“Jaggy Thistle” is the title of Arria's brand new upcoming  album. 

After launching two original albums in just over a year, Arria has been taking things slow with this one as ideas have built, more connections have been made, a broader view of the concepts and the ties between them has formed.

The album contains a song for the following Falkirk based attractions:

The Rosebank Distillery (The Rosebank Roses), McGills Midland Bluebird Buses (Larbert Depot), Wild At Heart (A vintage fashion shop on the Cow Wynd), Behind The Wall (a popular bar/restaurant in Falkirk), Moment In Frame (a photography and arts shop on the Cow Wynd), The Forth & Clyde Canal (and it's narrowboat - The Jaggy Thistle) and last but not least The Lonely Broomstick (Harry Potter themed shop on Falkirk High Street)

ARRIA: GENESIS

(a short bio story on the formation of Arria, Arria Music, and the latest upcoming album that has been brewing since 2020)

It all starts in Camelon (who would have thought) During a global pandemic 
(WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?)
One night I was out walking my cat (I know right) and the name of a street caught my eye
"PROSPECT STREET".
I asked myself - what are my prospects?
I often do this thing where I go for a walk somewhere random (not always with my cat)
and I reflect on the words and concepts that attract my attention. This is why I love exploring new places - it gives me fresh material to work with and new prompts for self reflection.
So here I am at this point. 
I've just moved back to Falkirk after 8 years of being a travelling, gigging musician.
Now we are all called to come "HOME".

Just before lockdown people were getting to know me but I was still the ME I was before Arria, before lockdown, before I had the spiritual visions and guidance that took me to new heights of creativity and depths of healing and consciousness. I had never put any roots down in my hometown. I'd just gone to school, kept my head down, and then endeavoured to get as far away as possible and start a new life. I never really kept in touch with anyone longterm. I just wanted to shoot off into the cosmos.

I came back as a grown woman with a lot of battle scars from one too many fireworks and flying too close to the sun. I would soon become a calmer, more considerate and compassionate person because I'd been through so much in my life over the 10 years away. In some ways it had hardened me and other ways softened. 

I was unashamed of my eccentricities and I was received with quite a lot of enthusiasm and warmth by people of my town. I was a stranger, but I was putting down roots after feeling root-less. More of a feather…

Falkirk was going to make me into a thistle. 

From doing a bit of street perforance and improptu gigs around town, I started getting known for my musicality. People enjoyed my multi-genre approach, changing hair colour and expressive bright make-up (more like war paint). After doing a strangely weepy rendition of “Karma Chameleon” on vocals and classical guitar, people started calling me “The Camelon Chameleon.”

I felt already anxious.

I was putting my music out there, but it wasn't like being in the city where you could hide like a chameleon. The irony was that I was standing out, not blending in. I started to realise this was a lot scarier in a small town where people knew where you lived and where to find you. I started to feel uneasy. I realise now that the time I had during lockdown to reconfigure my place as a musician was crucial for my wellbeing and to allow me to mature and express myself in a way that was healthy for myself and others. My previous music had been an open book of my inner world without the adjustments needed through time and reflection to keep my boundaries and my privacy upheld.

