Leaving Nashville wasn’t easy for Brigitte DeMeyer. Several years earlier, when she made the decision to relocate back to her hometown of San Francisco, she felt like she was leaving one family—her musical one—for her biological one. DeMeyer reveals the story of this journey, and all its ups and downs, on Seeker (BDM Records) out March 26, opening the book on “Salt of the Earth,” a lighter ode to her much-loved Nashville community.
Produced by The Wood Brothers multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix—who also appeared along with Oliver and Chris Wood on DeMeyer’s 2017 collaboration with Will Kimbrough, Mockingbird Soul—along with engineer and Grammy winning producer Trina Shoemaker (Sheryl Crow, Dixie Chicks), over a two-year period, Seeker reflects one of the most transformative periods in DeMeyer’s life. After many years of commuting back and forth to Nashville and eventually settling there with her family, building roots and solidifying her musical community, she had to make the difficult decision to move back to San Franscisco for her son.
“Having to suddenly leave Nashville and my long nurtured community of kindred spirits for the urgent sake of my son’s well being kicked my ass,” says DeMeyer, who suffered another blow as she was moving back to San Francisco when she lost her cousin and his daughter in a rogue wave accident in Hawaii. “It was extremely challenging, especially after it took me so long to find a thing I didn’t know existed for me, this feeling of belonging. I’d never really grown roots anywhere, or wanted to, until I got there [Nashville].”
Moving west and rebuilding her life again California is the root of Seeker. In Nashville, DeMeyer says she found people and a place in the music community that made her feel like she was home, and connected to her deeper spirit.
“Over time, things were happening that were detrimental to my young son’s spirit and growth that I hadn’t anticipated,” says DeMeyer. “I had to leave my chosen family, for my own beloved family at home. While I would do it all over again, it was a major jolt.”
In its lighter, bluesy grooves, “Salt of the Earth” is about looking for what she considered her salt of the earth—connection in a new place. “I just felt like I found my people,” shares DeMeyer. “We all have this common denominator, this language that we speak, so the longer I lived there, the more deeply my roots got grounded there. When I moved, I felt like it was disappearing, but it wasn’t at all.”
DeMeyer adds “The good news is, real connection stays that way. I have learned my community is true blue to me no matter where I am.”
Along with Rix, the two produced demos by sharing files remotely at first. DeMeyer sent Rix a page of lyrics, and he filled in the rest. “I didn’t have really a melody or anything written, just some ideas,” says DeMeyer. “Then he sent back the music for it, so our process began like that. I would send him lyrics, sometimes poetry, or a melody idea, and he would send it back finished. Other times, I would have no music at all, and he would send it back with music.”
Read the entire article by Tina Benitez-Eves at American Songwriter.