Jennifer Haase: News

Slowing down. Breathing consciously. Sleeping deeper. Wanting more, but trying to ache for it less. Moment to moment, day by day.

It's OK, it's OK, it's OK.

Maybe the writer fills pages and musical spaces for the same reasons you fill a schedule, a plate, a belly, a glass.

We are sometimes over-whelmed by any signs of emptiness.

Stillness is sometimes a deafening drone.

But I still seek it and yes I will try that and, OK Michael....we'll figure out January when we get to January. And so on...and so on....and so on...


Happy Holidays, Everyone....

There are days when this big ole world just isn't spinning fast enough for me. When my musically-inclined self wants ACTION and RESULTS. When I'm repeating what seem like fruitless affirmations about a living, breathing songwriting career, while wishing I could somehow put my very busy producer in a headlock until we reach even one of my zillions of lofty song-sharin' goals.

I found my quiet corner. I curled up here and wrote and wrote and wrote. I stretched and I slept and I wailed. I came out of the cave with these new songs and this new spirit and a new DRIVE that finds me just spinning in the parking lot due to various poignant delays.

I keep saying lately that I'm a believer in timing and I truly am. But I also believe in those times in your life when it's monumentally essential that you reach over and take the wheel.

Stop lights are important pauses. But I've seen my share now, thank you.

I am very VERY ready to roll.

2008 is picking up speed down the hill, in her bright red toboggan with her Ugg boots lifted high. I'm going back to Nebraska for Thanksgiving, a first since becoming a New Yorker, and then it's a series of quick-n-sleepy blinks through to the New Year.

I know something's about to happen with the music I make. A little more organic and a lot more progressive, the recording work--I predict--will start us all back up the make-a-record hill again come January. If I have anything to say about it, that's the next new push.

I'm writing now in poetic blips that I really enjoy. An idea hits and I immediately give in to it, laptop on knees.

If writers had darkrooms, what images would be hanging from lines of string? On mine today you'd see tattoos and Paris and circus balloons.

Of tomorrow's? Stay tuned...

I've been writing more songs again lately and it's astonishing to me how much simpler the structure of these tunes of mine are getting, even as my experience as a songwriter deepens and stretches and grows. How is this possible that the "better" I get at this craft, the fewer tools I seem to want to use?

What's funny is that, in general, I'm a pretty complicated girl. I bounce swiftly and often from emotionally-charged highs and lows within each 24 hour period. Maybe this is why I'm attracted so much to simplicity. Complicated chords make my head hurt because there are already too many complicated thoughts and emotions filling up the brain space within.

And, come to think of it, this is probably why I love working with men so much. Not all men can be catagorized as "simple" creatures, but many of them have this really calming appeal to me because of their basic on/off switches compared to my extensive board of flashing switches and non-labeled knobs.

This is a metaphor I stole from my producer, actually, and we've joked about this male/female difference many times. Both my producer and my engineer have those proverbial on/off switches that I have come to learn mean the following things:

ON=Functioning and Fed, Having Slept, Get to Make Some Music and, if lucky, Get to Watch Some Baseball.

OFF=Wiped Out, Need Food, Need Quiet for Sleep and NO I'm not thinking all that shit you think I'm thinking!

Just like with the songs, I'm starting to figure this Man Simplicity out, especially with the boys at the wheel of my musical machine. And what's funny about the simplicity of men is that--whether they admit it or not--THEY are attracted to complication, my friends.

Oh, yes, you heard me. They LOVE it. It drives them BATTY, but they love to scratch their heads over equations, story problems, flashing switches and non-labeled knobs. Don't think I don't know about the puzzled "I don't know, do YOU?" looks that are passed between my producer and engineer when my head is turned, but don't tell me that those gents don't sometimes enjoy trying to figure even me out. I know this to be true because there are AHA!! moments they each have when they slide into some realization about what will help me perform a song better or feel more comfy doing so. They love the process, the tinker, the techie-guy epiphanies that happen when Messy Girl + Rockin' Electronics = Killer Recording. Looky there! Girls Plus Math suddenly give girls some semblance of sense.

As for me, it's the simplicity that drives me, comforts me, inspires me. Here's to open chords, math-lovin' boys and quiet rooms in which to croon.

