Nancy Terzian • Buckinghorse Design

The key to the cover is here

    Late in 2017 I started writing songs for my next album, a set of songs inspired by women in US history. The current state of our country caused me to look into US history, partly as an escape from the present, partly to find some inspiring women in our past. I found a lot of them! Some of them are famous, like Helen Keller, Josephine Baker, and Amelia Earhart, and some are lesser known but equally inspiring, like Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Lucy Goldthorpe.

    People started hearing about my history project and sent me more suggestions. There’s no way I can write songs about all of the fascinating women (and men) who have been suggested, but researching them and seeing who sparks my creative fire has been a blast. Here’s the list so far.

    Here are all of the women who inspired the songs on 13 Women:

Amelia Earhart                Julia Morgan
Edmonia Lewis                Helen Keller
Sarah Wildes                   Henrietta Lacks
Lucy Goldthorpe              Peace Pilgrim
Josephine Baker              Maud Stevens Wagner
Martha Gellhorn              Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Rosie the Riveter

    I realize it's fairly presumptuous to muse and write about the thoughts of these women. Here are my thoughts on that.  

    I found some of these women through my own research, but several of  the women who inhabit these songs were suggested to me by friends and family members I've listed here.

Recording Progress:

December 2019: we've started mixing some of the songs, and are adding some last vocals and reeds to several others. Phoebe Elliot and Kyshona Armstrong were in last week, Karen Leipziger and Shelley HIggins come in soon for some final vocals.

October 2019: Mary Rodgers played accordion and Maggie Chafee played cello on two songs each. Tom and I sorted out a lot of the harmony parts.

August/September 2019: Phoebe Elliot, Barb Santoro, Ingrid Graudins, and Cathy Silverstein added backing vocals.

July 2019: We're making progress on the album, slow but sure. Renee Hayes moved in for a week and added a bunch of backing vocals. Just after July 4th four more friends came in to add more vocals. I forgot that when you put two or more friends in the booth to sing together that too much laughter ensues, but we managed to get some good vocals down for my songs inspired by Henrietta Lacks and Amelia Earhart.

Feb 2019: I'm still in the early stages of recording, but my friend Nancy Terzian at Buckinghorse Design zoomed ahead and did the wondrous cover at the top of this page.

Me singing Just Give Me Everything with Renee Hayes and Tom Manche. Renee co-wrote another song on this project inspired by Edmonia Lewis, A Wave That Rocks Me.

I played a couple of the songs from Thirteen Women at a show in Nashville last summer: Spell was inspired by Sarah Wildes, who lived in the seventeenth century. Read about her here. Below that is a duo version of Just Give Me Everything.