Sometimes, I write fan mail. Yes, I do! Who doesn’t like positive vibrations? Last year I wrote to Regina Specktor. No response. Of course, I don’t really expect to hear back from these busy full-time artists that don’t know me. That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised this week when I heard back from someone I reached out to!

I wrote to Claudia Schmidt, seasoned singer/songwriter and prolific folk and jazz recording artist from the Midwest. Here’s my email to her below and her thoughtful response:

January 6, 2014

Dear Claudia,

I came upon your music by pleasant surprise. To me, it was magic really. If you don’t mind indulging me here, I’d like to share the story with you.

It was this last October. I was in the car in the middle of the night. I had just dropped my husband off at Sea-Tac airport so he could fly to New England and move his mother into assisted living. It was an emotionally heavy departure and a surreal feeling to be awake and functioning at 4:30 in the morning. Our 2 ½ year old daughter was in the back seat, barely awake, piecing together the family tree aloud with her little baby voice. It was still pitch black as we drove north to our Seattle home. Then, around the curve of 1-5 the lights of the city appeared. I was listening to KEXP and your song “Persephone’s Song” came on. That song was exactly the journey of that drive for me. Persephone and Demeter, the mother and daughter. The black departure into the unknown underworld.

As a harpist, hearing the harp played always catches my ear. I turned up the music. I wasn’t sure if you were singing and playing? Who is this harpist? What is this song? I was hypnotized. We girls were quiet in the darkness as we listened to you sing “I need my rainy days.” We were on the edge of our own rainy days, the ones that make Seattle iconic, as the onset of another Pacific Northwest winter would soon begin.

Since that wee morning, your album “Bend in the River” gets plenty of play in my house. My daughter fondly, and simply, calls you Claudia, as if she knows you personally. Your voice is a familiar friend, kid friendly, and inspiring to this mama. Thank you. I love how my little child runs around the house singing “there’s a racer inside me, I can’t slow her down!”

If I may ask, I would be very pleased to purchase any arrangement you have of “Persephone’s Song” – it would be a great gift in fact.

Blessings this new year,

Monica Schley
Seattle, Washington

… and the response…

January 7, 2014

Dear Monica,

Thank you so much for the lovely letter. You really took me into the scenario!  My friend Andrea Stern, a Mpls. musician, played on that.  I will ask if she has a chart that I could make a copy of and send you.  I’m glad you found the song.  I still sing it often.

As it happens, I will be in Seattle on Sunday April 6 at the Royal Room. It’s a bit later show than usual, they had an event already. So I won’t start till 8:30pm, a late start for my peeps these days!  …. And I hope you can come (I promise I will do Persephone for you). I am also celebrating the release of a new Red House CD on that trip. Lots going on!  Be well, and I hope to see you soon.

Peace,
Claudia