Melanie Grace

Tag: acoustic folk singer songwriter

  • September Is Almost Over and I Am Not Ready

    September Is Almost Over and I Am Not Ready

    Can we talk about September for a minute? Because September is almost over and I have complicated feelings about that.

    On one hand, October is coming and October is the fullest expression of everything fall is. The color peaks in October. The best hay rides and pumpkin patches and corn maze days are in October. The fireplaces start in October. The good Starbucks drinks are fully in rotation in October. October is fall at its most October, which is to say fall at its most itself, which is to say the best month of the year by a significant margin. I am genuinely excited for October.

    On the other hand, September. Beautiful, transitional, quietly incredible September. I am not ready to let it go.

    September was the month this year when Give Me Fall came out into the world. That fact alone makes it a significant September for me personally. I have been making music for years and I have released a lot of projects, but this one felt different from the moment I started writing it. It felt like the most complete expression of who I am as an artist and what I love as a human being. Fourteen songs about the season I have been waiting for all year. And September was the month it finally got to exist.

    I wrote about September in a song on the album called September Starts, which opens with this image: a chill in the air that wasn’t there last week. That is September. That is the essence of it. One morning everything is still summer and the next morning there is a chill that wasn’t there before, and something in you recognizes it before you can name it. September is the month the air begins to change.

    September is also the month people seem to come back to themselves. I wrote about this in a blog post earlier this month, the way September feels like a second New Year, the way the return of routine and rhythm and cooler air and the smell of something different gives people a feeling of renewal that January tries to offer and never quite delivers in the same way. I see it in the faces of people I pass in September. Something has settled. Something has arrived. The summer is behind them and they are glad.

    I am glad too. I am so glad. And a little wistful, the way you are always a little wistful about something beautiful that is almost over.

    But October is right there. And I have promised myself I am going to be fully inside it. No rushing toward what comes next, no thinking about the album I am making for winter, which I did mention is coming and is called A Folklore Christmas and is going to be something really special rooted in the old stories and folklore and Celtic tradition of the winter season. I am going to let October be October. I am going to be present to every leaf and every golden hour and every firepit night and every last dinner outside that I do not know is the last one until it is already over.

    That is the whole lesson of this album and of this season. You cannot hold onto it. But you can be awake inside it. You can choose, every single day, to pay attention to the beautiful life that is happening right in front of you.

    Thank you for spending September with me. Thank you for listening to Give Me Fall and for streaming and sharing and commenting and showing up. You make this whole creative life feel like the thing it was always meant to be.

    October tomorrow. Let’s go.

    Find Give Me Fall on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Please follow me so A Folklore Christmas finds you automatically when it releases. Come be part of this community on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. And join my email list here where I share everything first.

    Tell me in the comments: what was your favorite September moment this year? What are you most looking forward to in October? I want to hear all of it.

    See you in October, friends.

    Warmly, Melanie Grace

  • Happy First Day of Fall: It Is Officially Here and I Am Not Calm

    Happy First Day of Fall: It Is Officially Here and I Am Not Calm

    It is here. It is actually here.

    Happy first day of fall, everyone. Happy autumnal equinox. Happy official beginning of the most wonderful season of the year. Happy pumpkin spice everything and flannel jackets and windows cracked at night and early sunsets and hay rides and corn mazes and firepits and the particular golden light that arrives in October like a gift you knew was coming but that still surprises you every single year.

    I have been waiting for this day.

    I know some people feel this way about the first day of spring or the first day of summer, and I understand that intellectually, but I do not understand it personally. For me the year has always been oriented around this moment. The first official day of fall is the day the rest of the calendar has been building toward. Everything gets better from here, and I say that as someone who loves Christmas deeply and is already working on something for the winter season that I think is going to be special. But today is not about that. Today is about this.

    Fall arrived in some ways before the calendar said it could. The air has been shifting for weeks, the mornings getting crisper, the evenings pulling darkness in a little earlier each day, the coffee shops updating their menus, the neighbors starting to put pumpkins on their porches. Fall does not wait for permission. It shows up when it is ready. The equinox just makes it official.

    I released an album on August 31st called Give Me Fall and writing these fifteen songs was one of the most joyful creative experiences I have had in years. Not because it was easy but because it was so true. Every song came from a real feeling about a real moment in the fall season, and singing them back feels like reading something from my own journal except set to music and much better organized. The album opens with a song called Give Me Fall which is basically my annual declaration to the universe that I am ready, I am fully ready, give me all of it.

    Today feels like the right day to say that declaration out loud again. Give me fall. Give me the pumpkins and the hay rides and the corn mazes and the apple cider and the pumpkin spice lattes and the flannel jackets and the firepits and the golden hours and the last dinners outside. Give me the crisp mornings and the early sunsets and the leaves turning every color they have been saving up all year. Give me October light on ordinary things. Give me the slow Sundays and the cozy evenings and the long conversations around a fire that only happen when the weather finally gives everyone permission to stop rushing.

