when jherek makes you cry. (Patreon)

i took this photo last night and wanted to share it with you.

two days ago, sent jherek (bischoff, my longtime collaborator and bandmate and touring friends and arranger and more) the depeche mode cover, “enjoy the silence”. we needed it mastered and jherek usually does a great and quick job.

i told him to add anything simple on top of it was needed. maybe a tiny bit of bass. whatever. i trust you.

at around 10pm, jherek sent through the track.

he said he’d added some simple strings.

we are staying out in hawke’s bay at my old friend kya’s house, and i sat on boudicca-the-teenager’s bed in the dark with borrowed headphones to listen because i stupidly left my headphones back on waiheke.

the master sounded good for the first few minutes.

hooray.

and then i heard the strings come in.

and i started to cry.

and i started to cry not because they sounded so beautiful and so sincere and so simple, but because i could imagine jherek playing the cello in his tiny apartment in LA, knowing exactly which places to fill, which bites to play, which fragile sound fingers to touch.

i miss making music in a room with people so much. i miss brian. i miss jherek.

but i heard those strings and i felt

so loved

so understood

so connected

so very not alone.

music

is magic. there’s no other way to say it.

why not take a picture of the moment.

it sounds so so good y’all. it should be out in the next 24 hours. i’m going to keep it patron only just in case we do a few more of these webcast-request-a-thons and i can collect them into a package for the public. or maybe we just give it a week or two and send it out to bandcamp. i’ve got to focus on “ask amanda” today and this week so it’s not a great time to publicly barrage the world with a song.

i love you all so deeply.

thank you for all of this.

xx

a