After holding several days of songwriting circles around Loudoun, musicians participating in the inaugural Loudoun Artist in Residence will perform their work tonight during a special concert at The Barns of Hamilton Station.
The Loudoun AIR project is led by Todd Wright with the support of Visit Loudoun.
Through the project, Wright brought in Germany-based hitmaker Terri Bjerre, known professionally as Terri B!, to work with members of Loudoun’s music scene. Joining the project were Pamela Brunetti, Jon Carroll, Cal Everett, Stilson Greene, Tracy Hamlin, Ethan Mentzer, Kim Pittinger, Emma Rowley, Gary Smallwood and Ryan Wright.
After three days of songwriting, the group spent yesterday at Wright’s recording studio to fill out tracks from the sessions.
“We’re kind of playing a little catch up. We’re cleaning it all up here and getting some additional vocals and stuff. It’s going really, really, really good,” Wright said.
The group has found inspiration by gathering in different areas around Loudoun. Today, they’ll have a final writing session at the historic John Wesley Church in Waterford.
“Making music outdoors, I think, puts you in a different headspace. You write different songs when you’re sitting out in the breeze or at the winery or when were at the farm yesterday,” Mentzer said. “There’s a way that affects you and what you come up with.”
Bjerre said she’s found a warm and productive welcome to Loudoun’s music family.
“Todd brought the spirit of so many people together,” she said. And she was surprised to find she had musical connections with some of them, such as playing the same festivals around Europe as Hamlin and traveling in the same same musical circles performing jazz, EDM and house music. “It’s crazy that this one Loudoun County project could connect the spirit of people that I met, who never met, who knew me indirectly through someone else. I don’t know how that happened, but I feel like the energy of everyone here was absolutely optimistic and positive.”
Collaboration is the heart of the project.
“There hasn’t been a whole lot of laboring over ‘what are we going to do today?’” Mentzer said. “It’s been just kind of having a feeling and then somebody jumps in. It’s not magic, but it kind of feels that way a little.”
“This is the first time I’ve written with so many people,” Hamlin said. “It was really amazing to put all that creativity together and make it work.”
Collaboration is the heart of the project.
“There hasn’t been a whole lot of laboring over ‘what are we going to do today?’” Mentzer said. “It’s been just kind of having a feeling and then somebody jumps in. It’s not magic, but it kind of feels that way a little.”
And they credit Wright with pulling the right mix of people together.
“What we’ve all said in roundabout ways is when you really like people, and you have a real positive personality and you’re very creative and like creating with other people and are humble enough to know what you do and what you don’t do, and then can you recognize when there’s someone else that does what you don’t do better,” Carroll said. “And Todd is all those things. I think that’s what the gravitational pull of so many things that have come to pass with different folks who know each other and have done different things. A sort of spiritual coagulation kind of thing happens around people like that and Todd’s very much that and was from day one.”
“I’m really, really having a good time. I always grow every experience like that,” Bjerre said. She says Wright is one best lyricists and melody makers she’s ever met. “He’s diamond, and Ethan is as well. Now I’m meeting these new writers who are legends but I’ve never work with, it’s just an honor.”
Wright pushes the credit back to the participants.
“My credo is I just surround myself with really talented people, and it makes people think that I’m more talented than I am,” he said. “It’s been lovely. It’s been a really lovely week.”
The Barns at Hamilton Station show on Friday Oct. 11, starting at 7 p.m. will feature a songwriter circle format with musicians playing their own songs and the pieces they created this week, along with stories about how their collaborations have built over the years.
Get your tickets here.
