I’m proud to have my song “Go in Peace” included on the latest album from Abbey of the Arts, The Love of Thousands: Singing with Angels, Saints & Ancestors. It’s humbling to have my music placed among songs from beautiful artists whose music I cherish, including MaMuse, Melanie DeMore, and Karen Drucker. The album accompanies the Christine Valters Paintner’s latest book. I’ve read and loved three of Christine’s books so far, and The Love of Thousands will be the next one I dive into. The book’s message is timely, because so many people I’ve connected with lately are in “all hands on deck” kinds of situations, where the love of angels, saints, and ancestors—those “sacred beings who dwell in spiritual form across the veil,” as Christine puts it—is deeply needed. A YouTube playlist of the album is here.
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Early this year I had a short episode of almost-but-not-quite depression, and it arrived along with an image of what happens for me during the worst of those times, which hasn’t happened for almost 20 years: A giant boot descends and plants itself on my chest, and I’m unable to move or negotiate. It’s enormous, it’s simply there, and it’s heavy enough to crush even the cheeriest and most optimistic of mortals. For me depression isn’t really about sadness. If sadness is warranted, I can sit with the sadness and even welcome it, but the boot is different. The boot can’t be sat with, snapped out of, or “moved through.” The boot stops life from being lived. In May I painted the boot, and it turned out to be an image of my own ongoing change, learning, and redemption. I’m warding off the boot, and its color is way more […]
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My CD release concert on May 18th was wonderful—it was a rich experience for me on many levels, and I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did. I performed the ten songs from Go in Peace with Bobby Medcalf on drums and Tess Evans Clark on guitar and vocals. My niece Kristina Dunworth made a special appearance on “Kristina’s Song,” the song I wrote for her a few days before she was born in 1995. (Hey, she’s taller than I am!) College Avenue Presbyterian Church hosted us, and about 50 people were there…15 of them my family members, to be sure. 🙂 I’m so grateful to my husband Gene Anderson for all the work he did making the sound system work absolutely perfectly, carrying equipment hither and thither, and doing countless other needed tasks, and to everyone else who helped and supported me and us in this […]
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Album credits Words and music by Katarina Stenstedt Vocals, guitars, bass, and keyboard by Katarina Stenstedt Drums and percussion by Bobby Medcalf Vocal harmony on “Kristina’s Song” by the lovely and talented Kristina Dunworth Produced by Bobby Medcalf and Katarina Stenstedt Recorded and engineered by Gene Anderson Mastered by Masaki Photography and album design by Gene Anderson About the album Gene, Bobby and I recorded every sound on Go in Peace in the living room of Gene’s and my house in the Oakland hills. We used a Roland VS-1880 digital recorder—a dinosaur with no computer interface. (Next album, ProTools!) Each time we’d record, one of us would jog down to the basement and flip the breaker to turn off the refrigerator so it wouldn’t hum and rumble in the background. We’d turn off the phone’s ringer and hope neither of the cats was about to launch into an inexplicable, crazed […]
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“…Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.” Gesturing toward the band onstage, he said, “We’re repairmen—repairmen with a toolbox. If I repair a little of myself, I’ll repair a little of you. That’s the job.” —Bruce Springsteen, as quoted in The New Yorker.* When my aunt Marjorie was dying of lung cancer in January 2006, there was one message I wanted to give her: Go in peace. I wrote my message into a song that I sang with my sister, cousin, and niece at Marjorie’s memorial service. Creating and offering the song helped me move through my own sadness at losing my loving, funny, irreverent aunt. It gave me something to do with my sadness, someplace to put it. I repaired a little of myself: Go in peace. Late in 2006, I recast the song so it wouldn’t refer specifically to the […]
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