Sometimes, you have opportunities come up that are so strange, you have no choice but to say… “Um, well, sure!”. We got an email a few months ago asking if we would come to Parsonsfield, Maine (where the heck…) to play in a yurt (what the heck…). It all just sounded too cool & weird to be true, so we went with it. Halfway through our 3 hour drive through the middle of nowhere, we finally asked, “Wait. What exactly did we say yes to???”

It was the kind of quiet in Parsonsfield that makes you panic a bit. We drove down a bumpy dirt road and pulled onto the property; mountain bikes and a uniquely-built wooden house were our first views. Our second view was the sweetest black lab, Watson, who gently & excitedly greeted us, following beside our car so closely we were afraid he’d be hit. After parking and sitting in the stillness and silence for a moment, we saw Cliff running down the hill. A mountain-bike enthusiast and outdoor excursion leader, he expressed his excitement that we were there and shared his vision of turning his little yurt into a concert venue. And we set off to do just that.

As night fell, we truly began to realize how loud our little city is back home. I sat stunned in the quiet for at least 30 minutes to let my brain adjust while Eric ran cables around the back of the yurt, setting up for the show. We ran a few sound checks and had dinner with Cliff and his partner, Lynn. Squash, fresh from the garden. Pesto veggies, fresh from the garden. Fish that Cliff caught just the other day. The freshness that you find in Maine is only rivaled by its stillness. The smells, the sweetness of the vegetables, the crunch beneath your feet. If you’ve never been to Maine, it is truly a completely unique and special opportunity to capture serenity in a very pure form.

We played our songs for a small audience, getting to explain in a natural & intimate way about the music. What inspired us to write Every Seed Must Die (a new song that will be on our second album). What we experienced when Eric’s Meme passed away, how Mary-Ann came to be. The love story behind Your Beauty. Our audience talked back, thanking us for a certain tune, or expressing their enjoyment of the harmonies on a particular part. I believe it’s important for musicians to have these kinds of shows every once in awhile. To remember exactly why we do it. It is the personal connection with other human souls that make this vocation so special. A man shared with Eric a horrible story about the passing of his infant son, saying our songs about death really impacted him. Reminded him of bearing a shovel to bury his own child. We talked to Cliff about the wildness of pursuing your passion. Opening a Mountain Bike Excursion company sounds about as tricky as being an independent musician. Crazy and completely faith-based, at times.

We slept in the serene cabin, smelling only wood and Sweet Annie. Hearing only crickets and our own breath. Enjoyed a breakfast of homemade granola and apple butter. (Again, if you’ve never visited Maine – what are you waiting for?) Sat in the company of two young couples who were just staying and learning how to mountain bike around Cliff’s trails for the weekend. One came all the way from Minnesota, the other just from a few towns over in Maine, enjoying their first weekend away without their 11-month old baby.

There are moments in this life where we ask ourselves, What the heck are we doing? Where are we going? Why are we driving to Maine on a whim to play in a yurt? What’s happening? It is quite funny to reflect on those moments in light of the magic and joy that come from taking risks and faithfully following the call that we find on our hearts. To let our music lead us to unknown corners is sometimes a daunting and odd task. Mostly, however, it brings us to intensely beautiful connection. Connection to quiet, to ourselves, to each other, to strangers walking journeys we get to visit for a brief moment. To an intimacy and communion with folks whose paths we never would have crossed otherwise, but with whom we get to walk hand-in-hand for just a step or two. What a wonderfully magical thing.

Quiet Hands || Live at The Red House

Surviving winter in Worcester is no easy task. We live at the base of snow systems coming down from New Hampshire’s White Mountains. We get Canadian winds through March and April, and we are careful not to hang up the heavy winter coats until May 1st. The public school system is revving up for another long year, having to makeup the 5 snow days we took, keeping kids in school until June 23rd. The trees are just starting to bud, and our dense city is beginning to dust itself off and slowly open its doors again to the possibility of warmth and new life. The sounds of reggaeton seep through our glass doors, and the Farmer’s Almanac says we can almost put our spring seeds into the ground. It’s a good feeling. A slow, but wildly welcome, return.

