SUNDAY SONGS #2

Magical lands, imaginary friends, and "Stallion," featuring Tim Foljahn and Television's Fred Smith.

Sunday Songs is a new series where I revisit songs from my music catalog. While most of you know me as a writer, I’m a musician first. Here are the stories behind the songs. Stay tuned for new music news. Thanks for listening!

This morning, my kids woke up at the crack of dawn to see what the Easter Bunny brought them. West and Lou are ten, I don’t know if I should be worried that they still believe in the Easter Bunny, but I’m touched that they’re holding on. “I love when the magical beings come,” West said, dreamily, as the pink sun slowly flooded our home. The boys spent the rest of the morning eating their candy, and drawing maps, trying to figure out how the Easter Bunny gets from his land to ours…

In 2012, I released my second album Coral Dust, a collection of songs that might as well have beamed in from wherever the Easter Bunny comes from. Pastel cliffs, celestial skies, and horses and horses and horses and horses…This land existed in my imagination since childhood, and the songs came as celestial downloads. In shamanic practice, one can journey to both the Lower and Upper Worlds to seek guidance from helping spirits. Coral Dust came from way up in the skies, and it features “Stallion,” an ode to my power animal, a companion, a blessed friend.

West and Lou’s Easter Bunny map.

To make this wild record, I called upon some superstar co-conspirators. My best friend and longtime collaborator, Tim Foljahn, helped bring my crystalline vision to life, our call and response guitars reminding me of children at play, weaving magical worlds, a secret language of their own. Television’s Fred Smith mixed the album, and played bass on “Stallion,” merging the downtown New York of my childhood with my spirit home in the skies.

Playing “Stallion” live, I would shoot up to that place in the heavens, lost in the drum’s heartbeat, finding relief — and escape — from my earthly woes. How I’d ride into the clouds with both my animal friend and my brothers on stage! Years later, when I began studying shamanism alongside my Buddhist practice, I learned that certain rhythms can synchronize the front and back areas of the brain. This is the peace and wild hallucination I still experience, enveloped in the pink cotton candy soundscape of my most otherworldly album.

Backstage during the Coral Dust era, 2012.

So, on this Sunday, a blessed day for many, I invite you to the land of starlight and moon beams…never, ever stop believing in magic. Find your helpers. PLAY! Map out your journeys!

You are never, ever alone. xx

Sending love and blessings to all. May all beings be safe, happy, healthy, and FREE.

Stallion

Never been out there before / Never felt my hair before / Blowing in the sand

I just don’t care no more / Take me far, far from the shore / Come on, take me inland

I want to see life without you loving me / Without you loving me I’d be free

I’d like to see you without me / You without me, that’s something to see

Never was a man before / But if I was I’d close the door / On a woman free like me

And if I couldn’t close the door / I’d stand there watching as she tore / Down to the sea

I’d say, now I will see life without her loving me / Without her loving me I’d be free

Now he will see the sea without me / The sea without me, that’s something to see

I’m just looking for my stallion

I’m just looking for my man

All songs written and performed by Alexa Wilding c. White Witch Music 2011 / ASCAP; Tiny Prism Records, NYC // Produced by Tim Foljahn / Mixed by Fred Smith / Mastered by Fred Kevorkian // Engineered by Murray Trider at Ground Control Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Additional percussion recorded by Tom Beaujour at The Nuthouse, Hoboken, NJ
Players: Alexa Wilding, Tim Foljahn, Brian Kantor, Fred Smith, Murray Trider

Coral Dust portrait by my sister, Sonja Georgevich; album design by The Heads of State