The Empress represents the mother archetype, urging fertility in creative endeavors, dreams, and imagination. A time of harmony and expansive growth is upon you. You may even discover richer, more loving expression flourishing in your relationships.
Labor Pains
SONG RELEASE STORY
August 8, 2025
It was summer 2019 and I had just started writing again - two songs the month prior and I was ready to draw another card. What would come through this time? I drew The Empress and quickly understood why. A time of abundant creativity was upon me. I was making music! I was creating my dream project! Life was good and I was having great fun with my new songwriting project.
In typical Lorie fashion, I didn't think too hard about the words or music. I allowed myself to become a sort of puppet, playing whatever my hands felt like doing. So many other parts of my life had been so difficult for me, I didn't want to let my art push me too far into the discomfort zone. I needed this song to be a joyful process. I prepared its demo and shared it on my SoundCloud site with the couple friends who had been following my progress.
My friend, Drummer C, said, "WOW, what a song!" exclaiming that he absolutely loved the ending verse, where I used a phrase with a double meaning. "You better get all of your planes and fly," refers to both physical and astral travel.
The song remained in my backlog for about 6 years until I had an idea for my producer. "Why don't you listen to all my demos for the unproduced songs, and see if any stick out to you as one you'd like to take on and produce all the instrumentation by yourself?"
I had posed this question because I was feeling too overwhelmed by my other responsibilities and did not have the time to produce the instrumentation for another song. I wanted to see if having Brian take it on would alleviate me of some stress, but also possibly produce a new sound.
After combing through the demos, Brian chose Mother's Creation / The Empress. The song interested him and he was open to giving my idea a try. It took a couple months for him to get something together. It was beautiful and different than my original arrangement. It was jazzier, with less emphasis on the blocky chord progressions I had crafted. Because of the changes, the way I had sung the verses and choruses needed to change as well. This presented a challenge I wasn't prepared for.
I decided to book some studio time at DNA Music Labs and attempt my parts with Brian acting as sound engineer and producer. Normally I am my own sound engineer, recording the tracks at home. This allows me to take my time and not be under anyone else's timeline. But it also adds pressure - taking on multiple roles of performer and engineer. It can be daunting to switch between the two and get a fantastic performance. So booking studio time was my attempt at just honing in on the performance aspect. I went to the studio on the last day of March and gave it a try. We recorded each part over a dozen times, eventually recording the whole song in one vocal take. None of the attempts were any good. They lacked a sort of specialness and there was a distracting emphasis on some of the words. The melody wasn't jiving with the music. We both knew the song wasn't working, but I was having such a difficult time figuring out how to sing it. We ended up ditching almost all of the tracks recorded at DNA.
Over the next few months, I labored along like an angry expectant mother - willfully forcing my voice's tone and pitch. I tried so many different styles of singing, phrasing, and melodies. I even tried writing new lyrics in a few places. At long last, I had a set of what I called "expressive vocal tracks" ready for Brian to evaluate. These were good enough to work with, and the song finally came together as the summer months got underway.
The card represents the mother archetype and I had my heart set on releasing the track in time for Mother's Day 2025. But the song had other ideas; it wanted an August release date. Perhaps in honor of my sister and her daughter, my niece - both of them have August birthdays. In fact, I was there when my niece was born. What a memorable 20 hours of my life - watching my sister go through her own labor pains. I felt buoyant seeing her newborn baby mere minutes after arriving into the world.
Today, this song is "stepping forward" as it's opening line suggests to the listener. And as it walks, or runs perhaps, into the world of independent music, I'm proud to let it fly into the ethers, into whatever planes of existence it transcends. Though it had a painful birth, I'm eager welcome this one to the collection. Happy Release Day, Mother's Creation / The Empress.