I always thought that people in their thirties had it together: a stable relationship, a steady day job, and a real sense of who they are. I thought I would have it together. My thirties have been spent single parenting, falling in and out of love, wrestling with voices from the past and struggling with the idea of the future. They have been full of change and growth, deep love and profound loss. They have been humbling and utterly human. They have given me a story to tell; so much of a story, that I decided to write an album and a book about my experiences.
Now I am asking for your help to independently release these two special bodies of work into the world on March 27th, 2020.
I have been a full-time singer-songwriter for fifteen years fueled by dreams that you have supported me in. You have come to my shows, you have bought my cds and t-shirts. You have told your friends about my music. I have been able to support myself and my two beautiful kids on music alone because of you. Please join me now and pick the package that suits you best. Anything that you can contribute is very much appreciated. I’m also printing this album on vinyl for the first time! Thank you for standing with me in this. It means the world to me.
Love, Jill Andrews
I started writing an album in the first few years of this transformative decade. When all was said and done, I had thirteen songs about my life, some of the most intimate I’d ever written. I gathered up some of my beautiful and talented friends to make an album. I wanted to maintain a lot of creative control in the recording process because the content was so personal and I wanted a lot of say in how it sounded, so I asked my friend Lucas Morton to produce it with me and play on it. I hired musicians Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk (Grammy award winning producers for Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour), Todd Lomboardo (Instrumentalist on Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves), and Peter Groenwald (of Hush Kids) to play on it.
As I finished recording the album, I still felt like I had more to say about this period of my life and I wanted to go deeper than a three minute song could take me. So I decided to write a book. It is entitled Thirties: The Album in Portrait and Prose.
“The stories in the book and album are not all wild or awe-inspiring. Many moments may feel quiet and every day, but I believe that in moments like these, where our minds drift and our hearts ache, deepest truths can be found. Each of the thirteen songs on the records has a companion piece, a story and photos, a vignette to bring you to the place of its origin. It is my hope that as you experience this album and book, you are able to find beauty and value in parts of your own life that you may not have expected.”
-passage taken from the preface of Thirties: The Album in Portrait and Prose.
From photo shoot with Fairlight Hubbard. Video by Rachel Bullard
The biggest risk here is that I won’t meet my fundraising goal, and that we will have to pull back on producing some of this stuff. Second to that, it may take a little longer to deliver the hand-made or personally crafted rewards like personalized songs or scheduling skype lessons. But I, along with my management team, will make every effort to get all rewards out on time and get schedules ironed out as quickly as possible for those generous to contribute at those levels.