Vanessa Lively
Songwriter, Artist & Non-profit Founder | Austin, TX
"Folk music on fire with worldly rhythms and a Latin pulse." -The Austin Chronicle
Austin, TX singer, songwriter, painter and Home Street Music nonprofit founder Vanessa Lively celebrates the release of her new album Mirroring the Wildness. Following up on the success of her 2022 folk-charting album Truth Is, this release shows her digging deep into herself, tapping into a wide-eyed inner strength necessary to confront a violent and unjust world.
A truly collaborative project recorded at multiple studios, she worked with a who's who of talent that included Ben Bedford, Carrie Rodriguez, Colin Brooks (Band of Heathens), JT Bates (Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, I'm With Her), John Macy, David Sinko and rising Texas star Luciri, who co-wrote and plays saxophone on the track “Mi Grito.”
“I began mentoring Luciri two years ago, and ‘Mi Grito’ is one of the songs we finished together,” Vanessa says. “We then took that new song to Blue Rock Studio in Wimberley to record the audio and a video.” This song, like much of the album, is about unearthing your primal self. “It is about finding your own unique voice, walking your own path, finding your inner strength amidst life’s many obstacles. It is a hero’s journey in a song.” Capturing the strength of those that have come before her, it also features some powerful vocals from Vanessa’s mother Linda Gomez Derr.
The album features several other songs co-written with friends, including Ben Bedford, Paul Curreri, Colin Brooks and Sara Jean Kelley. Although she has written a good 50 songs with other artists, she had only recorded one of them before. This time she chose to release a handful of these co-writes, recording many of the songs at Coastal Bend Studios in Rockport, TX with John Macy. “We stayed at the house on the water, recorded all day, swam at night, rehearsed in the evenings, ate meals together, and sunk into the entire experience,” she says. “We had the days and the time wide open, and it felt fluid and fabulous. We recorded it all live, in a room together. John Macy added his pedal steel afterwards, and JT Bates added in his drums. It was just me, Ben Bedford, and Paul Curreri jamming the songs and I can't even begin to capture how incredible this rich experience was.”
Forged in community and rooted in personal experience, Mirroring the Wildness looks at the world’s problems squarely in the eye and meets it with a fierce hope that is so needed right now.
Photo credit: Luciri Nazario at Blue Rock Studio in Wimberley, TX