What an interesting co-incidence  that I literally returned home after being an on-the-road wayward musician for so many years right at the time when HOME was where we were all about to be forced to confront full on. I had totally cut off from my roots and one day I called my sister in a state of tearful despair. I was living out in Leven away from evertything and everyone - tuning into nature away from the gigging scene and the toxic people and lifestyles. I looked great. But I was desperately lonely. My sister could hear the extent of my feelings and altough she wasn't always the brightest bulb nor the most empathic - she had her moments - and at that moment she instructed me to come home and live with her. It was the best advice she ever gave me. It was possibly the only advice I ever took from her. 
So there I was… living with my sister and my boyfriend has got me back into playing keys  which is also apt as the piano is a homely instrument. It is not only situated in the home, but it brings me home to myself. 
When I was travelling it was all guitar, which is cooler and easier to play at pub gigs and the like, but it doesn't quite have the depth that piano offers. It also brought me back to musical theory and composition. Since we weren't able to gig during lockdown, it gave me some time and perspective. What was I doing with my musicianship?
Was I wasting it by focusing so much on live gigs when I could be composing and producing music for film, theatre and TV. I was sick of always needing to have a drink just to deal with being in a bar. I longed to do concerts. Sure, I'd done Celtic Connections and festivals, but those were occasional gigs. I wanted to do concerts regularly and play to listening ears. People who were receptive to storytelling both musically and lyrically.
(ADD SONG FROM THIS PERIOD)
I thought to myself
I've got about 5 albums of recorded work but I feel they are all about making the wrong decisions or dealing with darker emotions and complex situations.
I always had a tendency to focus on the dark side of things. I liked to bring them into the light and look for resolutions and resolve. But the listener had to be patient for that revelation to unfold. And most people weren't. They needed something upbeat and enticing.
As I often found myself doing, I started hating everything about my work, my self, my life. And I went into recreation mode. 
Over a period of time, however, I managed to find some compromise with myself and feed myself some encouragement. Okay, I said to myself. 
Let's create some distance between who you are now and who you were before. 
Who are you now? I asked
"I don't know" was my response
Okay. what to you want to do? I then asked.
"I want to connect with the world in a more positive way. I want to be part of the world after so many years of trying to escape. I want to belong. I want to add something good to the world through my gifts."
"I  want to be part of the world, but I'm something of a hermit, I struggle with my inner world and I feel at times estranged, disconnected and often misunderstood..."
Okay. Do you feel estranged and misunderstood right now?
"No. I'm happy. I'm walking with my cat and I'm safe and glad to be in my hometown."
Okay - so write about things from that safe space
(another safe space - the bus)
PROSPECTS?
AS I gaze beyond the sign - 
I see the Rosebank Distillery is under construction. 
I'm so glad that I'm grown up and can do pretty much what I want to do now. Life was hard as a kid.
That's all I'm going to say. I want to put my arms around that child and say "Kid - it gets so much better after it gets so much worse!"
'Cos I'm happy now. I've got a cool boyfriend, I've moved in with my sister who looks after me despite her annoying ways - and I'm slowly trying to repair the relationship between my dad and I.
As the pandemic gets more and more restrictive, I begin taking walks out to Prospect Street and beyond - this time leaving Kitty (Nala-Thalia a.k.a "Tabatha") at home. 
My boyfriend gets me into Scottish Hip Hop and I become fascinated by the genre. How Scottish Hip Hop is so much richer than say American or British Hip Hop. It's less materialistic, more authentic and there's a lot more social commentary. 
Maybe all Hip Hop can be this raw - and it was just that Scottish Hip Hop took me home to my homeland. It's more humorous too. I get particularly absorbed in one rapper - Gasp - who goes from Horrorcore to Glasgow Ned Comedian (but is always too intelligent to really ever be a ned.) I like how he is trying so hard to be this ned character drinking Buckfast, but then he's waxing lyrical in a way that is impressing me more than anyone from the Romantic Era or the Gothic Era or the Beatnik Era. His observations, puns, wordplay amuse me endlessly and I sort of befriend this voice and take it with me on my walks.
I even start rapping too as I walk around Falkirk at night looking for stuff to Upcycle. (I'm a hippie fregan at heart!)
I feel like I'm getting to know Falkirk intimately, in a new light. Even during the day, with there being less people around it's like I can finally breathe!
And now I'm walking round Falkirk and seeing some new developments - like the Lonely Broomstick and Albas Artisan (which is not Whimsic Alley) these really lovely imaginative shops based on Harry Potter, the book I so loved growing up.
Mum brought them home one day after school and we all got started on them. I started on the third one and then worked my way down (typical lack of order for me - but we only had one set of the books) Mum's passed away now and this memory of bonding over Harry Potter, getting up at the crack of sparrows for the postman to deliver the next book. Me and mum in our PJs with tea and digestive biscuits all excited and spending all day with our noses in the new book which would be finished in no time at all!
...I reflect on these positive memories, re-visitting old places and discovering new places. Both old and new beckon me to new understanding, to create new associations and new memories. 
I struggled as a child. I'd been adopted when I was four along with my other siblings and I often struggled to fit in. My mum and dad took us all on at once and it was at times difficult for us all to adjust. My older sister and I especially, were processing our lives before mum and dad had come along and given us a new one. 
My older sister found it easier to fit in because she had already established an identity, a rebellious one at that. Whereas I was one prone to hiding away, quite literally fitting myself into small spaces or getting lost in a book or a fantasy world. 
By contrast,  I would have moments of extraverted wildness but it never went unpunished.
It never really stopped me though. I would always have that dualistic nature that defines the AMBIVERT. both introverted and extraverted. I'm glad for the way that life has made me. It's made me able to write these songs in that private world, away from everyone and everything - and it's also given me the courage to step into the light and play those songs to hundreds of people.

