I have been trying to figure out how to write this update, but the honest answer is that life has been a little bit of everything lately.

There has been music.

There has been art.

There has been family, friendship, grief, health anxiety, unexpected roller coasters and an unreasonable number of chocolate chip cookies.

So, basically, life.

The Band Keeps Evolving

Our friend Jonathan Ruiz has stepped away from the band.

Jonathan is an incredible musician, a genuinely good human and a very good friend. He will be very, very missed—not only for what he brought to the music, but for who he was while standing beside us.

This isn’t a dramatic band-breakup story. Sometimes people’s lives change and a chapter simply reaches its ending, even when you are grateful for every page.

We love Jonathan and strongly encourage you to keep supporting him. You can now find him playing bass with The Drew Preston Band. Drew, who was previously our drummer, is the bandleader. It makes me happy to see two people who have been part of our musical family creating something together.

Please go see them, cheer loudly and tell them JESKA sent you.

Meanwhile, we have started working with another bass player named Morgan Ryan, and I’m excited to hear how the music continues to evolve as we learn one another.

Every musician brings more than technical ability into a band. They bring their energy, instincts, history and unique way of hearing a song. That inevitably changes the music.

I think that is part of what keeps a band alive.

This project has evolved many times.

I have evolved many times.

I don’t know exactly what the next version will become yet, but I’m learning that the unknown is not always a warning.

Sometimes it is an invitation.

A Day With My Family—and Surprise Roller Coasters

I also recently got to spend a day at SeaWorld with my family.

I have complicated feelings about animals being kept in captivity, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. But it was still a genuinely wonderful day with people I love—and those days matter to me more than I can explain right now.

Also, apparently SeaWorld has roller coasters.

Who knew?

I certainly did not.

I thought we were going to look at fish, and suddenly I was at an amusement park.

Life has felt heavy in many ways lately, so having a day when I could laugh, be with my family and do something completely outside my normal routine was a gift.

Another Health Scare

I have also been dealing with another chapter in my ongoing healthcare saga.

After tests and a biopsy on my neck, I received the news every five-time cancer survivor desperately wants to hear:

It was not cancer.

The problem appears to be connected to an infection, most likely stemming from the dental issues I have been battling for years.

I am incredibly grateful that it wasn’t cancer. I am also still fighting for some kind of lasting solution to my dental health. It has been painful, exhausting and incredibly expensive, and it has affected far more than my teeth.

As a singer, my mouth and jaw are part of my instrument. As a human, I would also just really like to stop having infections.

I am still working through it, but for now, I am holding tightly to the words no cancer.

Those are very good words.

A Merch Panel and Some Familiar Faces

Yesterday, I got to help ATXM with a merchandise panel at St. Edward’s University.

It was wonderful to see Bev Lambert again. Bev has always been kind to me, kindness always mean a lot.

Eric Booth was also there handling photography and video. Eric is always a great person to be around, and it was good to spend some time with him while helping young creatives learn more about merchandise, branding and the strange little business decisions artists have to make.

I have learned many of those lessons the expensive and chaotic way, so it feels meaningful when I can help someone else avoid at least a few of the potholes.

Losing Dolly—and “Dolly Mama”

Dolly Parton died.

I still hate writing that sentence.

Dolly was one of the people I most wanted to meet in this world. She represented so much of what I admire—not only extraordinary talent, but humor, resilience, generosity, business sense and the ability to remain unmistakably herself.

I had always hoped I might somehow get the chance to stand in front of her and tell her what she meant to me.

Now I will have to carry that gratitude differently.

Shortly after losing her, my painting “Dolly Mama” was hung at Nightshade Art Gallery in Lockhart. It was my first piece accepted into a gallery, and it now hangs alongside artwork created by other amazing female musicians and artists.

The timing feels heartbreaking, strange and meaningful all at once.

I wish Dolly could have seen it.

I hope I managed to capture even a tiny piece of the joy, strength and color she gave to the world.

“Dolly Mama” will be on display at Nightshade Gallery during the Texas Women’s Songwriters Festival this weekend. If you are in Lockhart, I would love for you to stop in and see her.

Peanuts, Pour Paint and Gallery Dreams

Dolly wasn’t my only recent painting adventure.

I also painted an entire collection of Peanuts characters over pour-painted canvases. I used the existing movement and shapes in the paint as part of each piece, allowing the characters to interact with the backgrounds instead of covering them completely.

They are colorful, nostalgic, a little strange and very much mine.

I submitted them to another gallery, and I have very high hopes that at least one of them will be accepted.

LOL.

That “LOL” is doing a lot of emotional work there.

Submitting artwork is vulnerable. You make something with your hands, decide it might actually be good, send it to strangers and wait to discover whether they can see what you see in it.

But I submitted them.

That matters too.

The Festival Is Here

Harmony Sisters is preparing for the second annual Texas Women’s Songwriters Festival in Lockhart, September 18–20.

This festival means so much to me because it represents the kind of music community I want to help build—one where women genuinely show up for one another, share what they know, open doors and make room.

There is no gatekeeping in the world I want to live in.

There is room for all of us.

Harmony Sisters is sponsoring a stage this year, and I cannot wait to see old friends, meet new sisters and spend a weekend surrounded by women brave enough to turn their lives into songs.

And Apparently, I’m Painting Jackets Now

Because preparing for a festival, rebuilding a band and submitting artwork to galleries were clearly not enough projects, I have also been painting jackets.

A whole bunch of them.

I have been combining my artwork with reclaimed clothing to create one-of-a-kind wearable pieces, and I’m bringing them to the festival with very big hopes and dreams of selling them.

There is something especially vulnerable about making art you hope someone will buy.

You pour hours of yourself into something, carry it into public, hang it where everyone can see it and quietly hope someone connects with it enough to say:

“That one feels like me.”

It is exciting.

It is terrifying.

It is also the life of an independent artist.

We write the song.

We paint the jacket.

We build the stage.

We load the car.

Then we show up and hope someone else sees the possibility we saw when we began.

Anxiety Cookies

I have also developed a new coping mechanism.

When I start feeling anxious and don’t know what to do with myself, I make chocolate chip cookies.

Are they perfect?

Absolutely not.

One batch was too puffy. Another was suspiciously runny. I am apparently still negotiating the complicated relationship between melted butter, flour and the temperature of my kitchen.

But they are getting better.

And when my brain is spinning, measuring ingredients and making something warm and sweet gives my hands somewhere to put the nervous energy.

Sometimes healing looks like therapy, medical appointments and difficult conversations.

Sometimes it looks like standing in your kitchen at midnight, staring suspiciously at cookie dough.

I am learning to respect both.

That is where I am right now: somewhere between gratitude and grief, surrounded by drying paint, changing songs, evolving friendships, dental appointments, questionable cookie dough and an unreasonable amount of hope.

If you are coming to Lockhart this weekend, please find the Harmony Sisters stage, visit “Dolly Mama” at Nightshade Gallery and come look at the jackets.

Even if you don’t buy one, I would love for you to see what I have been making.

There is room to miss what was, celebrate what is and remain wildly hopeful about what comes next.

Love,

JESKA