Balancing Dreams & Motherhood: 2 Singer-Songwriter’s Stories
Photo by Elias Jonassønn on Unsplash
Being an artist and being a mother are both incredibly demanding callings — they both require, in many ways, a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment. Knowing that, it can feel very daunting to try to picture a life that balances the pursuit of a chosen art form with caring for children. When do you focus on which, and to what extent, and for how long?
When I was a recent high school graduate living in New York City, it was tough enough to try to balance pursuing my music career as a singer/songwriter, an on-again-off-again relationship, and attending college, let alone adding kids to the picture. I knew I wanted to be a mom someday, but “someday” was the key word. There seemed to be so much to accomplish and sort out before I would be ready for such a big life change.
During this time, I found out about a couple of female folk singer/songwriters whose stories sparked something in me. As young women in the 1970s, they both wrote and recorded more than a full album’s worth of songs, without any or much public recognition, and then spent the next thirty or so years raising their families in relative obscurity. Amazingly, both were then discovered in the early 2000s and have since become widely celebrated for their musical contributions.
I found their stories so inspiring — their paths let me know that there were options other than what I saw in the mainstream, and I began to pivot my own priorities. Realizing that I didn’t have to spend my twenties and thirties on tour and put off having a family was revolutionary to me.
Although there’s no guarantee of success thirty years down the road, there also isn’t any guarantee of success for the traditional path of the musician, either. What’s important is that your work can and will live on in the way that it’s meant to, if you have your heart and soul in the right place. This helped me to recenter both my artistic pursuits and building my family in their proper spiritual realms.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these singer/songwriters’ stories and their music.
Sibylle Baier
Born in Germany in 1955, Sibylle Baier recorded a collection of songs at home on reel-to-reel tape in the early 1970s. Although her music was featured in a couple of German films, and she herself acted in a Wim Wenders film, she decided to focus on raising her children rather than pursuing a music or acting career.
She was effectively unknown as an artist until 2006, when her son showed her recordings to J Mascis of the band Dinosaur Jr, who coordinated her first public release, the album Colour Green, on Orange Twin Records. Now Sibylle Baier is a much-beloved artist for her clear, candid voice, gently picked guitar, and intricate yet still-life-esque songs.
Here’s her song “Forget About”
Vashti Bunyan
Born in 1945 in England, Vashti Bunyan began recording her songs in the mid-60s and released her first full-length album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1970. Although she made many connections with other artists, the album didn’t sell many copies, and caring for her newborn baby left Bunyan unable to do much promotion. She decided to leave the music industry and spent much of the following thirty years having kids and focusing on her family.
In 2000, her album was re-released by Spinney Records, and she finally found her audience. Musicians like Devandrah Barnhart and Joanna Newsom now cite her work as an influence. This new public interest musically re-invigorated Bunyan, who went on to release two more albums, in 2005 and 2014.
Here’s her iconic song, “Train Song”
In short…
I hope that these two songwriters inspire you to reimagine what it can look like to pursue both art and family, and that their stories remind you that artistic endeavors can truly take all kinds of twists and turns while they blossom.