A couple of years ago, on a perfect spring evening, we invited a few of our closest friends to our humbly tucked away Red House to sing some songs on the upstairs porch. The kid living on the 3rd floor had just been evicted for running some kind of small-scale “business venture” to support his pizza addiction and surely gain popularity at the local State College. The doors & windows were shattered, but we carefully treaded up to the empty apartment’s porch during the golden hour on a beautiful spring day to film a live video of our song “Quiet Hands”.

Even though it was filmed a while ago, today feels like a perfect opportunity to finally release this video. The beginnings of spring right outside our door today remind us of the magic of making music with our friends as the sun set on our warming city that night.

We hope you enjoy this little taste of our favorite place. Made whole with our favorite people, of course.

Featuring:
Austin Troy – Banjo
Ben Trussell (Comrades) – Percussion
Peter L’Esperance – Trumpet
Gleifer Coghetto – Bass
Ash & Eric L’Esperance – vox & guitar
Filmed by:
John Rupeck
Edited by:
Ben Trussell

The act and process of song writing is as unique and diverse as the number of song writers who are out there. The more we chat with other musicians and song writers, the more we have come to understand that there is not a clear-cut formula to crafting a new tune. Many of our listeners are curious to hear about our writing process as a duo and a married couple, and some are surprised to learn that Ash and I do not co-write our songs, but craft them separately and then come together to flesh out the parts we each will play for the new tune.

I wrote “Arise” several years before I met Ash at a time in my life where my heart was longing for someone to call “my darling.” I was blessed (or cursed) with a romantic heart from a young age, and never doubted that I would someday fall in love and get married. I recall sitting down to write the song almost as a prayer, knowing that I did not have the love I would sing about, and wondering if the day would come where I could look at my partner and gratefully express that “my life is full with you.” Much of the song’s imagery is inspired by passages from a book of the Bible called the Song of Solomon. In these sensual passages of scripture, the author does not hold back in expressing his heart and passion for his new found lover.

While the song had been written for some time, I chose only share it with my close friends. It wasn’t until Ash and I were engaged, started dreaming up The Promise is Hope, and recording Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going that I felt ready to make it public. As we composed a record documenting our experience of falling in love, and transitioning into a new life together, it became clear that “Arise” now had a place to be showcased.

The happy couple & wedding party after the ceremony. 

The idea for the music video developed after my brother Peter and his soon-to-be wife Cassie asked us to stand with them as part of their wedding party, and to sing “Arise” as the processional and recessional for their ceremony. We excitedly devised a plan to capture the day’s events on camera, and combine it all into a music video for the song. Ash and I each carried a camera around that day, and with the help of our good friend Piper, were able to compile a bunch of footage for the video.

We are excited to share the final product with you below! We dedicate the video to Pete and Cassie, who we love a whole bunch. We hope you enjoy, and we thank you, our listeners, for all of your love and support.

It’s really rare that we actually get to go to concerts. Maybe twice a year, we’ll buy a ticket to see our favorite big act in Boston. But a few weeks ago, a friend (our official TPIH cat-sitter, Cheryl) texted us to ask if we wanted to spontaneously go to a secret show somewhere in the city. We’d never heard of Sofar, but pretty instantly connected with the mission, one that has driven us, too: to curate beautiful shows, featuring the highest caliber musicians, in intimate and lovely spots in Worcester. That night in December, in the old Printer’s Building downtown, we got to meet and hear one of the best musicians we’ve seen in a while; Max Garcia Conover. His music was both rowdy and vulnerable. Fun, interesting and raw. It was refreshing and honest, and not lacking immense talent. We instantly knew we had to bring him to Nine Dot.

Max Garcia Conover. Photo: Shaw Photography

As many of you know, we’ve been curating intimate listening-room shows in a small art gallery in Main South, Worcester for about a year. We’ve had some incredible musicians play with us in this intimate setting, and we are proud to welcome Max this Sunday, March 12 (6pm).

There are only a small number of tickets available. You can find them here. Buy them online to save a few bucks and make sure you have a reserved seat.

Max hails from Portland, Maine, and we have a good friend who’s been dying to throw a house show in her grandparents’ old mansion up there. So, if you’re in the Portland area, you can also hear us play with Max on Saturday, March 11. We’re keeping the address private, so if you’d like to come, shoot us an email at thepromiseishope@gmail.com.

