"I do an awful lot of throwing spaghetti at yonder wall to see if anything sticks."

In Profile: Jes Raymond

In Profile is a monthly segment of We’re All Getting Older, where we meet real people navigating life with intention, delight, and just enough mess to keep things interesting.

Jes Raymond is a singer, artist, and writer who lives in her great-grandmother's house in Wilder, VT. She is married to a handsome fiddler and, despite her reluctance to embrace organized sports, has become a certified soccer mom to one third-grade goalie in training.

Jes tells me she doesn’t always remember to brush her hair, so she cuts it really short and calls it shaggy hip. She thinks the only way to stay sane in northern winters is to play in the snow as much as possible, and loves to start her day with a run down her local ski hill before the to-do list takes over. She also loves to dance and does so as often as possible despite the mortification it occasionally causes the aforementioned third-grade goalie in training.

IN WHICH GENERATION DO YOU BELONG?

Gen X: 1965 - 1980

DO YOU WORK? IF SO, WHAT DO YOU DO?

I am a working artist, which means I do too many different things for work. Sometimes it's gigs — jobs where I exchange creative services for money, like playing fiddle tunes at the cocktail hour of one of Vermont's many rustic chic barn weddings. Sometimes my money comes from my own art, presenting my own songs in a concert or selling copies of my prints or collages. Sometimes it's kind of a combination of the two — like writing a theme song for the pilot of a children's show about a kid named Blue Ocean Bob.

I work on all sorts of projects, but they do have some unifying themes. I am adamant about the benefits of daily creative practice. I believe wholeheartedly in the necessity of art and music in our day-to-day lives and the transformative and healing power of live music and storytelling. That's what I write about in my newsletter, A Wilder Wonder.

WHAT WOULD THE 25-YEAR-OLD VERSION OF YOU THINK OF YOU TODAY? HOW ARE YOU MOST DIFFERENT FROM HER?

When I look at 25-year-old me, she is scared that she won't be able to pull it off. Now at 48, I have learned that I can trust myself to figure things out. I would tell her she doesn't have to know the whole plan, just the place she wants to go and the first step. It's taken me a really long time to get to that place.

WHAT HAS NOT CHANGED ABOUT YOU?

I'm still in love with music. Straight out of high school, I went to music school on a scholarship to study voice. For a whole bunch of reasons that are probably a series of essays I should write, I lost my scholarship and dropped out after two years. I moved into a cabin in the woods, and until I was 25, I did whatever I could to just have as much of my time as possible to be in the mountains, write songs, and practice my guitar.

At 25, I went back to finish college at The Evergreen State College, the only public liberal arts college in the country. I was studying music, natural history, psychology, and mythology. I was in love with learning, working for the school's Outdoor Program, and playing in an all-girl bluegrass punk band.

When I graduated from college, I was offered the job as the climbing ranger on Mt Olympus in the Olympic National Park, or the chance to go on tour in a minivan with my all-girl bluegrass punk band. I remember a drawing I did in my journal at the time, a very cartoonish illustration of myself on stage with a whole crowd of people dancing, and I chose the tour. I'd still make that choice. I'm still the most in love with music; it's the strongest medicine I've got to share.

GOOD OR BAD, WHAT ABOUT YOUR STAGE IN LIFE HAS SURPRISED YOU SO FAR?

I'm surprised at how much I have grown to love writing. Writing songs in my twenties and thirties was more of an oral and aural thing for me. I mean, I want to have something real to say, and I always wrote in journals and things like that to figure that part out, but more of the process was about finding the words that sounded right together, and people didn't read my lyrics; they listened to them.

I rarely tried to create anything that was meant to be read. In fact, I'm a really slow writer with horrible spelling and grammar, so I actively resisted any task that included writing. I was notoriously bad at responding to emails and always last-minute with papers. I once convinced a professor to let me do a series of woodcut prints as my final project instead of a paper.

The last couple of years have really changed writing for me. I started writing on Substack just because it was a free newsletter platform, and Mailchimp was charging me every month for my subscriber list that I built up touring for 10 years. I switched it all over for that reason alone, just when notes started to come out, and I discovered some writers that I really enjoyed reading who were teaching craft. I started to look at my newsletter as a creative practice instead of a chore I had to do, and it changed everything. I found out I actually love working with essay forms. I love how much more deeply I have been able to express myself, how much deeper my reading has gotten as I practice writing for writing’s sake, and how it has helped me connect in a real way with my audience off stage.

WHAT’S ONE THING YOU THOUGHT FOR SURE YOU’D HAVE FIGURED OUT BY NOW, BUT HAVEN’T YET?

I definitely did not think I would still be winging it quite as much as I still am. Between moving across the country before my son was born and all the changes in the music industry, I do an awful lot of throwing spaghetti at yonder wall to see if anything sticks.

WHAT COMES TO MIND WHEN YOU HEAR THE PHRASE ‘FULFILLING LIFE’? HOW HAS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THIS CHANGED AS YOU GOT OLDER?

Good food, good movement, and good relationships. Plus, I want to be of service to my community with a vibrant, creative life. I want to stay connected to the natural world.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT THESE DAYS?

I've got a bunch of projects that I am excited about. My husband and I have finally started recording our duet project, BEECHARMER, and I'm hoping to have an EP out by spring. This is the second year I have made “A Wilder Wonder” postcard calendar. I made cut paper collages this year from illustrations that I made for my newsletter, and I'm stoked with how the calendar came out. I have also somehow gotten myself to develop a daily yoga practice, and that is really exciting me. Partly because I can't believe how consistent I have been, and partly because I can finally do the crow pose, which I surely could not do at 25.

IF YOU COULD GIVE SOME WORDS OF WISDOM TO SOMEONE 20 YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU, WHAT MIGHT IT BE?

You are worth what you want, so decide to be brave. The world needs kind people who are prepared to do things that scare them, and to get what you want, you will have to do things that scare you.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE SINGER/BAND GROWING UP?

This question is so unfair! Pick only 1?! Ahh! Okay, I loved The Cranberries. But also Dolly Parton and the soundtrack to Les Mis. Beck. And Pearl Jam. Vince Gill. Joni Mitchell. Ani DiFranco. Whitney Houston. The Shirelles..... Clearly, I can't do it. Before college, I was steeped in a brew of folk-singer songwriters, 90's pop and alt rock, Broadway musicals, my Dad's bluegrass and classic country, and my mom's order from TV album sets with like a hundred songs of Female Stars of the 50's.

LB: I’ve heard from others before that this “one-favorite-singer-band” question was tricky. But clearly, it’s torture for someone like Jes!

Lou Blaser writes We’re All Getting Older, a weekly essay series about change, meaning, and the lives we’re unfolding. She also maintains The Filtered, a digital library for reading, learning, and thinking better.