If you can get over the intimidating nature of their band name, Matrimony just might become a new favorite of yours.  Joining Irish folk rock sensibilities and North Carolina indi-ness and harmonies, Matrimony shows that true love [and of music] and heartfelt words really can cross oceans.

I have to be honest that I saw this link on a friend’s facebook and I was not keen on clicking through to hear the song.  I didn’t want to be reminded of matrimony.  I didn’t want to look at someone else’s plaid-skirted, tights, and ballet shoe-ed wedding shower pictures.  I didn’t want to listen to another mandolin play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  I didn’t care about a stranger’s journey of love, I just wanted to shut down–more than even the computer.

But then I took a breath and refreshed my heart with humility, hope, and truth.  Perhaps there was more to this music than the next hip thing.  Matrimony, did you know, stems from the Latin mater.  Mother.  This ceremony of leaving and binding is deeply rooted in family, in beginnings, in mothering.  Marriage is about the new two, but matrimony, in the ceremonial sense (as opposed to the sense of state) is transitional.  Like motherhood, it is herding, it is caring, it is speaking, it is promising, it is believing.  Matrimony is a moment heaved upon with purpose, conviction, and all-out fighting [not necessarily dramatically] for the best in someone.

Maybe that’s why Jimmy Brown and Ashlee Hardee Brown (lead singers of the band) felt compelled to live their musical lives in the shadow of such a dusty, onerous term.  Matrimony, marriage, mothering, songwriting–all creating new, all pushing from known to unknown.  In fact, all of these acts and states combine new, old, known, and unknown in every way and degree imaginable every day.  A mother uses her youth to guide her children and her ideals to set them on unknown paths.  Wives and husbands learn from each others’ pasts and even ancient wisdom.  They keep the old that works and strive to make their own, better future history.  Songwriters mix mystery and hope with reality, dreaming of impact and connection.

So matrimony has suddenly become very relevant to me as a teacher, a songwriter, a sister, a learner.  It’s no wonder the term is scary; it’s edges can be quite sharp.  Be attentive, then, to speak and write and promise words that mater [matter].