The Inside Track: Tekla Waterfield + Jeff Fielder "Burden of Fear"
Words By Tekla Waterfield
I wrote this song a while back. It's on the new album my husband Jeff Fielder and I have been releasing singles for leading up to the full album release in January called "Trouble In Time". We made the recording for it this year in our home studio with the initial guitar/vocal track being captured while we were at an artist retreat out at Doe Bay on Orcas Island. I'm incredibly happy with how the song came out, particularly with the bowed bass parts that wound up becoming an entire string section played by Keith Lowe and orchestrated by Jeff. It's actually my favorite song on the entire album. :) This song talks about being a woman in the world and having the kind of fears we as women have to face, like being alone in an unlocked house, walking alone at night, or being afraid to stand up or stand out because as women, we've been taught to be polite, friendly, "to smile more". The line, 'what was she like, before the burden of fear' imagines what it'd be like to not have all of these ingrained gender roles and just be born into a world where we can be ourselves without constraint.