    And give me the people. That is the love thread that runs through every song on this album. Fall is always better with someone. The best version of every fall moment has another person in it. The hay ride is better with your arm around someone. The corn maze is more fun when you are lost together. The firepit is warmer when you are half in someone’s arms under the stars. Give me fall with you. That is the whole album in four words.

    If you have not listened to Give Me Fall yet today is the perfect day to start. Find it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Follow me on all of them so you are the first to know when I release new music, and I will be releasing something new before this year is over that I think is going to be a beautiful gift for the winter season.

    Come celebrate with me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. And join my email list here because that is where I share things first.

    Tell me in the comments how you are spending the first day of fall. I want to know every detail. What did you wear? What did you drink? Where did you go? This is important information and I am taking notes.

    Happy fall, friends. We made it.

    Warmly, Melanie Grace

  • Tomorrow Is the First Day of Fall and I Cannot Contain Myself

    Tomorrow Is the First Day of Fall and I Cannot Contain Myself

    Tomorrow. It is tomorrow.

    I realize that the autumnal equinox is technically an astronomical event and not something that requires a countdown or a vigil or a blog post written the night before in a state of barely contained excitement. I realize that. And yet here we are, because I am a person who has been waiting for fall since approximately the middle of July when it was one hundred degrees outside and I was deeply, personally offended by the weather.

    Tomorrow the calendar makes it official. The air has already been making it official for a few weeks now, if we are being honest, because fall does not wait for the calendar. Fall arrives when it is ready and the calendar catches up eventually. But there is still something about the first official day, the equinox, the moment the earth tilts and the northern hemisphere says okay, we are done with that, that feels like a holiday to me. A personal, deeply held, slightly over-the-top holiday.

    I have been celebrating the arrival of fall my whole life. Not with any particular ritual or tradition, though I think one should probably be developed and I am open to suggestions, but with a feeling. A full chest, all-in, this-is-my-season feeling that I have never been able to talk myself out of or down from. Fall just does something to me that no other season does. It makes me feel most like myself. Most alive. Most creative. Most grateful.

    I wrote a whole album about it. Give Me Fall came out on August 31st and it is my love letter to everything this season is and everything it brings and everyone it is better with. Fifteen songs, from the joyful opener about pumpkins and hay rides and corn mazes to the spiritual closer about learning to let go the way the leaves do. If you have not listened yet, tomorrow, the first day of fall, is the perfect day to press play for the first time.

    But I am also thinking tonight, on the eve of the equinox, about what is coming after fall. Not because I want to rush through fall, I absolutely do not, I want to live in every single October minute, but because I am a maker and I am always working on the next thing while I am loving the current thing. And the next thing I am working on is rooted in winter and tradition and storytelling and the kind of music that feels like candlelight and snow and something ancient and beautiful. I cannot say much more than that yet. But I am saying that much on purpose because I want you excited. You should be excited.

    Get on my email list here and you will hear about it first when I am ready to share.

    For now, tomorrow. First day of fall. I want you to do something intentional with it. Open a window. Make something warm to drink. Put on a flannel. Go outside and actually look at the sky. Take one slow breath of the autumn air and let it do what it does to you.

    And then put on Give Me Fall and let me celebrate the season with you. Find me on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Follow me so every new release finds you automatically. Come hang out on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube where I will absolutely be posting about the first day of fall like it is a major holiday. Because it is.

    Tell me in the comments: how are you celebrating the first day of fall tomorrow? What is your plan? I want the details.

    See you on the other side of the equinox.

    Warmly, Melanie Grace

  • My Favorite Fall Morning Routine

    My Favorite Fall Morning Routine

    I am a summer morning person. I know that is something people do not often admit because summer mornings have a certain reputation for being idyllic, all birdsong and warm golden light and open windows. And they are. They are perfectly nice. But they do not do for me what a fall morning does. A fall morning is a different thing entirely. A fall morning is the reason I wrote an entire album about this season.

    Let me tell you about my favorite kind of morning.

    It starts before I am fully awake, with the window cracked from the night before and the air coming through it at a temperature that makes the blanket feel deliberate and good. That specific experience, the cool air from the window meeting the warmth of the bed, is one of the small sensory pleasures I look forward to all year. I am not being dramatic when I say that this exact moment is worth anticipating from July. The cracked fall window is one of the great simple joys of being alive.

    I get up and the first thing I do is not look at my phone. This is a practice I have been working on for a couple of years and fall makes it easier because there is already something better to look at. The light outside in fall is different from any other season. Lower, more golden, arriving later and already carrying color with it. I try to see it before I see a screen, to let October have the first claim on my attention rather than the internet.