Like a gardener churns the earth, I seem to be seeking more fertle ground in places I haven't yet bothered--or dared--to look. Fertle writing ground. Fertle income ground. Fertility in the forms of a more satisfying life and a deeper inner peace.

I shut this website down for about 3 weeks and then begged to have it back again. Thank you, HostBaby! Sometimes it takes a bold and ridiculous attempt to disappear to make yourself aware of how much you really want to stay.

October is gorgeous here and the early morning frosts have become so thick and glittery the past couple of days. The ground is harder to dig, but dig I shall. Gratefully.

Jennifer

Good days. Bad days. I'm suddenly irritable and edgy, somewhere stuck between a pit of sludge and fertle earth.

whatever THAT means.

So Derek Sivers sold CDbaby to Disc Makers. I have a lot of respect and like for Derek and I wish him well, but DISC MAKERS????? Wouldn't Micah and the gang at Oasis make the better choice? Humpf, I say. Hurrumpf!

Prove me wrong, Disc Makers. Please.

I'm writing a jingle this week for a bank commercial. It's kinda fun, but I've given myself this new deadline, for the pre-scheduled recording session of said jingle, that I'm not sure I can meet. Ah, well, who cares. There are more sessions to be had if more time is needed.

Yes, I know this blog post is seriously lacking. I can't find my ground today. (ie the sludge I previously mentioned?)

If you want to read a GREAT blog, read Amy Speace at her myspace page. www.myspace.com/amyspeace. What an eloquent, interesting, talented girl.

As for me, "there's always tomorrow for dreams to come true."

If you can remember who sang that, I'll buy you a brownie.

But I'm eating one first.

j.

It's the first Saturday of August and the village near where I live is hosting an Arts & Crafts festival. It's a beautiful, cool day for the middle of summer, but I'm way too happy sitting in my living room, wearing a sweater and flip-flops, eating marshmallows and reading Clapton's autobiograpy. I know I should go out, check out local music at the festival and people-watch in the Catskills, but for now I am at peace burrowing in.

My living room here, in this rented house in the mountains, is where I've written many a tune over the past 12 months that I've temporarily called this space my own. But there are still songs that over-power me, overwhelm me, make me sensitive and bratty and brooding.

One of those songs is one I'm penning with my producer. It's this little bud of a 12/8 tune that has potential for bloom, but I keep scraping myself on the sharp corners of the topic and the somewhat inflexible rhyme scheme I can't seem to uncommit myself to.

It just hit me today, as I was strumming the long-ago written chord structure to this song, hoping words would slip out and settle over the change from A7 to C, that this thing needs a living room. Not MY living room or his living room, but a communal space where two writers, two guitars and one pad of paper converge and collaborate.

I think I know where that living room is. It's in Harlem, with two old off-white sofas against opposite walls the color of dark mustard, with a chime hanging over the door leading to the back courtyard below.

We need to borrow the living room where I used to live when this here new record started taking shape. Where we first tested new songs I was writing and we rehearsed for a gig at the Baggot Inn. Where we shuffled note cards with song names and wrestled with a complicated 8-track machine that I ended up reselling for well below its worth.

Maybe I'll suggest this, to said producer and to the folks who still own that living room in Harlem who just might let us get back in there for a song-making afternoon.

In the meantime, this living room i'm in will do just fine for this particular summer weekend, for fluttery-tree gazing and many 40-year-old girl musings from the laptop, the 6-string and the occasional journal page.

j.

Since joining Facebook (www.facebook.com) and actively seeking lots of new connections there over the past couple of months, I've had the really sincere pleasure of "meeting" new music lovers and music makers across the globe. And because of these new and lively connections, my LISTENING CHAIR CD over at www.cdbaby.com/haase is picking up in sales again, YAY!

Every week since the middle of May, I've been receiving notices from CD Baby of new disc sales. That's right--DISC sales, People of the World. Yes, I've sold an mp3 or two here and there off other sites and my entire album as mp3 files via CD Baby, but it's the manufactured disc-in-plastic-case-with-liner-notes package that's still selling the best overall.

Just when I thought it might be pointless to invest in another soulfully designed CD package for album #2, the music-buying public proves me wrong, God Bless 'Em.

j.

