Intro for Season 6

I know Stella Martinez through Felix Peralta.  Stella, from the band ‘Gunsafe’ and the enthusiasm she brought to Tinyboatsession in the spring of 2021 was one of the deciding factors that pushed this project from something born out of the pandemic into something beyond that.

Stella has this big clarion voice that fills the Bosque.  She is funny, jokes, and knows a lot about the birds there.   After my first tinyboatsession with her in what would become Season 3 she told me I had to keep going after I made my way back to Seattle from visiting family in Albuquerque. She knew a ton of musicians in her old stomping grounds in Humboldt and she’d love to introduce me. 

The thought had crossed my mind.  All I had was a van and an iPhone, and if I was going to tinyboatsession, not only would I have to find artists, I’d have to find tinyboats along the way.  It would be a lot of moving parts.  Her enthusiasm pushed me over the edge and what happened in the next several weeks back in Seattle changed the trajectory of the project into something with a few dozen artists to almost two hundred.

It was great to have her in Bosque on a much warmer and greener day than the February we had filmed the year before.  She looked like rockabilly meets Little House on the Prairie and I felt lucky that I got to capture her rocking out for a second time.

Intro for Season 3:

I think I met Stella Martinez of Gunsafe through Felix... I think. It seemed like once I tapped into the music scene in Albuquerque, everyone was a step or two away from one another. She came with a low-slung cowboy hat, leather jacket, and bandana, and looked parts outlaw country-western with a hint of punk. She’s got a set of pipes on her that filled the river as she strummed the guitar on the calm backwater ripples reeled out from the canoe. When she was done, she asked if I needed more musicians. I did. She asked if I was going to get music on my way back to Seattle. I was. "Then you have got to stop in Humbolt. I know amazing musicians there. I'd been thinking of collecting songs on my road trip back, but I wasn't sure if now was that time. Stella's enthusiasm sealed the deal. I was going to tinyboatsession all the way from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. Stella started connecting me to other musicians. Paul and Steven in Albuquerque, Turtle, Lyndsey, and Ethan in Northern California...and even Joseph in Port Townsend! -Jordan and Clarabelle