cover photo by Nancy Anderson Cordell
“I saved all your letters to remind me / that our lives are not the same / you always told me you can tell a lot about a person / by the way they sign their name / but I don’t recognize it anymore”
the story
Nationally recognized singer/songwriter Juliet Lloyd announces the release of Letters, a new single available on all streaming platforms on August 23, 2023. Living at the intersection of roots, country, and contemporary folk, Letters is a poignant tribute to a mother whose distinctive handwriting has been altered by time and illness.
“I saved all your letters to remind me / that our lives are not the same / you always told me you can tell a lot about a person / by the way they sign their name / but I don’t recognize it anymore” Lloyd sings in the chorus.
“The inspiration behind Letters was a thank you note that I got in the mail from my mom earlier this year,” Lloyd says. “I noticed that her handwriting—always so recognizable for its bold, sweeping style—looks different now. It got me thinking about what’s constant in our lives, and what changes as we age, and how we reconcile the two.”
The single is Lloyd’s first new music since her acclaimed EP High Road, released in July 2022. The album, hailed as a “top-tier singer/songwriter album” by reviewers, featured songs that have earned Maryland-based Lloyd recognition in multiple national singer/songwriter contests and festivals this year, including the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival (CT), the Rocky Mountain Songwriter Showcase (MT), and the Al Johnson Performing Songwriter Contest (TX), in addition to top honors in the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest and Bernard/Ebb Songwriting Award in 2022.
“Letters also marks somewhat of a turning point in my songwriting,” Lloyd says, “in that it’s ushered in a new batch of songs that are intensely personal. I’ll be releasing them over the next eight months.”
The poignancy with which Lloyd explores the theme of aging parents through the metaphor of someone’s signature shines through in the lyrics: “always the model of grace / as constant as the way she underlines that name we share / but time has a way of altering the steadiest hand.”
Letters was produced and recorded by Dave Mallen at Innovation Station Music in Annandale, Virginia, and features Steve Quintilian on acoustic and electric guitars, Mallen on bass and organ, and Andy Hamburger on drums. The track was mastered by Dave Collins in Los Angeles. The production and recording was supported in part by Lloyd’s Grand Prize in the Bernard/Ebb Songwriting Award in 2022, which was presented by Bethesda Urban Partnership and included studio time as part of the award.
Lloyd is a fixture in the DC/MD/VA music community and—increasingly—beyond as she has played a number of regional festivals and listening rooms around the northeast. She has performed 175+ shows a year since the pandemic, both solo and with her band, and has released three studio albums over the course of her 20-year career as a writer and artist, garnering TV placements on MTV and VH1 and radio airplay on more than 170 stations across the US.