Produced by Miranda Stephens and Luke Harper.

All lyrics, songs, vocals, and instrumentation written by Miranda Stephens.

All vocals performed by Miranda Stephens.

Saxophone and clarinet performed by Taylor Stephens.
Piano, guitar, ukulele, accordion, cajon, glockenspiel, pianica, and all other instrumentation performed by Miranda Stephens.

"You and I and Her and Him” chorus:
Isla Stephens, Mary Jane Stephens, Taylor Stephens, Juletta Harren, Lee Harren, Shannon Kojasoy, Tumay Kojasoy, Alyssa Northrop, and Meg Rudolph.

Illustrations by Miranda Stephens.

Recorded, Engineered, Mixed, and Mastered by Luke Harper and Miranda Stephens

in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Special thank you to all the animals listed above and Annie Loch, Morgan Stangl, Diana Hoffman, and Kristin Harper.

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I love a good song cover, and I love a good song mashup. So I thought, why not do both to all ten songs on my album? 'Cause I can. Wink!

“Animalgamation” is the most me thing I’ve ever made. My history, my family, my partner, my children, my friends, my life. It’s all there.

Thank you for being a part of it.

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Hello!

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Unravel Your Bones

track 10.

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Featuring eleven original tracks

Animal Me

track 1.

You and I and Her and Him

track 4.

Little Olive

track 7.

Available on iTunes Here!

My daughters grew up exploring our little neighborhood of Wayzata, Minnesota. They toddled, walked, triked, ran, scootered, and biked those sidewalks until they knew by heart how to get to all the neighborhood landmarks, the most special of which was Joan’s House. At age one my older daughter would ask, “Wan go Joan's House?” so I’d strap on the baby and away we’d go to say hello to our neighbor Joan. She lives on the corner in a house as beautiful as it is old, with gardens sprawling over the sidewalk and onto the boulevard. She decorates for every season: pumpkins and ghosts at Halloween; twinkling, old-fashioned lights at Christmas; and most special to my kids when they were very young: Easter. Every March, Joan decorates her giant lilac tree with colorful eggs, and every year it became a game with the children to see if the eggs were up yet. Their favorite days were when we’d get those big fluffy March snows that would leave little snow plops atop each egg.

Which brings me to “The Egg Tree.” My older daughter took a long time to come out of her shell. But I have Joan to thank for when she finally did. Joan made my daughter feel at home in the greater world outside of our family, and she was always patient with my daughter’s hesitant nature, always willing to wait for an answer, or to not expect one at all. She knew that some of us just need to stand in silence and gaze up at the egg tree before we continue on our way.

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This song is for the moms out there rocking postpartum bodies. We grew human beings inside ourselves, birthed these beings through a process so elemental and painful and blissful that it defies description, and we were left with bodies broken, bodies healed over time, and in every case bodies irreversibly changed by the process. We all want to love our bodies, and for some this is easy. But it’s okay if it’s hard, and it’s okay if it takes a while, and it’s okay if it never quite happens. “Swill” has no deeper meaning than, OMG this is my body now?! And if you think I’m silly for writing a song about that, come take a seat at this bar with my mom friends, and we’ll tell you all about it. All of our stories are true, and many of our stories are just plain funny. Cheers!

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The Egg Tree

track 6.

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Music Videos !

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Laundry Line

track 2.

Watch my music videos

below!

Roll album credits !

An oldie but a goodie, “Animal Me” is the first song I recorded, by layering live recordings of a bunch of different instruments in the studio, one after the other, then vocals. This isn’t really the way people in music do things these days, but hey, I… didn’t know what I was doing!

This song, which started as a sad love song and turned into something silly, taught me an important lesson. Sometimes you need to dance around with some friends in animal pajamas and laugh your head off. Then, you write an album celebrating just this: making music with and about the people you love, without a care for why you’re doing it. And just like that, the album Animal Me was born!

I wrote this song when my grandmother Olivia passed away. She was the beloved matriarch of my mom’s side of the family, with twelve children and 33 grandchildren. She and I had a special connection from when I was very young. Or perhaps it’s simply that she made each of us grand-kids feel so special that there are currently 33 vaguely similar-looking grown adults walking around thinking they were Grandma’s favorite. Whatever the case, her home, her farm, her church, and our family traditions are just as familiar to all of us.

For “Laundry Line” I focused on this imagery. I gathered most of it from her farm in Stearns County, Minnesota, including our family-famous tractor parade, bouja soup-making, and Slovenian sausage-making. Laced through the lives of anyone raised Catholic are rites of passage grounded in the image of a white dress. For Olivia, these were vital passages, so I unearthed footage from my parents’ 1974 wedding, where over 800 people attended a full Catholic Mass followed by a reception on the farm.

Prior to recording this song, my parents and I discovered the fabled and disputed long-lost family accordion collecting dust in the attic. Fifty years since she had last played, my mother still had the muscle memory to play a “Jingle Bells” polka. So I included some accordion in “Laundry Line,” and I smile every time I play, because I know the thought of me struggling with this cumbersome instrument would make Grandma laugh.

Oh la la la

track 9.

You'll get it in the mail!

