Bloom where you fall
A message of resilience and recovery
“From the first time I heard the songs that make up this CD, I knew that it was something extraordinary and that there was the potential for producing something of great beauty. This is not light listening – each song takes you on a journey. The lyrics are powerful and poetic and often document confronting serious personal trials and coming up victorious.
Hana gave me tremendous freedom and let me orchestrate each piece to my heart's content. I can easily say that I am as proud of this project as anything I have ever produced.”
-Kelly Mulhollan/ Still on the Hill
Hey friends, I have a new album! It was many years (and many hands) in the making- A small group of us worked very hard to get this collection of songs composed, recorded, produced, mastered, and distributed!
After its initial release it climbed to #4 on the folk charts, which was wild! I got to hear my songs alongside the work of folk legends, on programs I’ve listened to for years. My newest single, “People Against an Empire,” snuck onto the album last minute, and got the most radio play- it is indeed a timely gut-punch of a song.
I’m proud of this work and so very honored to share it with you! You can stream it anywhere you listen to music, or purchase a physical or digital copy here:
If you do purchase the album, one thing that helps me tremendously is if you review it! Just hover over the album once you’ve purchased it, and click "favorite track - set" or "Why do you love this album?" to open the comment box.
A review gives reputation to the songs and helps them reach more listeners. Thank you for your support!
“A song can keep us oriented in an ever-changing world, pointing us steadily towards our highest human values. I hope these songs can be, for you, the compasses they were for me in their creation.
This album is a collaboration with the most remarkable spirit, Kelly Mulhollan, who, in the spaces between me and my guitar, composed symphonies.
In the final weeks of recording, I had a dream I was walking up a street with a crowd of people. When I asked where we were going, they told me we’ve always walked this way together, and are walking, still. At these words, my mind flooded with understanding- we are surely traversing the chasm of our differences, you striding beside me, I beside you, walking each other home.
Fellow traveler, I share with you my compass for the journey.”
With love, Hana
“When you listen to the songs in this album you are quickly drawn in by Hana’s powerfully unique perception of the world. This is punctuated by Kelly Mulhollan's (Still on the Hill) virtuosity, who, in the spaces between voice and guitar, arranged delicate symphonies. This combination of poetry and music is both magical and rare. Her storytelling is capable of reaching into the heart’s heart and reopening a space that was closed, perhaps by grief, or numbness, or some kind of suffering- songs that recognize our collective pain and lift the listener to a place of overflowing compassion- she pulls us deep into the origins of our psychic sameness.
The album opens in the recovery community of South Philadelphia where Hana leads us into a familiar church basement, a meeting where life hangs in a balance of human will and choices- she sings “we weave the great story of love, and we rise to the work to be done.” This is a triumphant anthem for anyone struggling with addiction. A common thread in many of these songs is a stubborn unwillingness to conform –but instead– to shine a stark light on what is terribly wrong. In the song “People Against An Empire” she writes of walking through refugee camps and borderlands, “past the remnants of the whims of what some government decides, for a people against an empire.” For anyone who dares to imagine a better future –one without injustice and unconscious destruction of the natural world – like her, it's not hard to see where our loyalties lie: “We are a people against an empire.”
This album was the result of three years of collaboration in which Zara and Mulhollan sent tracks and ideas back and forth between New England and the Ozarks. Mulhollan’s arrangements are nothing short of phenomenal, including instrumentation such as marimbas, octave mandolin, recorders, pump organ, mountain dulcimer, cavaquinho, pizzicato violin, banjo, and autoharp, to name just a few.
What weaves all of these songs together in a way that gives life to the title, "Bloom Where You Fall” is the common theme of rising up beyond difficult circumstances and embracing the totality of ourselves as fallible, yet striving human beings.”
-One Sheet for Radio; Laura Josephs and Marc Kornbluh
Hana signing off,
Be well my loves!!
