The Rock and Roll Playhouse plays Music of The Beatles & More for Kids

Jessie Baylin will be reissuing Strawberry Wind, now as a Deluxe Edition with 3 new tracks added to the vinyl, and the digital release includes 4 new songs with one as a Digital exclusive - 4 new songs in all.  The original release was April 27, 2018, distributed via one souce, Amazon, and now on May 10th, 2024 it will be available everywhere.

Strawberry Wind not only delivers on a promise to create an honest album for kids and parents, but it represents what Baylin calls the "beautiful divide," of juggling family life with her creative life, a difficult task by any measure. “The divide in me is easy to feel because I invest 100% of myself into my family and often the creative get’s put to the side,” she explains. “So when I decided to begin writing for this album it just poured out of me,” and now singer/songwriter Jessie Baylin, whose music the Associated Press declared as “Lush thoughtful pop music…[That] plays on the mind like late afternoon sunshine filtered through layers of gauze,” is sharing that creative outpouring on Strawberry Wind, and now with new tracks added, has brought her small and select group of friends along to help her catch the vision the original Strawberry Wind release had.  Assembled together, Thad Cockrell, Jon Estes, Jessie Baylin Produced (along with Daniel Tashian on the song “Big Feelings” co-written with Baylin). Tracks 13, 14, & 15 were Produced by Thad Cockrell, Jon Estes, and Jessie Baylin, recorded & Mixed by Jon Estes in Nashville, TN.  The new songs

Baylin, who's released five critically-acclaimed albums over the years, says the seed was planted for this project after contributing a cover of Harry Nilsson's "He Needs Me" from the film Popeye to the Amazon original playlist Amazon Acoustics. "The song has a childlike sense, but the message is very deep. It's magical, it's dark, and it hit all the notes. I wanted to do an album that felt like that. It gave me the bug," she says.

It's quite a departure from her last record, 2022’s Jersey Girl, and 2015's Dark Place, which NPR Music described as "stunningly thoughtful tenderness." "Writing Dark Place began with a premonition of what was to come, and what followed was fear and many challenges that were put on me as a human being, so creatively I completely shut down – and Dark Place was a devotion to my pain,” admits Baylin.  But the beautiful thing about life is that it will force itself on you whether you are looking for it or not, and according to Baylin, “it pulled me out of the darkness – leaning into my family was part of that and it showed me a new landscape and helped me get back in a forward motion.”

The New Jersey-bred, Nashville-based artist found even more inspiration after giving birth to her first child.

"Since becoming a mother," she explains, "I found myself being around the house a lot, and I started gravitating to these wonderful older albums to listen to with my child -- The Beatles, John Lennon, Roger Miller, Harry Nilsson's The Point!, and Carole King's Really Rosie. I realized that people aren't making albums like that anymore, and that really inspired me to go down this new musical path.” Mother to now four-year-old Violet is expecting her second child due spring 2018.  “Little did I know while recording Strawberry Wind that I was pregnant with my second child.”

The magic of those iconic '70s records she mentions is that they're all grounded in solid songwriting and were never dumbed down for the audience. "Those records feel very honest and that was my mission here. I also wanted it to feel magical and remind people of the child inside all of us that is filled with a sense of wonder and pure joy and hope," she says.

Immediately upon first listen, Strawberry Wind sounds like a wonderful new Baylin record. Her trademark emotive retro-pop vocals shine through, her inherent moody musicality is present and her '70s Laurel Canyon/Brill Building writing prowess is front-and-center. After closer listens, one finds that there's more of a playful, carefree and delightfully childlike sensibility on the tracks that overflow with a sense of joy, wonder, and excitement for life that speaks well to children.

Once she started writing, the songs just flowed out of her.

"I think the longest a song took to write was about 40 minutes. It felt so natural and easy; effortless, like this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. The song that made it all complete was the title track -- the lyric ‘this must be the place I've been looking for/And the door is open’ represents the door to my heart opening. It was the moment when I felt like I had really passed through to the other side in a way.”

The 14/15-track album, produced by her longtime collaborator, producer/songwriter/musician Richard Swift (The Shins, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Nightsweats, Foxygen), kicks off with the ethereal "Dream Catcher," which harkens back to such '60s songstresses as Dusty Springfield and Nico and wraps the listener with a cozy, retro blanket of sound, setting the perfect tone for the record. "'Dream Catcher' is about asking for protection, which is something we all seek out," she says.

"Dream Catcher" is also the track that kicks off the accompanying 16-minute short-film, created by award-winning director/animator Steven Mertens (Regina Spektor, Dan Auerbach). It tells the story of a little girl who goes to sleep only to go on a grand adventure in a vivid, cosmic dream world. In the film — which also includes album tracks "Supermoon," "Strawberry Wind," "Same Old Tune" and "I Am a Dreamer" — the dream catcher is an animated cat who guides the little girl through a wonderland of flying fishes, gremlins and other magical creatures, protecting her along the way.

Though the album overall is warm and enchanted, Baylin doesn't shy away from telling it like it is. Weaving through the lyrical themes of dream life, super moons and summertime vibes are some gentle doses of reality. On "I Am a Dreamer," for instance, the singer reveals that life isn't always one big magical mystery tour.

"I don't want to lie to my kids. Life is hard sometimes and you need to find a way to deal with it. This song is about how there will always be things in life you can't control. But, you can dream of a better world and make your own refuge," she says.

With the new songs, Baylin’s cover version of a lesser known Bee Gees song “I Can Bring Love”  extols the virtue of leading with love.   

"Magic of Your Mind" continues the theme of finding happiness within as Baylin sings, "Sometimes life will be low/Sometimes life will be high/That's just the way the river flows/But you will always have/The magic of your mind."

"This is the one song that is a direct message for my daughter. I didn't want to candy-coat what life is. We all have to work on rising above struggles and finding peace within," she explains.

On "Power in Words," Baylin warns how words can sometimes be mightier than the sword. Or, as Baylin sings, "There's power in the words/Be careful what you say/There's power in the words/Comes back someday."

"It relates to what we see in the world today, but it was inspired directly by my daughter saying something a few times that was a bit ugly. I told her you need to be very careful about what you project into the world,” she says.

Elsewhere on the record are songs of inspiration and hope, such as "Sparkle Shoelace." "The sparkle shoelace is a metaphor for that feeling that something so small can improve your mindset and your view of yourself. It's like that old Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields song: ‘pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again’," she says.  

"This is not just another record. I see more beyond just music and a short film with this. It's the perfect creative landscape for me to live in right now and where I want to go with my work," she adds.

Strawberry Wind (a short film), Directed by Steven Mertens 

Trailer: https://youtu.be/k5CePUulpqw?si=V9_Z0xMattulOGXe