FEATURE: NYC SINGER-SONGWRITER ABBY AHMAD DISCUSSES HER NEW ALBUM ‘TEA WITH SHADOWS’
Musician, songwriter, and actress Abby Ahmad released her new album Tea With Shadows last week. With some tracks reaching back to almost a decade ago, the album came together over the past few years as Ahmad and her partner in music and in life, Mark Marshall balanced teaching, touring, and recording. While the pair have been based in New York City for over ten years, Tea With Shadows was a somewhat nomadic process, as Ahmad returned to her childhood home of rural Pennsylvania and her late grandparents’ home for most of the recording stages. Immersing herself in her past and history – a process she calls “greenhousing” – Ahmad brought back with her the narratives and natural spirit of her surroundings for a collection of experimental folk songs, blending poetry with wordplay and percussive melodies. “I laid down half the album’s tracks surrounded by nature, cultivating ideas like seeds, and giving them room to properly grow”, she shares. “[It] needed time and the right space to germinate and, in turn, asks listeners to spend time — with the lyrics, the sonic textures, and emotions unearthed by the earnest content explored in this diverse range of tracks.”
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