Walking down the High Street one day I see a book in the window of WATERSTONES. It immediately catches my attention and somehow I know I am being called to read it.

It's called “Scabby Queen” by Kirsten Innes.

The story recounts the life of a Folk Musician who is eerily similiar to myself, who becomes a Pop/Folk Legend for the Scottish Indy movement. It's a really sad tale, but there's so much culture and colour it and I can't explain why, but I feel like I am part of this story and it is part of me, despite having very little interest in politics.

I've been living like a hermit monk. When I come out in public, I hide behind costume and wigs, I tuned OUT from the world and into Spiritual and Esoteric teachings and my own musical and magical intuition.

Would you believe me if I told you that the same day I discovered Scabby Queen I also discovered the “Friends Of Yes” studio. On a day that I had been looking for a music studio and producer to produce a CD for me,  also found this studio. Friends Of Yes and Callendar Studios was a multi-events space and there I met Ricky, Andy, Andy and John. John just happened to be my local MP and was using the space to livestream. 

Ricky, Andy and Andy got excited about my music and started producing, helping to film and put on livestreams.

They showed my music to John and John asked me if I would write a song for Scottish Independence.

I didn't see why not. I'd been really moved by the book “Scabby Queen”. Literature had a way of pulling my interests into things. And there was a real sense of rightness about coming to the Friends Of Yes. When I heard people like John and Martyn and people from the labour and green party all talking together it really sparked my interest in a way nothing else happening in the real world did. You find out what the next chapter of yur destiny is by exploring new places,, meeting new people and seeing what draws a response from your heart.

I don't want to make this a story about that one song - but it was a big turning point for me to write a song that was political and directly so. 

But this album is about Falkirk - not politics. This is just a short intro into how Falkirk stirred me and drew things out of me.

Back to PROSPECT STREET.

That over-looked the Rosebank Distillery….

I watch the Rosebank Distillery slowly being transformed and it gives me hope throughout lockdown. That dark delapidated building that reminds me of my stark past. We would drive past it as kids and it always had a spooky quality.
But now here it was, looming like a prospect, suspended in this moment with me as we both evolved and renewed. It became a living metaphor during this period of my life, it progressed alongside me. 
I wrote a song called "Angel's Share." 
I thought about sharing it with the Rosebank.
(Little did I know that I would write a happy uptempo Folk tune many years later, little did I know that my lyrics would be inscribed on a bench on the towpath overlooking the newly renovated distillery. Little did I know that I would outgrow all the misery and struggles I sang about in "Angel's Share". 
I could never imagine that I would take my partner (new partner by this point) and his family around the distillery and try Rosebank Whiskey with at the whiskey tasting with them. 
The beautiful things that were to come... it's as if I could feel the glow of the future like a sun waiting for me... just to keep walking, keep singing until the mists cleared and I could live a new life where I felt safe, loved, upheld and part of the land and the lives of the people around me.