I write about very hard topics but package it in a bite size offering.
This album is dedicated to my late grandfather, William Francis Maclaine on my mother’s side, a professional jazz musician, and to my Uncle Paul Maclaine on my mother’s side. I have always known this music flows through my veins, but I lived a very long time scared of letting it out. This album captures so much of my heart and soul.
I write about very hard topics but package it in a bite size offering. Disordered is about eating disorders and fear of food. Things that happened to me as a very young girl but became painstakingly worse after many holistic doctors took so many foods away from me claiming they were bad for me or made me sick. Our western culture does us no favors in thinking they know the things they do not know. This song was my offering for peace with the precious, beautiful food that works to fuel the body and heal the soul.
I have come such a long way and still have a way to go- but man, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Milk and Cookies, the title track, was written about our precious elderly neighbor we grew up by on Park Street. She gave me such a safe place to land and share in milk and cookies of course, and board games. This song feels like an anchor, then and now!
Better Check Twice is about mental illness and OCD. So many of us battle in silence. We act out in public as though nothing is bothering us on the inside for fear of being booted outside the camp. If we were all being honest, I bet we could all relate to every single one of these songs in some way. The channeling and uncovering became deep for me on this album. Every single song on this album is my favorite. I was able to connect with my grandfather during the making of this album and every clarinet solo came from my connection to his soul. The soul never dies.
I hope you find something you love and that speaks to you in this album. It was a true honor to create it and offer it to the cosmos.
Every album created has a powerful dedicating and bowing down to my beautiful children. The three that are with me earthside, the three that crossed over way too early, and the three we adopted again from Haiti but could never join our family due to the health condition that tried to take my life. I think of them all every single day. I often wonder why things turned out as they did, but there comes that surrender word again. May they all know how much I have always loved them and always will. I tell my babies many times a day how proud I am of them, how much I love them, and how much they mean to me.
– Jennifer