Kristina Jacobsen and Meredith Wilder. Photo by Jesse Littlebird Photography, © 2018.

Two of the region’s admired singer/songwriters, Albuquerque’s Kristina Jacobsen and Meredith Wilder, the latter now residing in Louisville, Colorado, are this week releasing their much anticipated EP, Elemental, whose six cowritten tracks illuminate recent personal challenges and epiphanies in their lives. The handmade album also offers a testament to the process of songwriting collaboration that the two have been exploring over the last couple of years. They’ll celebrate the release with two appearances this weekend in Albuquerque.

Songwriting collaboration is nothing new, but songwriting collaboration via the telephone and Skype, which is how Jacobsen and Wilder went about writing these tunes, definitely is. “We’ve virtually written maybe one-half of one of the songs on this album face to face,” says Jacobsen. “There’s something, in a funny way, almost more intimate about writing on Skype. It’s like this black box that you can just pour your heart out into the void and know this amazing human being is on the other side.”

They’d have no trouble doing it face to face—and have done—because they’ve been collaborating one way or another since they first met, when Wilder took Jacobsen’s country music class at UNM several years ago. Their geographical separation, however, forced a long-distance solution to cowriting for this album. “Putting aside the time for Skype almost makes it more of a successful cowriting session,” says Wilder, who notes that the limited time they were able to connect forced a focused and concentrated effort.

Kristina Jacobsen and Meredith Wilder. Photo by Jesse Littlebird Photography, © 2018.

Sessions started with the two catching each other up on the events and concerns in their lives, each taking copious notes on what the other had to say. After an hour or so, they’d look for threads in their conversation that might weave together into a song. This process addressed a challenge articulated by Wilder: “How do we reach some common ground? How do we relate to each other and bring these two worlds together? . . . How to make it sound like one voice?” The answer to those questions, in essence, created a new artist, one that will sound familiar but different to those who know these two as solo performers.

The album’s opener, “Unplug Me,” for example, grew out of their shared ambivalence about their smart devices and social media, and their concern about the distractions those things can introduce into one’s artistic life. Jacobsen at the time was doing field work in Appalachia, and her recounting of going up the mountainside to clean the silt out of the springbox was transmuted into a telling metaphor for the song and some timely advice about caring for one’s muse. (Detailed liner notes and the lyrics are available online.)

Kristina Jacobsen and Meredith Wilder. Photo by Jesse Littlebird Photography, © 2018.

All of the songs on the album, indeed, carry advice—first of all for the songwriters themselves. “I don’t know if this was really intentional. What we both ended up doing in these songs was giving ourselves advice and support for the future—for our future selves,” says Wilder. “I’m really glad these songs exist so I can hear these words of advice.” Wilder notes that the songs came to focus on where the two of them would like to be, or what they would like to experience in the world.

“Leave Home to Come Home” rediscovers the familiar and comforting touchstones of one’s home ground while at the same time vowing not to let that comfort subvert creativity or undermine the “wildness inside of me.” “Fortress” agrees to leave the heart unguarded and to suffer the consequences in exchange for the freedom of that vulnerability. “Sunday Frame of Mind” is determined to find a better mind-set amid the midweek stresses, frustrations, and demands of everyday life. “Freedom” explores the value and cost of freedom, whether it’s freedom from war, impoverishment, or gender marginalization. The title track, which closes the album, offers a love song to the elements, physical labor, and the way they align body and spirit.

The limited edition Elemental album cover. Photo by John Parish.

The personal nature of the material is also mirrored in the production of the EP, which was recorded and mixed entirely by Jacobsen and Wilder. They have also produced a very limited number of CDs, which have been packaged, with help from visual artist John Parish, in handmade album covers and which will be available only at the two appearances this weekend. (The album will be available digitally on Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon on March 30.) The artisanal nature of the album cover reflects the DIY process of creating the songs and the desire to have the labor of their hands, both the music and graphic art, connect directly with the listener. It’s easy, they say, to lose something of one’s own voice in the production of an album when others are involved, and they wanted to avoid that and take a more direct, less expensive path to producing their music. They also hope that their DIY experience might inspire and empower others to follow suit.

The quality of the songs and performances on the album offers convincing evidence that the DIY approach can yield gratifying results. Elemental delivers memorable melodies, sweet harmonies, and poetically incisive observations, and if there are a few rough spots, they are balanced by the immediacy of the songs and their openhearted delivery.

Elemental CD Release Party
with special guest Camille Grey from Copenhagen
Friday, March 30, at 7:00 p.m.
Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd.
$15

Elemental CD Release Party and
Fundraiser for Songs from the Rez
with special guests Chicki Begay and Ritchi Anderson, Jr.
Saturday, March 31, at 7:30 p.m.
Tortuga Gallery
901 Edith Blvd. SE
$15

© 2018 Mel Minter