I can't remember exactly when it was that I stopped reading Rolling Stone Magazine. It was maybe the Boy Band Era, I don't know. It was somewhere between R.E.M. and Britney Spears cover shots that I lost interest and felt the once beloved rag had lost its edge and significance.

I picked it back up somewhere in the mag's 39th year. And that was only because it started showing up at my house, a free subscription granted me after catching my friend Stephen Kellogg (& The Sixers) play a show at Irving Plaza in NYC. My name was collected from the tickets purchase, I assume, and free copies started dropping regularly through our Harlem brownstone apartment mail slot.

I skimmed the first issue or two. I actually read a few articles in the 3rd or 4th. And I've been absorbing entire issues ever since.

Rolling Stone Magazine is BACK and it's probably been BACK much longer than I'm aware, but I feel the need to spread the gospel just in case you didn't realize it was BACK yet, either.

Back for politically-charged peeks into the world's darker underbelly and slitting the flesh wide open. It was in Rolling Stone that I first learned about some of what goes on inside Guantanamo Prison. It's Rolling Stone that just taught me about L-1 Identity Solution's (a Connecticut-based company) dealings in China to provide facial-recognition software that will likely help China's government one day fully control and repress its citizens. A company that probably has plenty of privately stored information about the likes of you and me, as well.

And, yes, it's back to being a great source for great music. The artist-focus blend is again vast and poignant to a wide age range. The album reviews are helpful and I often agree. The updates on technology and music biz changes are welcome signs that they've still got their fingers on the pulse of what's happening in the world of music makers and music lovers today.

Nope, I didn't get paid a dime to write this endorsement. I just entered my 40's and so did this magazine and I guess I'm sittin' here feeling proud of how far each of us has come.

j.

Wow, I think I've been holding my breath for a good year now. Maybe longer as the ticking of my inner girl clock got so loud it rattled more than just my own cage, turned to silly rage and made me fear this AGE of mine.

Well, Sheesh, I say...what a waste of energy THAT was!

Let's relax now, shall we? Let's make a little more music now, how 'bout them apples and oranges and piles and piles of ripe raspberries....mmmmm!

Had two recording sessions the end of April. Threw down a few new songs and it's weird how these new songs mostly seem to STICK.

A tune called "Beautiful Man" that I explained to the boys as "a whimsical and sensual, yet so very non-sensical song about sex" that turned out pretty dang nice in demo form so far. An emotionally tough song for me called "Cut it Out"....an angry-with-heart song called "Don't Be Hatin" and a long-ago penned song of mine about the house we left when my parents divorced, called "Follows Me Still." Will these songs all make it on the disc? Please stay tuned!

I'm beginning to think that the songs themselves are why I came here to the countryside. To pour out some pressure onto the page.

It's been radically hard on me, at times, to do that very thing. But I must say...

I am grateful, I am grateful, I am grateful.

Jennifer

I turn 40 this week and I'm embarrassed to report that I'm entering this new decade of mine kicking and screaming. Not because I don't want the good stuff that my 40's will bring, because I do. I look forward to what they will teach me, how they will change me. What I'm down on the floor having a messy tantrum about is all that I feel I have to let go of in order to move on. I'm clinging and biting and scratching and, yes well...it's all moving into the songs I'm writing and the way I'm singing them and themes that collect like teardrops of warm olive oil at the surface of my skin. I don't dare rub them in. I don't dare rub them in.

Yet.

I want to fight with someone today. I want to soak in a bathtub, which this house doesn't have. I'm self-absorbed and bitchy. But in spite of myself I'm feeling something wonderful growing beneath this spilling of spoiled girl behavior.

Somebody said to me recently..."you artisitic types are so emotional"....and he's right, of course, but I think it's more than that. I think we artistic types have cells that are vibrating more beats per second than other folks who aren't, perhaps, as affected by the constant shifting rhythms of life. Maybe there is no true sense of stability for the creatively-fueled folk. When life becomes distinctly staccato, we require more time, more talk, more substance abuse, more patience, more denial, more bravery to make the slightest leap from note to note.

Or ...I'm just a 40 year old girl who doesn't know what she's talking about as she spins in place looking for a sense of peace.

Yeah, that's probably it. If I just had a bathtub to soak in, this would all just float, float, float away.

Right?

j.

Oh, don't mind me, i'm just frustrated by my current tendency to SPIN IN PLACE and then sulk about it.

