Folk Alley Lyric Pull featuring ‘We Are All Travelers Here’ by Jaspar Lepak
We’ve launched a new review-adjacent series on FolkAlley.com. It’s inspired by our Membership Coordinator’s inability to hear lyrics. Emily is always playing music. Sometimes when you think you’re hanging out with her and having a conversation she’s suddenly popping on headphones to listen to music instead. You gotta respect it.
But she’s never heard a lyric in her life. When I asked her if I could call her out like this she replied: “I’VE HEARD AT LEAST ONE LYRIC.” When I get hyped or sad or wistful over what a song is about and try to express it to her, she stares at me as blankly as the vacuum of space.
For this series, we’ll listen to new albums and share lyrics that land with us in any kind of way. Some lyrics pulled without comment – many with. It’ll be personal to the writer so let’s be clear: I’m Sarah LaDuke and I felt these feelings and thought these thoughts.
Welcome to Folk Alley Lyric Pull – our second album is ‘We Are All Travelers Here’ by Jaspar Lepak.
From press materials:
Folk-charting songwriter Jaspar Lepak returns with her powerful new album ‘We Are All Travelers Here.’ Following her politically charged album ‘So Strong,’ this new collection of songs explores what it means to live through uncertain times without losing our humanity. Moving between the personal and the political, Jaspar writes about grief, courage, love, and belonging – and the everyday choices that help us stay connected to one another.
Recorded in her hometown of Minneapolis, it was co-produced with long-time band member Ben Cook-Feltz (keyboards, vocals, drums, percussion) and veteran producer Peter Remiger (engineering, mixing, electric guitar). The sessions were tracked largely live as a band, bringing together frequent collaborators and top Twin Cities musicians Andy Schuster (bass), DGS (violin), Haley E Rydell (vocals), Zippy Laske (vocals) and Aaron Fabbrini (pedal steel).
‘We Are All Travelers Here’ is Jaspar’s most fully realized album to date, showcasing her clear, expressive vocals, poetic songwriting and a band whose musical chemistry brings each song vividly to life.
On the Inside
🎵I won’t let fear keep me living on the inside anymore.🎵
A song of affirmations to take into each day. Not to mention: I love list songs. I heard Jaspar sing this live at FARM, solo with her guitar, and nodded as each lyric cum motto resonated.
***
Storm in Their Eyes
🎵I hear the mountains tremble. I see the earth beneath me crumble. I hold my life like a loseable thing – like a key or a ribbon.🎵
Something to which many can relate: A certainty that the universe adheres to Murphy’s Law. From within or without: we all live with dread we have to manage.
***
When the Ocean’s Full of Tears
🎵I see a world full of people who think their sadness is their own. But these tears are from the ocean, they are the sadness of our home.🎵
***
In Your Name
🎵Love could save the world if we’d only choose love but we never do … 🎵
This is a serious, seeking, angry, and amazing song. Which makes my next question clearly a diversionary comedy coping mechanism: Did everybody see Bob Dylan with the Pope on Wednesday? That was weird, huh?
***
Orion
🎵The past is what calls you, the present is what knows you. There’s no path to follow when you are always home.🎵
***
Something New
🎵Some say fame is permission for art – I say joy is the reason to start.🎵
I want to share this with my niece but she only likes listening to ‘Candy Shop’* by 50 Cent when we hang out. {sigh} It is a banger.
*My instinct was to spell that song title “Candy Shoppe” – which I credit to recently mainlining “The Gilded Age.”
***
Piano by the Window
🎵I want to remember how to be here without a reason without a question in my mind. I want to believe again in a safe world where love is powerful and hate can never win.🎵
Me too.
***
Blue Blue Eyes
🎵Our bodies free we could swim in all directions all the pain of past rejections slipped away into the tide.🎵
***
If I Were to Tell You
🎵If I were to tell you what I’ve lost it’s the hope that there’s a savior and that loves comes at a cost. No sacrifice is worth your curiosity and joy. Pleasure should be nurtured not destroyed.🎵
If that lyric doesn’t pull you, let me add: Aaron Fabbrini on pedal steel.
***
One Brave Life
🎵We want our memory to age just like a fine wine. We want to leave knowing we did more right than wrong.🎵
***
Traveling Home
🎵As you cross over, you’re not alone. Our love goes with you as you journey on.🎵
Not to bring this original non-denominational hymn down to logistics but I do think for your secular funerals: this should be under consideration.
On “We Are All Travelers Here, ” Jaspar Lepak brings us on a journey – the only one we all share. Much of the pain and, importantly, joy of life and an usherance to the final out on one record.
[Photo of Jaspar Lepak by Corri Miller]
