New Album Announcement
Write the song you need to hear
When you've done it, tell me how
Hello! It's been a minute!
In the admittedly unlikely event that this badly neglected blog is your only source of information about me and my music, I could understand you thinking that Beth Kinderman & the Player Characters were a thing of the past. I'm pleased to report that this is not the case! Since my website had its last substantial update, I've continued to write songs, and my bandmates and I have continued to perform live (mainly at science fiction conventions). Perhaps most importantly, we've continued our work in the studio, until at last I can say…
My seventh album, Sisyphus: ten songs about hope, will be released on October 25, 2024 at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival. It will also become available on streaming and digital platforms around the same time.
Cover art by Wetdryvac, the same artist who did the paintings for our last album…isn’t it gorgeous?
Sisyphus is currently being mastered and prepared for replication. Once mastering is finished, you'll be able to preorder a digital or CD copy through Bandcamp, and to hear a few preview tracks. Watch this space for a link as soon as the tracks are ready.
Finishing this project was a long and difficult process. No record that I've ever released has been without its challenges, but this one had more than its share. Our initial production meeting to plan out the shape of the album took place in early March 2020, just days before everything shut down for COVID. In the more than four years since then, every member of the band has faced a major life transition or a health crisis - to say nothing of the global pandemic, civil and political unrest, and all the other everyday struggles (big and small) that get in the way of art all too often. There were times when I honestly doubted it would ever be finished. But it's precisely because the world so often continues to frighten and disappoint us, and because hope can be so hard to find, that I couldn't give up on this album. (Though most of its songs were written between 2018 and 2020, I regret to inform you that they don't seem like they're going to stop being relevant anytime soon.)
I like to think that the lyrics of these songs speak for themselves. But it's also fun to provide a little more background on the writing process and thought process "behind the music," so to speak. Beginning on Monday, September 2, check back here for the first of ten posts in which I'll take a deep dive into each of the songs on Sisyphus. I plan to put up a new post each Monday until they’re done. I hope you'll join me!