And then write about it. :)

Two cancelled recording sessions two months in a row--all my doing. My health has been crappy and so has my attitude. My bank account is hacking from the dust covering its negative balance and well....such is the indie singer/songwriter's hard row to hoe.

I was supposed to be in the studio tonight, but empty pockets and kidney stones find me typing to you from the sofa at home instead. I'm beginning to fantasize about the Live Room, imagining myself with shoes kicked off and headphones on.

I crave the musical work now. I crave the exhaustion and progression of the recording process. Hell, I crave just ONE DANG SONG to show for the past 2-plus years of trying to record an entire album!!

That said, I will admit that I am learning the value of the slow-paced journey. Just trying to live in the moment over here.

But sure wishing that moment included someone in my headphones saying "Do you think you can play that one more time, Jen?"

Because, yes, I can play that one more time, thank you very much. And, wow, I really want to.

Somebody remind me I said that, once the "tape is rolling" again.

j.

Mid-March is approaching, but I'm still too groggy from winter's hibernation and deeply moving contemplation to be able to register the approaching seasonal shift. I've been holed up in my temporary home in The Catskills just writing and writing and writing. Sometimes just 2 inspired lines, sometimes entire songs hammered out within one drafty indulgent weekend, between mugs of sweet coffee while catching up to a handful of blogs.

In some ways, my life has hit an intense pocket of pain and resistance. But creatively? Like thick and supple pain paint, it gets squeezed through the tiny tube opening of my creative push and the intensity of the color that emerges makes me want to play and play for hours.

Wait, that metaphor wasn't quite what I intended. I live alone in the wilderness, what can I say.

I feel like we're writing a new album now. Like maybe we were supposed to wait for some momentous continental songwriter shift (that being mine) before we could actually make the record we were together meant to make...Michael (producer), Robert (engineer) and me. And how lovely that this suddenly became A We Thing. There's this high and pure Triangle ping ringing from the connection I now feel to the people making this record with me. And Looky There...as it turns out, I'm really rockin' good at choosing a musical team. Who knew?

Our next recording session falls a day after the spring Equinox. A poignant celestial shift spinning us toward longer, warmer days. The tides change. The bronze-wound strings get sweaty at the neck and so do the rest of us. Here's to the coming handkerchief dabs that mean we've survived all these cold and heavy days once again.

Hey, People of the World. It's been many moons since I've spilled any thoughts here. I've been hibernating, detoxing, reconfiguring, transitioning...as girls about to turn 40 are known to do. I'm spending a quiet clip in The Catskills, away from the noise. But then, as I've said in other places to other ears, quiet sometimes is its own kinda noise often heavier than you'd expect. But it is the contemplative quiet that has brought me back to my musical journey and some growing strength of self and sweet inner peace.

In a way, I feel like we're starting over. Like I should reintroduce myself to my engineer and my producer. Heck, even my guitars, though they have been loving companions encouraging my bud and my bloom.

I'm putting new songs on "tape" tomorrow in Chinatown. Re-familiarizing myself with my own voice. Ditching the map, just drivin' by feel.

Making new noise that I hope is joyful or, at the very least, soulfully felt and sung as I move on through.

Love to All,
Jennifer

Rosanna Arquette has become one of my favorite filmmakers. First, her documentary of several years ago, called SEARCHING FOR DEBRA WINGER was an interesting look at today's women in the film industry through interviews with actresses trying to have careers and balance in their lives. Now her interviews with musicans and songwriters in ALL WE ARE SAYING is the same type of approach, only in the music biz and includes both men and women out trying to make an authentic musical difference in this new track-downloadable, VH1-visually-driven world. I loved every minute of every interview. It reminded me that I'm not the only singer/songwriter out here struggling with wanting to express musically and make a living doing it in an arena that is less and less willing to accept me as a flawed, less-than-gorgeous, non-pop-star-thang seeking girl. It reminded me that my heroes are just people trying to create and get paid and have families and some respect for it all along the way. The documentary is currently playing on Showtime and more info can be found at www.allwearesaying.net.