    Then coffee. Always coffee. And in September and October the coffee means something particular because the seasonal menus are back and the whole ritual of fall drinking is underway. I wrote a song about this called First PSL on my new album Give Me Fall, and while I have some dignity and am not exclusively a pumpkin spice person, I will tell you that the first pumpkin spice latte of the season is a genuine event in my life that I take seriously. Sometimes it is a home version with a syrup I bought at the craft store. Sometimes it is the real thing from the drive-through. Either way it is October in a cup and I love it without apology.

    I take my coffee to the porch or the closest window and I spend a few minutes doing nothing. Not productive nothing, not scrolling nothing, just sitting nothing. Watching the leaves. Noticing what has changed overnight. Seeing whether any new colors have arrived since yesterday. Fall moves fast and if you are not watching you will miss the peak and only realize it after the fact, when the trees are already bare and you are standing there thinking wait, when did that happen.

    This is also when I do my best thinking about music. The early fall morning is when songs come to me most naturally. Something about the quiet and the particular quality of the light and the permission the season gives to slow down and feel things. A lot of the songs on Give Me Fall started as early morning thoughts on a porch or beside a window before the day started asking things of me.

    I will also say, because I cannot help myself, that there is something coming later this year that I have been working on during these early mornings that I think you are going to love. A project rooted in the winter season, in tradition and storytelling and the particular magic of the coldest and most beautiful time of year. I am not ready to share all the details yet but I am working on it in the early mornings and it is making me very happy. Join my email list here to be the first to know.

    Tell me in the comments: what does your fall morning routine look like? Are you a slow morning person or a get-going person? And what is the one fall morning thing you look forward to most? I want all of it.

    Give Me Fall is streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Please follow me so every new release finds you. Come hang out on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

    Here is to crisp mornings and slow coffee and the window cracked just enough.

    Warmly, Melanie Grace

  • What Fall Is Teaching Me This Year

    What Fall Is Teaching Me This Year

    Every year fall teaches me something. Not always the same thing and not always something I was ready to learn, but something. The season has a way of doing that. It creates just enough stillness and just enough beauty that the things you have been too busy to notice all summer suddenly have room to surface.

    This year fall is teaching me about presence.

    I know that sounds like something you read on a coffee mug, and I promise I am going somewhere more specific with it than that. But I want to start there because I think presence is one of those words we use so often that it stops meaning anything, and fall has a way of making it mean something again.

    Here is what I notice every October. The light changes. It comes in at a different angle, lower and more golden, and it makes everything look like it is worth looking at. The ordinary things, the kitchen table, the coffee mug, the person across from you, they all look different in October light. More vivid. More worth memorizing. And I find myself doing something in fall that I do not do as naturally in other seasons. I find myself stopping. Just stopping and looking and letting something be beautiful without immediately moving on to the next thing.

    I wrote about this in a song called Golden Hours on my new album Give Me Fall, which is out now everywhere you stream music. The line that I keep coming back to is this one: you can be awake inside them. The golden hours, the beautiful moments, the October evenings around the firepit. You cannot hold onto them and you cannot slow them down, but you can be awake inside them. You can choose to actually be where you are.

    That is what fall is teaching me this year. To be where I am.

    Practically this has looked like a few things. It has looked like putting my phone in another room during dinner more consistently than I have in years. It has looked like taking five extra minutes on the porch in the morning before the day starts asking things of me. It has looked like saying yes to the hay ride even when there were other things I could have been doing, and then sitting on that wagon looking up at the October sky and feeling genuinely glad I went.

    I think this is a faith practice as much as it is a life practice. Paying attention is an act of gratitude. Stopping to actually see something beautiful is a way of saying thank you to the One who made it. And fall, with its extravagant color and its lowering light and its particular quality of air, makes that gratitude easier to access than almost any other season. It is hard to be rushing through October and miss what October is doing. The season insists on being noticed.

    Proverbs talks about wisdom being present at creation, delighting in the inhabited world, rejoicing in the human race. I love that image, wisdom rejoicing. I think fall is a season for rejoicing. For being genuinely, fully glad. Not performing gladness but actually feeling it, which requires stopping long enough to feel it.

    What is fall teaching you this year? I am asking sincerely. I think these are the conversations worth having in September, before the busyness of the holiday season arrives and the pace picks back up and presence becomes harder to choose.

    I am also going to mention quietly that something is coming later this year that I think is going to give a lot of people a reason to stop and feel something. I have been working on a project with a very different feel from Give Me Fall, something that leans into the storytelling and tradition of the winter season. I am not ready to share all of it yet but I am so excited, and I think if you love this time of year and the faith woven through it you are going to love what is coming. Get on my email list here to be the first to hear about it.

    In the meantime, Give Me Fall is out now and waiting for you on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Please follow me so you never miss a new release. Come find me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

    Be where you are today. Fall is worth it.

    Warmly, Melanie Grace