Includes all Album Artwork,

a fully operable paper doll set,

& free Digital Download

When I was eight years old, I caught a really big Northern pike with my dad on Lake Minnetonka. Fishing was always one of the ways he connected with my three older sisters and me. He taught us how to catch a fish, clean a fish, and cook a fish, and now he's teaching our children. At some point, I wrote a poem about the time I caught that big fish and filed it away. Years later, we discovered the poem, so my dad made copies, framed them, and gave them all to my sisters and me. I thought, maybe one day I'll make that poem into a song.

Now another part of the story. I don’t know why, but my younger daughter loved my dad from the moment they locked eyes, infant to grandpa. They just… connected. And I noticed immediately that it released a happiness in my dad I had never seen before. It took my breath away. I thought about it a lot, and as happens with me when I’m mentally working something out, strange dreams followed. I dreamt, night after night, that my daughter was that big fish. I caught her, filleted her, cooked her, and ate her. And then I created her again, birthed her, and presented her to my father.

I mean, how do you not write a song about that?!

Animalgamation

track 11.

Remember when you were a kid, and you’d meet another kid, and you’d both look at each other and be like, “Let’s play!” and then you would, and everyone was friends, simply because they were kids? Nothing mattered beyond proximal convenience. We all know it gets much more complicated as adults. You meet someone and think, “Maybe they could be my friend?” because you have something random in common, like a job or a hobby or a kid the same age. But not so! You have to dig a little. You have to dig a little to find the true gems who will bring you joy and laughter and a sense of belonging, and you have to polish those gems and keep them in a special place. Because sometimes, you just need a proximal person to spend time with. But other times, you need to reach for that place where you keep those gems. And knowing the difference means everything.

Baby, that’s all I need!

make art!

Feel good!

This here is a love song for my husband, Taylor. We have one of those loves that follows you around all your life. It jumps out at you at first, this thought that pops into your head and stirs around in your belly, when you’ve met this person-- a stranger who seems not a stranger at all, but a part of you. And you realize, Oh! This person is my person and I guess we’ll keep each other. And someday, you’ll look back on all the moments you shared together and wish you could do it all over again.

Enough

track 8.

Swill

track 5.

Singer Songwriter

I’ve always loved making music and art. But for years I rarely sat at a piano, held a drawing pencil, or even sang. I studied science, became a special education teacher, and had kids. It baffles me, and yet this is what I chose to do. At some point, I was in my late 20s bringing my kids to preschool, and I started getting to know some of the moms. One asked me, “Don’t you play guitar? I play accordion and these other two moms can sing. We should play music together.” Sure, I said. I can do that. So we did, us four mother folkers making a racket after the kids had gone to bed. We wrote our own songs, learned new instruments, and held basement and backyard concerts for our friends and family. We had one heck of a good time.

At this point, I had acquired a dozen instruments, a strong sense of my songwriting process, and an ability to arrange instruments and vocals with ease. So I said the thing out loud that finally brought me to the place I’d always wanted to be: in a music studio. “I’m making a music album” became less and less absurd each time I wrote a new song, recorded something in the studio, pulled out my watercolor pencils, or made a video.

So. Make art! It can be terrible and devoid of technique. It can be carefully studied and really special. If you like it, do it. The universe always needs more art, more reflection, more silliness, more openness, more connection.

Go ahead, unravel your bones.

Order the full CD album Here!

My 8-year-old nephew Lucas is one of those people whose heart is always open. He doesn’t just say “Hello” to the people he encounters; he leads with, “Hi, how is your day going so far?” and before you know it he’s found you a new friend. He has a wellspring of good-heartedness that recalibrates what it means to treat each day as important and each person as special.

“You and I and Her and Him” celebrates this and all the other ways Lucas is unique. He gives the kinds of hugs that will turn your day around, he asks real questions and genuinely cares about the answers, he’ll ask you how he can help rather than if he can help, and he has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Each of these things is important, and each of these things is special. He also happens to have an extraordinary mom, my big sister emilee; an incredibly kind, compassionate dad; and the best twin brother he could possibly wish for.

This video has the voices and faces of so many people I hold dear, adding their names to Lucas's community of support. Join us by donating to the Muscular Dystrophy Association at www.mda.org.

Miranda Stephens

This song is about mental illness, which is uniquely difficult to manage in Minnesota where we are cloaked in cold darkness much of the year. It’s hard for everyone experiencing it themselves, and it’s hard for everyone supporting others managing their symptoms. We’re all doing our gosh darn best.

“Enough” is this idea that we have to find the balance, the exact right amount of self-care that is just enough to help maintain happiness. Just enough to keep ourselves out of the dark space where melancholy gobbles us up, without tipping over into the chasm of egotism where loved ones aren’t welcome.

My kind of "Enough" comes in the form of “Yes” people. “Yes” people are up for anything. Up for making an exercise tape? Yes. Up for wearing leotards and latex animal masks? Yes. We can’t breathe, see out of them, or hear each other? No problem; we’ll film in short takes, we’ll have faith, and we’ll yell maniacally. These “Yes” people are my good friends, and they are the precise amount of “Enough” that puts a pep in my step and a smile on my face, even and especially in the darkest months.

Someday

track 3.