As you probably know, we have a musical chickie in our family.

Hannah has been making music since all she had at hand was my tupperware in a bottom cabinet to thump on.

When she was six, she discovered strings and we all suffered through the first few years. 

I’ll never forget her first “concert” for her Mimi in a hotel room in Pennsylvania. She stood very straight and played very seriously and Mimi hung on every cat screech, clapped joyful and tearfully (Mimi is always overflowing happy tears for her children’s accomplishments) and said, “Hanny that was WONDERFUL!! You play SO BEAUTIFULLY…. what was it?” It was Twinkle Twinkle.

Her teachers have been many, from proper classical violinists, then free-form fiddlers, where she found her heart and her love for folk music. A Scotch lady in the deep dark of Tikal’s jungle, a concert violist, a big dude with long black dreds that wormed his way right into the family for life (Hi Duane!) and the lovely Miss Mira with her beautiful Irish lilt, to Blues greats Steve James and Carlos Funk. She’s a pretty lucky girl to get to have such an interesting and eclectic group of teachers and friends.

She added guitar to her fiddle over our winter in Guatemala.

This Christmas she added a mandolin. And yes, we are carting all three around the world (she owes her brothers, BIG TIME.)

She can play just about anything she hears within a few minutes and she loves to sing. She does it for hours a day (to her mother’s delight.) This, however is her first attempt at writing her own song.

It’s not truly her own song, the tune is borrowed from Tyler Lyle’s California, but she wrote her own words, added the mandolin part and tweaked the guitar, and the song itself is very, very her.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do:

On My Way To Thailand (this one is m4a)

On My Way To Thailand (this one is mp3)