Grace Woods is a skilled marketing and communications professional with experience developing strategy and managing content for a variety of socially driven organizations. Click here for an extended resume and click here for some writing samples. As a musician, Grace Woods creates wistful piano pop rock with quirky chord progressions, sophisticated lyrics and short upbeat hooks. The songs share stories, confessions and fantasies with strong vocals, syncopated rhythms and lush string arrangements.

It’s about time for a post-CD release, post-move to LA update. It’s raining here in Koreatown. I’ve spent the day writing a new song and sitting in Mak cafe performing open heart surgery on the music Facebook page. Learning how to create my own page tabs and utilize more web measurement tools is also helpful for my job at the non-profit during the day. I really love being a message crafter. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than delivering a striking message in a brief and profound way.

It’s hard being without my husband/drummer here. Finding buddies for hikes, brews and concerts is challenging. Granted, I keep going to opera events and there are only a handful of people my age who LOVE opera as much as I do. Even an opera nay-sayer would have been impressed with hearing Placido Domingo for free yesterday! Perhaps the interweaving string parts of the songs I heard helped me to write a song this morning. I’ll show it to you soon. It has something to do with validating a life that takes many turns. My generation seems to switch and lose jobs, change careers and towns and relationships and alter just about everything constantly. Do we ever get used to that incredible lack of stability?

On a different note, musicians are very easy to come by here. They are the best friends to make (no surprise given my open mic friends from Berkeley). I have found many kindred souls who seek to give more meaning to this life with their melodies. They have helped me discover venues like Genghis Cohen, Room 5, the Hotel Cafe, Left Coast Wine Bar and a couple others that are starting to blur together.

My Koreatown apartment is in the middle of these venues, my job downtown, family in Silverlake- everything. It’s 8 minutes from everywhere I want to be. If I could only read Korean, I’d have an easier chance at choosing stores and restaurants to take a chance on though in this neighborhood. I did taste real ramen for the first time, and it’s really worth traveling to! The apartment is the largest I’ve ever had (a one bedroom is sadly the largest space I’ve ever rented), and it feels so spacious and empty. Just a folding table, three folding chairs and an air mattress to my name in there. Thank life for family! That’s where the folding table and chairs came from.

I heard the majority of Americans believe in angels. I don’t in a Deist sense. I think my family in LA are real angels; the kind that ask to be of help at every turn, the kind who always invite and always give, who love unquestioningly and create a landing place. I want the whole world to have a landing place. I want the whole world to feel as loved as I do when I venture to a new place and know no one. I want everyone to have this gift.

I am preparing my two new songs for a practice this Wednesday at the West Coast Songwriter’s event and then for my show at the Left Coast Wine Bar November 16th at 8:30pm. Click here to go to that Facebook event. I hope to help a couple folks feel more alive. I went to a show there recently and heard Aiyana Cadwell and Samantha Tart. That made me feel more alive. There is still great heat in the sky and still great passion in the world. More to come.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Instead of a kickstarter campaign, all donations to the “Move to LA” band fund, which pays for gas, rental of a rehearsal space in LA, payment for the guest musicians at the release, and promotion costs can be made by clicking here (PayPal or Credit Card). Or here:

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Songs written by Grace Woods, except 4 by Grace Woods and Billy White.
Drums, percussion by Whitney Jacobson.
Electric and acoustic guitar, bass, percussion, glockenspiel, synths by Gawain Mathews.
Backing vocals on Spaceship by Elspeth Golden, Gawain Mathews, Kwame Copeland, Tamarind Free Jones.
Cello by Vicky Erlich.
Viola and violin by Irene Sazer.
Recorded and produced by Gawain Mathews at Bay View Music Studio.
Mastered by Justin Weis at Trakworx Studio.
Photographs by Tamarind Free Jones.
Design by Miguel Jimenez.
Special thanks to Bonnie Hayes, Paul Ruxton, James H Woods, Kathy Kennedy, our friends and family.

On the same day, I head over to Yoshi’s for a songwriters-in-the-round event in the lounge. Rebecca Burke accompanies me on violin, playing the arrangements for the more classically-inspired songs from the new album. Joining me for rotating 20 minute sets are Brad Brooks, famed lead singer of Pop Rocks and acclaimed songwriter, as well as Sonia Rao. Both are amazingly talented singers. Brad will also be accompanied by an accomplished violinist. This will be an intimate, unplugged, 5 buck show with drink and sushi specials. We hope to bring enough friends so that we get invited back to release our 4th CD on the main stage, so please come out and enjoy these digestible 20 minute performances from 8 to 10pm!

Whitney and I have decided on the album title, “Afford to Believe”. It’s also a name of one of the tracks on the album, but it has much greater meaning than what the song implies. I did a photo shoot with Tamarind Free Jones this past weekend in the foggy hills of Martinez and I’m excited to see how the CD artwork turns out. Miguel Jimenez, direct from Seville, Spain, is redesigning the website to match the ambiance of this project. I’ll keep you posted on the release date and huge party!