Chicken Little and Coffee Streams

I’ve been feeling all the feelings lately (as usual)- anxiety, excruciating joy, awkwardness, sadness, fear. Opening up the world is almost scarier than the virus for someone with anxiety. I listened to Glennon Doyle’s first podcast episode yesterday (“We Can Do Hard Things” if you want to look it up). She describes to her sister the way that people with anxiety are always thinking about the sky falling, and when the sky fell (pandemic happened) we anxious people were all like: “I told you the sky was gonna fall!” and we were calmer than the rest because we are so used to still showing up in the face of scary things- we do it all day every day.

I HIGHLY recommend that episode if you’ve ever been or loved anyone with anxiety. Her advice for loved ones and for those of us dealing with it ourselves was just so lovely and supportive and I almost cried like 10 times during the episode. THEN her 15 year old daughter wrote a song and they premiered it at the end and I was just floored.

I am SO thankful for people like Glennon who openly talk about their struggles, especially with mental health, because there is this idea out there that it is something to hide, or mine isn’t as bad as that person’s so it’s nothing, that it makes us less than, and that we shouldn’t put a big sign up that says “I have a mental illness” because it’s not who we are. But in most cases, it is kind of a part of who we are and it informs a lot about how we walk through the world.

I never realized how much I needed to share my struggles in order to feel whole and to feel validated. I hope that you can do that as well, if at least to one trustworthy person, and who hopefully is trained to listen in a safe, supportive and constructive way- that is to say it may not be your mom or your best friend. If you’re not ready yet, I hope you can tell yourself, and if you can’t yet then let me tell you: You are not wrong, you are not too much, you are enough and you are wonderful.

I had SUCH a great time playing a couple livestreams this weekend. If you weren’t able to tune in to the Maui Coffee Roasters Livestream, you can watch it back here. Leave me a comment and let me know which song was your favorite!

I was also a part of Friday Night Live Jams (watch here) with some great guys from O‘ahu and Big Island. Such fun! Thanks to Wayne Kim for ‘recruiting’ me!

Now I’m ready for some down time to finish some courses I’m taking and to write more songs.

Sara Jelley gets vulnerable with her 3rd single “Stay Right Here” from her debut album

Sara Jelley is a powerhouse vocalist living on Maui and writing and making new original sublime singer-songwriter music. Sara most famously portrayed Mary Poppins at MauiOnStage in 2016, and has graced the stage at ZepMaui as well as the Hawaii Songwriting Festival. “Stay Right Here”, Sara Jelley’s 3rd single from the debut acoustic album, “Holes” was released on all streaming platforms on December 11, 2020. It is the first single from her debut original full-length album of the same name.

Stream “Stay Right Here” the single by clicking here.

“Stay Right Here” is an acoustic cinematic ballad with a string arrangement performed and composed by the immensely talented Michelle Packman (Hans Zimmer, IMAX, Eminem, Camila Cabello). The song was written as a letter to Sara’s mother who passed away when Sara was just 11 years old. Lyrics such as “I will Stay Right Here, ‘cause it’s the best place I’ve found so far” express a feeling of loss and loneliness, mixed with a hopefulness for a different kind of happiness in the future.

Sara Jelley's debut original full-length album ‘Holes’ was recorded with David Stoller Whitney at The Root Cellar Studio in Kula, Maui. The album and this single were released December 11, 2020. Listeners have said about Sara’ style: “Echoes of Joni Mitchell” and “Exquisite vocal phrasing”. Sara's voice is emotive, powerful and soulful, and invokes a sense of respite and deep connection with unique skillful fingerpicked guitar and intensely flowing full string section accompaniment.

Maui’s Mary Poppins releases her debut original acoustic album: the truthful and dark ‘Holes’

Sara Jelley aptly portrayed Mary Poppins in MauiOnStage's highest-ever grossing musical in 2016, and has expertly vocally executed raucous Led Zeppelin songs at Maui’s biggest arena, the MACC. She is now using her pure voice, nourishing charm and storytelling experience from the theater to entice the listener into the beautifully melancholy and vulnerable world of her songwriting. Listeners have said, “Wait a minute... there’s therapy in here!” about Sara’s honest, vulnerable and relatable lyrics focused on healing through self-acceptance, and compared her sound to Joni Mitchell and Sara Bareilles. Sara's voice is emotive, powerful and soulful, and invokes a sense of respite and deep connection with sublime and unique skillful fingerpicked guitar and ukulele accompaniment.

Jelley has been writing songs since she was 14, and put out her first EP in 2016: ‘Lay Down Easy’, made up of five very personal honest songs. Two of those songs have been given the royal treatment and will be reincarnated on her first full-length release, ‘Holes’, out everywhere on December 11, 2020. Nine other songs written by Jelley in the last decade will fill out this expressive album journey.

Stream “Holes”  by clicking here.

This delicate acoustic guitar folk-pop album centers around the process of trying to fill emotional holes with external things that don't necessarily fit: people, ideas, jobs, etc. These songs begin to address this by going into the black "hole" inside of ourselves instead of around it. We never know how much our lives can change on the other side of a feeling until we sit with it and go through it. ‘Holes’ is Sara Jelley’s first full-length album and it features songs from throughout the craziness of her twenties, and includes a couple from the recent thirties. Jelley says “All of my songs are about transformation in some way- lessons learned, relationships realized and ended, and other people’s stories that turned into mine. The thread throughout the album is staying with my emotions, not resisting or trying to fix them, and getting to the other side instead of running away, no matter how big or small the challenge.”

Sara Jelley's debut original full-length album ‘Holes’ was recorded with David Stoller Whitney at The Root Cellar Studio in Kula, Maui.  The album features Michelle Packman (strings- Hans Zimmer, Eminem, Camila Cabello), Sal Godinez and Marcus Johnson (both play often with Amy Hanaiali’i and John Cruz). It is set to be released December 11, 2020.

Check out Sara Jelley’s EPK here
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Sara Jelley reminds us with humor to focus on our own selves first with her Second Original Single “Can’t Fix Anybody”

Sara Jelley’s second single “Can’t Fix Anybody” will be released on all streaming platforms on Friday, November 20. It is the second single from her debut original full-length album of the same name.

Stream “Can’t Fix Anybody”  by clicking here.

‘Can’t Fix Anybody' is an upbeat folk with a piano/bass arrangement by Maui’s Sal Godinez and Marcus Johnson melted in. As Eric Clapton once wrote, “Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself”, and Sara Jelley attempts to cement that message in her own chorus: “You Can’t Fix Anybody but Yourself”. Sara says she wrote this song when she was “frustrated with a couple obnoxious people and got so caught up with what they were doing, I didn’t realize that I had some of those tendencies too, and that was precisely why they bugged me- I saw myself in them and then I knew- I needed to bring the focus back to what I could be doing better”. She brings it back around in the last chorus, when looking at the other people, “Guess what? They are just you, inside a different mask that day”.

Sara Jelley's debut original full-length album ‘Holes’ was recorded with David Stoller Whitney at The Root Cellar Studio in Kula, Maui. It is set to be released December 11, 2020. Listeners have said, “Wait a minute... there’s therapy in here!” about Sara’s honest, vulnerable and relatable lyrics focused on healing through self-acceptance. Sara's voice is emotive, powerful and soulful, and invokes a sense of respite and deep connection with sublime and unique skillful fingerpicked guitar and ukulele accompaniment.
 
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