Hello! I am Mama Gina, Fearless Bard and Folk Artist. I travel with an acoustic 12 string guitar, djembe and frame drum, sharing my Muse and all original music at festivals, book stores and shops, and living rooms all over the US. Recently, a friend commented, "Oh, you don't really write love songs, do you?" I took that as a challenge, and looked and listened for love stories that needed to be told. My new CD "I Remember Love" has 10 stripped down, raw, acoustic songs about love - and it's all love. I wrote "Binding Wood" as a Handfasting song for a lovely couple handfasted this past Spring. "I Remember Love", the title song on the CD, is about my son and me, and our soul contract. "Collapse" is a sweet ballad about love that is bigger than time and space, and I still get rather choked up when I sing it. "The Empress Down Rattlesnake Road" is the willful, bluesy tale of my becoming an orphan and my love affair with Kali and she guides me through the process. "The Eagle and The Owl" is a percussion and voice piece that you will want to play and sing along with. "Between" - ah, this is about loving yourself. The chant "Worthy" is such an earworm that my studio engineer said, "I went home singing it. It stayed in my head." There is an incredibly amazing ficus tree in Bonita Springs in south Florida that my friends call Grandmother. I tell the story that she told me in "Grandmother Tree". "BeBop Betty" is a jazzy/bluesy little number about a sprite that "do what she love, and love what she do." Finally, "Mamaji's Travelin' Hugs Workshop Show" is inspired by a few hug workshops I have attended at festivals, and I know you'll love this stripped down, funky groove. This Bardic Life If you had asked me three years ago what this Bardic life would be, I would have told you that I would be traveling and singing my songs, telling my stories. While that is part of it, I have learned so much in the last few years. When I began traveling, I was reluctant to ask for help, to ask for donations, to ask for tips, to ask for money to play actual gigs. I was afraid to ask to stay in people's homes, to ask if I could sleep on their couches and share meals. This fearless Bard is not really fearless, but less afraid than I was about so many things. I know now that this is a most vulnerable path - that asking for money to travel and play a gig is a fair exchange of energy, and that most folks really appreciate and value the intimacy of my music and performance. I have learned that I am not here to simply share MY stories ... I am here to LISTEN ... to listen deeply ... to hear YOUR stories and share them with the world. I have learned that folks are genuinely awesome and perfectly willing to let some stranger with a guitar enter their homes, sleep on their couch, and break bread (and sometimes share a bottle of mead) together, and that those moments provide great opportunities to connect on a very deep level. I do what I love, and I love what I do. Do what YOU love, and love what YOU do. That is the message that I hope to convey with this new CD. I don't do any of this alone. Let's make this happen together.