Willajay & J-Dell

I met Willajay and J-Dell through Justin Nunez.  My immediate family lives in Albuquerque and my parents live a ten-minute walk from the Rio Grande.  It’s a bit longer when portaging a canoe, which, like in Season 3 I'd borrowed from my brother's old Scoutmaster, Andy Meyer. 

The path to the water goes from a parking lot next to a park down a concrete arroyo before it opens up into a little oxbow lake on the Rio Grande.  Most of the time it's easy to spot the Tinyboatsession artist because they are carrying an instrument, but since Willajay’s instrument was her voice, she showed up in a stylish multi-colored pants suit and orange glasses that I imagined being worn in some stylish place in LA, or along the Italian Riviera.   They were also the perfect palette of colors that complemented the Rio Grande Bosque (the forest that surrounds the river) and the red canoe that floated in it.  J-Dell, the guitarist, dressed in a cool studio musician vibe. 

Shooting two artists in a canoe is a fun challenge.  Balancing the microphones for artists on either end of the boat and doing a single shot that features both artists on a boat in shallow water is a challenge, especially with a bit of extra wind buffeting the canoe, so I used a bit of line and tied up either end.  Each tinyboatsession has been an experiment and this was the first time I tried to catch two artists on either side of a tinyboat the best I can.

What I loved about Willajay and J-Dell's songs was the eclectic mixture of influences. It would set the stage for more to come, is that it was a different genre than most of the tinyboatsessions thus far, and hearing sounds I didn’t know or expect made me love this project all the more.  Instagram: @willajayy @jdellmusic