What I'm Reading...
Just finished an article in the current Rolling Stone called The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr, by Jeff Tietz....a very disturbing look at the treatment of a specific, teenage prisoner in the America-backed torture-happy detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As a member of Amnesty International (please see their link on my links page), I am already aware of, and outraged by, this facility and their President G.W.B-approved torture practices. But it's something entirely more disturbing, haunting and frighteningly real to read a personal story of someone who is living it. Read the article. Be outraged, too. Then join Amnesty International and help fight this kind of horrendous treatment of human beings, no matter their religion, culture or the fact that they were a member of an army fighting against you.

In My Ears?
Jerry Reed: Super Hits. I was introduced to the music, and guitar-pickin' prowess, of Jerry Reed when I was a kid tuning in to what my Dad loved to hear. Dad was always impressed by Jerry's pickin' style and so am I. But if you've listened to Reed's records over the years, you also know that he often enjoyed a countrified form of Rap music long before I knew such a genre existed. Jerry sometimes rapped out his lyrics to country/rockabilly/rock/blues/etc riff and rhythm backdrops in songs like "She Got the Goldmine(I Got The Shaft) by Tim DuBois and a very famous Reed number called "When You're Hot, You're Hot" by Jerry Hubbard.

Where my activism thoughts and donations are going this week? Check out these websites for more info...

www.amnesty.org
www.savedarfur.org

Big Love to All...
Jennifer

Yeah, it's oppressively hot (can you say GLOBAL WARMING, children?) and I'm actually pretty bloated and hormonal (too much information?) today, but I'm THRILLED to welcome August back into our days again. Because August means my favorite season (Ahhhhhh, Autumn...) is on the way and, since I was a kid in grade school, August has always been a month where I pull my sh*t together and make some get-this-done-before-the-year-ends goals. I'm more organized and motivated in August than most other months of the year. So ONWARD to making plans and making them happen in our own individual ways.

BOOKS I'M ABSORBING:
I've dug back into SIMPLE ABUNDANCE...little daily affirmations and inspirations from a very female perspective. I'm a big fan of things that keep me thinking about the tiny blessings we take for granted while trying to survive the daily doses of crap that get overwhelming and fast.

I'm not reading anything yet, but I wanna know of a great biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. The more quotes I read from this woman, the more I want to get to know her better.

IN MY EARS?
Just dug out my copy of Aimee Mann's "Bachelor No. 2..." in the lime green sleeve....and I bow to the great singer/songwriter gods in the sky for having done it soooo very right when they created this girl. Wow.

I've been bawling all day. No, it's not PMS. No, it's not menopause. It's just an almost-mid-life (knock wood) girl trying to keep her little boat afloat.

And when I'm trying to keep my little boat afloat, I often turn to a girl who gets it....a girl who is inspirational, confessional, whimsical and oh-so-special to me....that girl being Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy...otherwise known in the publishing and inspirational world as SARK.

If you don't know SARK, please head over to www.planetsark.com and discover her. She is one of those soulful, beautiful and brave girls who is always trying to challenge herself while she sends out lots of love and playfully inspired thoughts to you.

So I was bawling in the bathtub today while reading her book EAT MANGOES NAKED...bawling with her while she told a story about leaving from a visit with her ill mother...and I went over there to www.planetsark.com to tell her thank you for helping me find some pleasure in spite of my pain.

And that lovely, lovely girl wrote back. Right here, in my guestbook. Sent me some love and then slipped away to send some love elsewhere. I am so touched that here come those waterworks again.

Thank you, SARK. Thank you for being brave, for being thoughtful, for sending love into my little boat. I just might keep her afloat yet. (-:

Luv to u...
Jennifer


BOOKS BY SARK YOU SHOULD EXPERIENCE...please visit www.planetsark.com for a complete list....

EAT MANGOES NAKED
The book I was reading today...how to find pleasure in everyday life...and how to allow yourself pleasure when the world is telling you that you don't deserve it or don't have what it takes to find/create it.

LIVING JUICY: Daily Morsels for Your Creative Soul....daily affirmations for a truly juicy life.

INSPIRATION SANDWICH: Stories to Inspire Our Creative Freedom...one of the many things I love about SARK is her full-on support of freeing the creative individual that makes you YOU.

SUCCULENT WILD WOMAN
Exploring your wild woman side....her romance, her sexuality, her beautiful physical self and total inner succulence.

Books of SARK's that I haven't read, but want to VERY BADLY...

