How The Wishing Jar Was Revived

This is the story of Oh Dry Those Tears, and how Amber Humphries and I decided to pick up a long-lost love once more.

I’ll keep this brief because I mostly just want to let you know about the song we’re releasing this weekend. But it really is a catalyst to reigniting a flame that was started in me and Amber over 5 years ago. We’re both moms (duh) and we both work in a variety of fields. We met as musicians and spent a good portion of our time together around microphones, on stages and in studios. And one day we started talking about how annoying a lot of kids music is . That’s no shade toward kids music-makers. In my personal experience, kids LOVE IT, so you must be doing something right. What we didn’t see was a lot of music that kids AND parents liked together. So, we wondered what it might look like to make an album that could achieve the seemingly impossible.

And it worked! The Wishing Jar was born, and it was some sort of baby sorcery. No joke— our inboxes flooded with parents telling us how enraptured their children were and how they now had to listen to the music before bed. We were thrilled.

And then… we just sorta left it there. There’s no reason in particular except that we just had a lot of other stuff going on.

…Then, you know, a global pandemic landed and magically there’s all this time to think about the things we left alone. I started thinking about The Wishing Jar, among MANY other things involving Amber, and after we finally had a conversation, I realized she had been thinking about a whole lot of stuff, too. Separately we had been “pandemic pondering” about what we really want to do.

That’s when I told her I had perused the public domain library just to see if there was anything that might fit with originals we’re writing. One of the songs I found instantly grabbed my attention lyrically. Then I scoured the internet to find any performance I could and clicked the first video I saw. It wasn’t impressive, not in the least. But by the time the song was finished, I was weeping. It was the release I needed. It was what my heart and my mind needed to hear in this present time. And, wouldn’t you know it, of the list of songs I sent to Amber from the public domain, the one she commented on after listening was the very one that stopped me in my tracks. So, I told her I thought this should be our first single for this new project.

And now it is! The song is called Oh Dry Those Tears. It’s a song that is so fitting for this moment in history, even though it was written almost 120 years ago.
It encourages us to look for sunshine;
that sorrow is inevitable;
that, just like storm clouds that can still be bright reflecting the sun, we can find light and reflect it in darkness.

Oh Dry Those Tears will be releasing on Saturday, May 16th. This day also happens to be my 40th birthday. The BEST gift you can give me is to download it, stream it, listen to it and let it wash over you. Share it with your friends and family. Spread the love and peace.

There is SO much more to share with you. Amber and I are just beginning… again. :) But this time there’s no end in sight.