We are really excited to officially say that we are writing new material for a second album that we intend to record in October of this year! Our single, “Mary-Ann,” is a taste of what is to come as Ash and I continue to write songs that are meaningful to us and will hopefully continue resonate with you, our friends and supporters! (click here for a link to purchase the song)

Through a really special series of events and connections, we had the opportunity late last summer to open for the band, Brothers McClurg. The show was memorable for a number of reasons, including the kindred nature and chemistry we experienced with the three guys who comprise Brothers. We sat in on each other’s songs and played as if we had been performing together for a number of years. After a wonderful show, Chris and Anthony Hoisington, found members of Brothers, extended an invitation to Ash and I to take a trip to Batavia, NY and spend a day at Old Bear Studio with them. We would record one of our new songs, and they would shoot an episode for their mini-documentary series, Harmonized Sounds. We had just begun writing for our second album, and had been discussing and searching for the right people to work with for the recording process. The offer sounded good to us and we felt compelled to give it a try.

Our experience at Old Bear was really positive. The guys had set up a really comfortable and inspiring space in which to work complete with all of the gear we would need to make a wonderfully arranged song. Their team was knowledgeable of their gear and we got to work with some other top-notch musicians.

Though we have several new songs, we chose to record “Mary-Ann” for our Harmonized Sounds episode. The Old Bear team assisted us with rearranging the song to a point where we all felt it would be at its best. We spent 13 hours together that day working diligently, experimenting with various instruments, and laughing a lot as we sought to create an interesting, subtle, and sensitive sonic tapestry over which we could lay our vocals. Despite the regular intake of coffee, Ash, myself, and the team at Old Bear were exhausted, but in the way that feels so right – like you’ve just worked your tail off at something you were made to be doing. We had been searching for the right studio and producer to capture our next album, and working on “Mary-Ann” gave us the assurance that Old Bear Studio would be the right team to work with!

Our time recording with the team at Old Bear Studio has been captured and tastefully presented in the following 17-minute mini-documentary! We hope you enjoy hearing more of the story behind “Mary-Ann” and getting a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to record a song. We suggest you grab a snack and your favorite beverage and enjoy!

If you have not yet heard, we have begun to announce at our shows that The Promise is Hope is planning to record our second album this upcoming fall. We have been thinking about it for some time now (almost a year), but have felt a sense of uncertainty in how to approach a new project. Our first album came together so organically from writing on through to recording and printing. A good friend of ours’ blessed us hugely and took the cost of the recording project upon himself. At the time we would not have been able to record, but his generosity made our hope a reality!

Looking forward, we have been researching studios, and discussing the benefits of moving forward with one of these options, but we did not sense in our hearts that the right opportunity had yet presented itself. Then through a remarkable series of moving pieces including Eric’s dad, a complete stranger (now good friend), and a sincerely supportive band of quality individuals, we have found ourselves making plans to record in a studio we had previously never heard of in a part of the country that we had previously never visited! We will have more to say about that soon (along with a new single recorded at this mystery studio so just hang tight).

We mention all of this because we have been working on some new song material. For those of you who are closest to us it will not come as a surprise that our new songs are giving words and expression to a season of darkness that we have been passing through. This season has been marked by loss on many levels, including the passing of family members, suicide, the dissolution of a tight knit community, and raw awareness of hatred, bigotry, and oppression in our national climate. Our newest song is called “A River”, and was penned as a reflection of being right smack in the midst of the hardest time on the darkest night. It is full of weary questions and doubt, wondering if there is any strength and compassion from without that can carry us through to the other side. The petitioner is met with a response from a heart of love who has also been through the dark night of the soul. There is a promise that this love will never fail, and that the night, while so very dark, must be followed by a new sunrise.

We have so many questions, doubts, and fears, and I know that we are not alone in that. If you are in that season right now, we are hear to say that you are not alone. We do not know when the daylight will break, but we do our best in the darkness to remind ourselves that light will come, that hope will persist, and that force at work in center of everything we see is a force of love and goodness that is making everything new.

Inside the Sprinkler Factory Gallery & Artist Space, Worcester, MA

So what does this all have to do with a tiny desk? Inspired by their Tiny Desk concert series, each year NPR solicits emerging and “undiscovered” artists to submit songs performed by a desk. We performed A River at a little desk in a Sprinkler Factory turned art gallery. We owe a big thanks to our friend, Mike Palumbo, for lending his skill to capture the moment. You can see the video below.