature, and that most people in our culture are hungry to experience this feeling of belonging through music or other forms of art.” – Brian

“Soothing, melodic, metaphoric songstress.” – Rob

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