Some things are just worth waiting for.
Or are they? Spending eight years on a quixotic quest for the perfect five minutes and six seconds of recorded sound has called Jennifer Cutting’s mental health into serious question. Her most ambitious production to date, an all-star recording of her song Forgiveness, was an odyssey of Homeric proportions, starting way back on Christmas Day of 1994, when she first penned the song’s chorus, reaching one peak on December 1, 2002 with the release of the finished recording on Park Records’ Women in Folk, and culminating with the song's inclusion on her own album, OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey, released in 2004. On Women in Folk, her pearl-of-great-price takes its place beside recordings by June Tabor, Jacqui McShee’s Pentangle, Karen Matheson, and Kathryn Tickell. On OCEAN, it shares space with tracks featuring Polly Bolton, Grace Griffith, Gabriel Yacoub, Tony Cuffe, and Peter Knight, among many others.
Forgiveness was also one of the triumphs of SunSign, Jennifer's international production company. The sessions that produced Forgiveness were held in August 1999 at Chipping Norton, one of England’s premiere recording studios. Cutting and two trusty co-workers from SunSign, as well as Grammy-winning guitarist/producer John Jennings (of Mary Chapin Carpenter fame) flew to England from Washington DC for the sessions. Joining them on the British side were First Lady of English Song Maddy Prior (of Steeleye Span fame); in-demand multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley; drummer’s drummer Dave Mattacks; and genre-defying vocalist Polly Bolton. For Jennifer, the Oxfordshire session was the triumphant culmination of almost four years of composing, networking, and planning (just try getting all these busy personages in one room at the same time!)
During her years as a musician and bandleader in The New St. George, Jennifer developed the contacts and experience that allowed her to organize this session. She met Maddy Prior several times during the 1990s, when the two played the same North American folk festivals. John Jennings produced "The Steggie" and contributed production help to several other cuts on The New St. George's 1994 CD High Tea. Prior frequently works with Donockley (most famously a member of Iona), and her management suggested him for the sessions. Jennings had worked with Mattacks, one of England’s greatest drummers, who pioneered British folk-rock drumming with Fairport Convention in the 1960s and 70s, and who has worked more recently with Richard Thompson, Paul McCartney, and XTC.
The only player at this session with whom Jennifer had had no previous connection was Polly Bolton. She simply heard Bolton singing on the second Hokey Pokey charity compilation, All Through the Year, and set about finding her and inviting her to record. Although Bolton's song from this session has not yet been released, Jennifer and Polly have continued to work together, and Polly sings the lead vocal on two key tracks of Jennifer's 2004 CD OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey.
Forgiveness is Cutting's most important and most acclaimed original song to date. In 1996, the great songwriters Hal Ketchum, Tom Paxton, and Steve Seskin awarded the song First Prize at the prestigious Merle Watson Memorial Song Contest. Cutting says, “I think that Forgiveness is the best song I‘m capable of writing - and the task of forgiving is the hardest, but the most important, work we could ever do. We all struggle with it, in our relationships with exes, family members, and former colleagues; and on a larger level, the same struggle goes on between races and religions.”
“It was such an important song to me that I wanted a truly heavenly lineup of musicians to bring it to life,” says Cutting, who wrote, arranged, and produced the power-rock ballad, as well as playing piano and Hammond B-3 organ. “When I wrote the song, I was struggling to make sense of an overwhelming hurt, and I wanted to write a song that sounded the way forgiveness would feel, if I could reach that place. And the greatest thing happened - when I finished writing and recording it, hearing the song really did give me that feeling of sweetness, of release - that our hearts are larger than we think they are. I’m hoping it will help others feel uplifted, too.”
It seems to have done just that. In an important rite of passage for Cutting, the musicians who were her greatest idols now accept her as a peer. Dave Mattacks asked Cutting’s road crew, “Is all her material this good?” John Jennings was visibly moved during playback, calling Forgiveness “big and gorgeous.” Upon receipt of the final mix, an excited Maddy Prior pronounced it “Stunning!”
In addition to Forgiveness, the ensemble recorded Johnny Has Gone Electric, a good-naturedly irreverent jangle-pop jab at folk purism; and One April Morning, an idyllic song from the English tradition clothed in one of Jennifer's moody electric dreamscapes.
Maddy Prior’s label Park Records released Forgiveness on the compilation CD Women in Folk (2002), and Jennifer released it on her own CD OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey (2004).
The other songs have yet to see release, but are planned for release on a future SunSign album.
Between 1994 and 2004, Jennifer’s weird and wonderful journey included:
 | Straining to complete the lyrics in a noisy Washington, D.C. courthouse where she was serving on jury duty; |
 | Recording a home demo on an eight-track half-inch analog tape deck with no automation and mixing with a different person moving each fader; |
 | A long eventful road trip to North Carolina to compete with gospel quartets with big hair and matching outfits in the Songwriting Contest at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, where a simple piano and vocal performance of Forgiveness miraculously took first place; |
 | Three years of juggling schedules trying to get her favourite musicians from both sides of the Atlantic in the same studio at the same time to record the song, after which one day the logistics and a free ticket mysteriously fell into place; |
 | A generous executive producer who came forth with the support to make the trip across the Atlantic to record Forgiveness in her dream studio, which just happened to reduce their rates drastically for the session; |
 | The recording session of a lifetime, which took place in the Cotswolds on the very day of a rare total eclipse of the sun; |
 | A heartbreaking technical snafu which rendered the main tracks recorded in England unusable (until later, when a solution was found); |
 | Three separate painstaking mixing sessions until Forgiveness sounded just right; |
| The chance invitation to a Washington, D.C. dinner party, where Jennifer met the late Billboard Editor-in-Chief Timothy White, who pronounced Forgiveness “exquisite” and ordered an 800-word write-up before the song had even been released; |
 | The long wait until Forgiveness found a home on Park's Women in Folk compilation; |
| The inclusion of Forgiveness on Jennifer's award-winning album OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey. |
What sustained her through this long, arduous journey? A burning determination to hear her vision realized, and an eight-year supply of little waxy chocolate donuts.
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