In the fall of 2019, Jamie Stillway moved into a 196 sq. foot cabin on an island in the Puget Sound without internet. From this quiet place, her new album “Lullaby for a Stranger” was born. The instrumental guitar album is inspired by a true story of a journey, one that took place 70 years ago when a pregnant woman made a solo drive from Minnesota to Oregon to deliver her unborn daughter and give her up for adoption. That baby grew up never knowing her mother, and 30 years later gave birth to her own daughter. And as generational trauma is often a circle without completion, that mother then left her own daughter when she was just 6 months old. That child was Jamie Stillway. In Lullaby for a Stranger, Stillway’s most haunting and personal album to date, Jamie writes a letter in sound that chronicles her grandmother’s journey as she imagines it might have been. These are songs of grief, loss, contemplation, and ultimately, beauty. They speak not only to the two women who became her strangers, but also to others who have made the decision to part with a child, and those left behind to grieve in silence. If you have a beating heart, prepare yourself. Lullaby for a Stranger will touch anything you have lost and loved.
