It started with a notebook.

It was 2018. We had just moved home from St. Louis back to Texas to help take care of my dad. My music world went from 150 miles per hour – classroom teaching, running a studio, leading choirs, worship leading in two locations, etc. – to zero. “All of a sudden” I was waking up with lyrics or full-blown songs in my head, sitting at the piano and pouring out chords and phrases… When I expressed this out loud, my daughter’s explanation to me was, “Mom, your music has no place to go.” And it was true.

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After my dad passed in 2020, we were going through his things and found a whole book that he had never gotten published. I told my husband one day, “I don’t want the kids to walk past that notebook someday and think, “Wow I wonder what these sounded like in mom’s head.”” So I started the process to turn the songs into fully realized, charted out, finalized pieces.

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I’ve always loved poetry and literature, and as a worship leader I’ve created arrangements and written a few worship songs. So I got to wondering, tinkering… and the process turned into a full blown adventure in song writing. 

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As the lyrics came together (on the songs where they didn’t come to me all at once) I made notes in the notebook as to what sort of genre they might become. Some behaved. Yes, the mixed meter song was always supposed to be a mixed meter song (read story behind the songs) but after 4 semesters of jazz piano one of the 4/4 ‘pop’ pieces became my first jazz waltz. (I’m not a jazz pianist, but I’ve stolen the title “jazz adjacent” from another songwriter/artist.) We can also blame my frustration with getting the ‘ii° - V - I’ under my hands properly. 

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Long story short? We spent the summers of 2024 and 2025 in the studio with friends that we hadn’t played with for over 30 years. We made new friends in the wonderful studio we recorded in. We sang and played as a family, yes my family is on the album, and I am so blessed. A friend I’ve known since junior high – we walked home from school together – composed the music for one of the songs. My daughter and I co-wrote a song. I’ve learned so much. It’s been a beautiful time.

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I’m so happy to share this album with you. It’s pretty much a capsule collection of all the musical influences of my life. I’m wonderfully aged, so I had the privilege of growing up with am/fm radio, fantastic bands of all genres, new age and smooth jazz beginning their journey (ambient music), and all the great music that my piano teachers put in front of me. 

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As a classical pianist, I wasn’t encouraged to “piddle.” I was instructed to play what was on the page. Which is not wrong, per se, but also isn’t the whole picture. As I grew into the era of playing by chords, especially in worship, I began to desire more flexibility in my abilities, so I went hunting for jazz lessons (let’s not even talk about the terror of improv – that’s a whole other dissertation). I want to thank Damian Garcia and Wade Girton who are ridiculous jazz pianists for putting up with, encouraging, pushing, and inspiring me. Please go listen to them. So another blessing of this project was the permission to let myself play. To piddle. With chords. With progressions. With lyrics. With sound. With healing. I hope that comes through.

 

- Donna K