There was a point when the sounds in my head were trapped. I didn’t know how to birth the records I wanted to make. When I was a teenager, I was lucky to get to work with great musicians from the start, but I knew I had a long way to go to be worthy of the heavy talent in the room. I felt like a kid among my heroes and even with the fortuitous circumstance of having major record deals, it wasn’t until my fourth released album that I started to feel at ease and that making a record was a place I could pour myself into and capture what I heard.

We say “youth is wasted on the young” only because we so often wait until something is out of our reach to truly recognize its value. I feel I’ve lived my life in reverse of that. I always knew that the best was yet to come. As soon as I entered into the world of making records independently, I accepted the invitation for the best of me to show up. Even though I’ve had some of the great A&R people in the past (the best of whom knew to leave things alone), given the space that was left open when no one was telling me what to do, how to dress, or giving my releases a narrow time limit to prove their worth on the charts, I could write and record songs as naturally as breathing. I once playfully sang the line, “Nobody knows how all my best work is on the cutting room floor,” and it often was true. My demos would sound messy and imperfect. I’d play all the instruments because I couldn’t wait around for people to show up and I was in my PJ’s anyway, with a half-inch reel-to-reel, or even a multitrack cassette machine. I’d record, mix tracks down in balances committed forever and then go and make a record that would sound nothing like my demos.

Two Different Movies is my tenth album. I couldn’t have made it without the amazing array of talent and musicianship that came together for this record. One only has to read the credits to know that we were blessed with an embarrassment of riches with extraordinary players who could take these songs to their highest level without overthinking it.

The cover is a sketch the great Joni Mitchell drew of me when I was a child, eleven years old, and given to me on the spot, backstage in a locker room at a Carole King, James Taylor and Jo Mama show in Scotland. She signed it on the back in pencil, “Joan Mitchell”. My younger sister Sherry (who got one too) and I were traveling with our mom because it was summer, and even though our mom was another giant in the world of songwriting, she still was “mommy” to us. Joni was one of the most influential and inspired songwriters both personally for me in my teenage years and whose work
influenced a lineage of singer-songwriters who wouldn’t have existed without her.
Her talents seemed to drip from everything she touched – pianos, watercolors, words, melodies, tunings, dulcimers and more. Her records were the soundtrack to my teenage hood, growing up in Laurel Canyon, and I treasured this drawing throughout my life.

When I had the idea to use this sketch as the cover of Two Different Movies, I wanted to do it with Joni’s blessings. I reached out to her people and in no less than a week got a response back, “Joni thinks it’ll make a great record cover.”

Thank you, Joni.

*“If you’re wondering what I came here for, it started a long time ago.”

- Louise Goffin

Jan 26th, 2020
Pacific Palisades

*from the song “It Started A Long Time Ago”