**PROSPERITY PIE
**CHANGE YOUR LIFE WITHOUT GETTING OUT OF BED
**THE BODACIOUS BOOK OF SUCCULENCE
**TRANSFORMATION SOUP
**MAKE YOUR CREATIVE DREAMS REAL
**SARK'S NEW CREATIVE COMPANION

I have this book of magnetic poetry in my bathroom. A little plastic sleeve inside holds all the chopped up magnet words, all jumbled in a clump waiting for my attention. Doesn't everyone write poetry in the john, like me? Well, as George Michael once sang..."not everybody does it, but everybody should."

So I stuck the words "wild red minutes" together today in a sensual poetic cluster and I feel like those three words represent everything I'm feeling right now...and in a really wonderfully ALIVE kinda way.

And because this is my dang blog on my dang website that I pay for monthly in order to present my sappy perspective to the world, I'm gonna write just a bit about those Wild Red Minutes that I'm living right now....

The minutes that feel like deep-chest pulses as I write the songs I'm currently writing....

The dark cherry color of those minutes where I let myself slide achingly into dreams of an earth sign man...

The wild, organic nature of minutes that I'm suddenly allowing to grow in any direction they want to...as I follow bravely (OK, sometimes quite tentatively)....as I learn the power of possibility that every wild, new minute contains.

To me, these Wild Red Minutes represent flow, release and blood-pumping change. Without Wild Red Minutes, you can't feel your own excitement take you some place inside you've been scared to find ...but you know you have to get there....that you were MEANT to get there if you could...just....let....GO.

Take off your watch, because Wild Red Minutes have nothing to do with checking the TIME.

Sit still...focus on that place in your belly where all the fear collects and festers...push all that fear up and dare yourself to FEEL and EXPRESS and TRUST in everything that comes bubbling to the top of your life-force stew.

You might just find that those Wild Red Minutes have been a long time comin' to you.

(-;

Jennifer

So www.myspace.com has become what my friend Mike Miller calls "Internet Crack"....luring a motley crew of cool, sincere, friendly, wacko and downright scary individuals to its party on the web. My experience? So far, so very good.

Among the various cool connections I've made at myspace so far, I was offered (and accepted) a NYC gig via LES Productions. I was asked to come play Paddy Reilly's (which I haven't done yet) during the break of fab Irish/Americana band called Random Folk. And today I met a really talented, and really friendly, singer named Naomi Bedford who has a band with her husband in the UK called Jonah Hex. Naomi and I have similar song styles and we've already decided that when next she's in the states we're gonna play a few stages together.

I've gotta say...I'm feeling incredibly blessed about connecting with these peeps in this way. I don't care much for fame. I'd like some great reviews and respect from my peers, but I don't dream about media attention at all. I have no desire to be the next "hot thing" and I will never seek the Pop Star route.

What I want most out of the music that I share is to CONNECT with other music-makers and music-appreciators.....to make music together...to help each other....to be an important part of the indie scene not because I'm better or more popular than anyone else (which I'll never be and that's just fine) but because I write/sing/play for you and you write/sing/play for me.

Everytime that kind of connection happens for me, I feel like a successful singer/songwriter, whether I've got any praise in my "press" box or any coins in my pocket.

So myspace...you crazy beast....I thank you. And Lord, if you're up there...please give me days and days and days of connections like this.

Amen. (-;

Jennifer

The following are some words I wrote back when I was a Nebraska girl, working in a bookstore, spending my days day-dreaming and not really DOING...back when I was feeling so confined and afraid of making moves (literal and figurative) that I didn't yet know I was going to make. I pull these words out again when I'm feeling a little lost....like today....when I need my inner girl to give me a gentle nudge...

Don't know why I'm sharing them now. It's just a day I need to share, I guess. And why are we all here if not to share, connect, express?

Thanks for letting me slip them into your pocket...on a folded little note....on light blue paper....with much affection from me to you.

NOTE TO SELF (NEBRASKA 1998)

Mid-west counter girl
Still wet behind the ears
You sing loud in the basements
daring someone to hear
You're a long shot or nothing
You whisper a roar
You save face pretending
not to care anymore
You can't burn your tongue
if you don't take a bite
And choosing indifference
won't make you right
You're safe behind an attitude
And fear of the fight
but don't sell someone else's words
the rest of your life

--j. h.