My name is Annie Humphrey, and we are by Lake Superior and the city of Duluth.

And there.

We're we're gathering here for a musical event.

I'm a singer, and I'm a lot of other things, but I'm here to be a singer today.

But as far as, like, writing songs, I which to probably in my early 20s, you know, I mean, I was playing music as a child, but, writing songs and then actually, you know, supplementing my income a little bit came along when I was in my early 30s, and I had two little kids by then, and we were just on the road.

Man, it was awesome.

And me and my kids were on welfare and food stamps, and I was playing coffeehouses for like 40 bucks for like two hours and music or for tips.

And one day I said a prayer.

I said, creator, if I if I can make more than my $395 monthly check, I will close my case and I will just go wherever you send me.

Well, like the next month I got a gig at the Ordway for 400 bucks.

So there went my my how to keep my promise.

Like when you got off and there were some hard times.

But you know, when you.

When you jump off something, you got to, like sink or swim.

So I was like, hustling, trying to get gigs.

And shortly after that, this record label call for, we heard some stuff you're working on.

Would you want to come in and let me two records with them?

And then I went on this tour with Jackson Brown and the Indigo Girls, and then, you know, and then I just, I was in the middle of my heyday.

It was cool.

Remain on a home and it holds all that you need.

I took on the way it is in our store is.

Dance them back to life.

We were on the road like 5 or 6 years and one day they said, mom, we want we want regular friends and we want to go to school.

We want to ride a bus.

And, you know, and I thought, well, maybe better owe it to them because they had bounced around in my truck for all those years just really slowly.

The music kind of like just stopped.

And as a kid, you know, the bigger you get, the more work you get to do.

Like my grandson Zane, I tell him, you're getting really big, you know?

The more the bigger you get, the more work you do for grandma.

And so we do Sugarbush together as a family.

We knit together as a family.

We do everything in the woods together in the woods.

Didn't even know there was a pandemic at the Sugarbush.

We have a big, big, huge, ancient maple, silver maple.

And she is when we start the, the season, she is the one we take tobacco juice and the one place to take tobacco.

And she's so big and she gives the sweetest out.

She's beautiful.

And the other beautiful thing is my grandson, the youngest boy.

Every day when we walk into the cabin, we boil on slate.

Out in the bush.

He'll say, good morning, Swedish grandmother.

And then he'll go and take a sip of her sap.

We put one tap on her just so we can.

She makes her offering.

We just want one.

She's big enough to put like five cans on, I'm sure.

And then when we leave for the evening, he'll say outside goodbyes with his grandmother.

I mean, to me, that's honoring Earth, isn't it?

I mean, to the fullest.

I just think that's.

Yeah.

My grandsons again, love being in the woods.

We buried my dad in the fall.

I start making a record, and that's what you kill.

It came out right when Covid hit.

So I did like two shows.

Then Covid hit and I couldn't promote it at all.

So I kind of treat it like it's still new.

There's was a song about, sexual assault and the shame women carry.

It's invisible.

They walk through life carrying shame because all.

You can't tell anyone what happened to you.

You know it was your fault.

And that's that's what the thought is.

And so I wrote a song about.

It's going to be about.

It's kind of a healing song.

So, I'm going to sing this song for healing for anyone out there who's carrying shame all by yourself.

She prayed to the moon.

In all the phases she walked on sunlight.

No day was wasted.

There are undoubtedly a lot of women who are walking around carrying shame because it's invisible, you know?

And a lot of times women, when they've been assaulted, something there's a voice saying it's probably your fault.

And it's not.

It's not.

The song is about the damage and how.

And it's so hurtful.

And if it.

Can't be fixed, I don't know.

But the healing has to happen, right?

So at the end of the song is about she, you know, she waits for healing out in the distance.

She dances.

So she, she dances and she's coming back like she's back now.