Our Lemon Verbena Album
Read on to find our more about Jo and myself, our Kickstarter project, and the songs themselves
We are over the moon to have been selected as one of Kickstarter’s Projects We Love!
Jo Brandon and I met in 2011 at Leeds Lieder Festival Composer/Poet Speed Dating event!
We created the song 'Shunned Street' (listen) for the festival. The song explored Pope Joan, a female Pope of the Middle Ages who successfully hid as a man until she gave birth on the street whilst on procession.
In 2021, we were commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to create their flagship song for International Women’s Day.
Plango: A Cure Lament (listen) was an expression of grief and ritual cleansing, focusing on the impact of Covid 19 lockdowns on women, predominantly as care givers.
This inspired us to apply for the Wild Plum Arts residency, Made At The Red House. We had spent years coming up with proposals that would enable to us to work together, but in 2021 we decided that we would take matters into our own hands and create an album of songs. Each song would explore more historical and legendary characters like Pope Joan.
We are particularly interested in the human side of these stories. They sound good as soundbites, but actually, what was the human cost. Where did the power lie? What impact did they have? What were the attempts to erase their stories?
So here are the songs and the women of Lemon Verbena
Song 1. Margery and Julian
Margery Kempe, a 14th century mystic, who went on pilgrimage solo with just a maid and dictated one of the first autobiographies in English.
Margery gave birth to 14 children, and today it has been considered that she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
In a world where superstition and religion are two sides of the same coin, how did Margery protect herself when some religious orders felt she was a heretic, and others felt she was a visionary?
Song 2. Mary and the Rabbit
Mary Toft who was famed for giving birth to rabbits. She became a media sensation in the 19th century until the hoax was found out, and it subsequently ruined a number of physicians’ careers.
But this hoax came about after Mary miscarried. Reports show signs of illness, of infection. Who helped Mary dupe all these physicians? And what was she subjected to in order to prove her wrong?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClGjq39o1x9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/ClTNVcOIguT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Song 3. Maupin
Julie ‘La Maupin’ d’Aubigny, in Jo’s words: ‘Sword fighter, opera singer, someone who defied norms with her open bisexuality. She made comebacks when anyone else's reputation - and life - would have been lost.’
Our song focuses on the event of Maupin entering a convent to be with her lover. When one of the nun’s died, the couple moved the nun into the lover’s room, and set the monastery on fire.
Maupin’s life, as read, is certainly one of a whirlwind. She died at the age of 33.
Song 4. Back From The Dead Red
Jacquotte ‘Back From The Dead Red’ Delahaye is a Haitian pirate. She is widely believed to be a fictional character - but we feel that stories are often intergenerational memories. Real or no, a version of her will have existed.
Jacquotte became a pirate after the death of her father in order to provide for her younger brother. She was a war hero who faked her own death, invaded Tortuga and then died in a gunfight while defending it.
Her life is one of fighting for the right to survive - and our song follows her connection with the sea.
Song 5. Wise Woman (Vita)
We approached this song from the perspective of healing and evolutionary knowledge lost to our generation of women, (specifically focusing on our history in the UK): from witch trials wiping out healers, midwives, community elders, to colonisation and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, destroying all links to family and ancestry.
This song is anger, but also hope. Vita is a name passed through my family - my Nanny, my name, and my daughter’s name - and also means life.
Learn more about Wise Woman (Vita) in the video below
Song 6. Shadow Mother
This song is a story of motherhood. Of the realisation that comes when your child grows, and you sense a disconnecting from being one, to being two people. A sense of loss that comes with pride, grief and joy married together as one.
Sometimes we need to wail out our grief so that we can let go enough to give our children room to flourish.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck9F7b_oS9o/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Song 7. Verbena Air
This song is about the writing process.
Of magical evenings winding our way through gardens and hedges after a nourishing dinner - yet the song lingers on a snapshot of being held in creative limbo. The fear and the insecurity of creating music and poetry, not knowing where to go next.
‘Do you ever offer your songs to the dark?’
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ckb5Blco39X/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Song 8. We Are Volcanoes
From Jo: ‘The title is taken from a speech that the author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote and delivered in 1986 at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA:
‘We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.’
I love this quote and think of it often.’
https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClQkHJHAC5V/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
We need your support to help us reach our funding target of £3500.
This will help us to record, produce and release the album.
Please check out the Kickstarter
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Pledge your support if you can.
Thank you!