Jess singing for Bryan

In a week or so it will be my turn to step into the studio with Bryan for a final time. I’m endlessly grateful to Patrick and all of those involved for honoring Bryan and making the recording project of his unarchived material happen. He would be so excited and honored.

When I met Bryan Logan, I was 18. I’ve told that story before. I was in Manhattan on my own over the winter break from school just trying to stir the pot and make something happen in that city. When I first joined in with him and Patrick I was just adding myself to their existing I repertoire. I had to learn harmonies etc. I was given melodic freedom on an existing tune called Walking Papers. I liked singing the music. I liked the way Bryan and my voice sounded together. I liked having something to sing, a reason to, and a place to.
The first song we wrote collaboratively after Walking Papers was a little chorus I wrote called “Heavy Places.” The song never went anywhere because the guitar part I wrote it to ended up belonging to someone else, but it’s only important to mention because I wrote it shortly after experiencing for the first time the distress surrounding one of Bryan’s seizures.
I could walk you the elevator bay where I got the phone call. Thankfully he had given me a heads up on a long walk through Central Park about a week earlier, but they were presumably controlled and he hadn’t had one in years. In my 18 year old brain, I was just worried about him. I wasn’t thinking beyond, “Are you ok?” I really didn’t understand epilepsy or the manifestation of it in a person’s life. I was just worried about him. So, days after the dust settled and he was stable again---I wrote the chorus.

You’re in heavy places baby.
Faces you won’t recognize
Shoulder’s shrink and the chest will rise
Easy now won’t come so easy tonight
So I’m standing here, with my hands in the sky
Your heart in the left, fingers spread to the right
Can I make it easier tonight?

Now---important to note as I begin to share song stories about the upcoming album. Bryan and I had VERY different writing styles that I wonder if you will catch as you listen to the things we made together. I write to understand, to process, to express, or to tell a significant story about an emotion. If it's "about" something significant in a human beings life, I probably initiated it haha.

Bryan wrote to serve you a story with beautiful language and unique melody lines. He wrote to play along with his friends and family because that brought him complete joy. He wrote about love. He wrote about things bigger than himself. His mom is the one to credit for the lovely language. See if you can spot “her” in his style. See if you can hear the guitar lines Patrick or Al sent that inspired him to put pen to paper. From my perspective, the things he wrote he made for the love of making music with the ones he loved.

And that is what makes this project so special....now WE are playing it back for him.