{"id":29866,"date":"2025-08-01T00:11:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=29866"},"modified":"2025-07-31T22:36:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T05:36:54","slug":"gayle-skidmore-hummingbird-in-a-whirlwind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/gayle-skidmore-hummingbird-in-a-whirlwind\/","title":{"rendered":"Gayle Skidmore: Hummingbird in a Whirlwind"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gayle Skidmore. Photo by Anastasya Korol.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gayle Skidmore is a whirlwind. Tall and blonde, like some kind of Norse goddess who ditched the mountaintop for a folk club, she walks into a room and immediately rewrites the energy. She\u2019s gentle, glowing, generous. She is also wildly prolific, unnervingly smart, and intimidatingly good at everything. She plays more than 20 instruments, has written over 2,500 songs, and somehow still finds time to illustrate coloring books and drop Finnish-language EPs for her family in Lapland.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a hummingbird with a piano strapped to its back.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the only way I know how to describe her. Fast moving. Joyful. Built for flight but carrying weight most people wouldn\u2019t dare touch. She makes art because she has to. Because it pours out of her. Because it\u2019s how she breathes.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been in each other\u2019s orbit since 2015 or thereabouts, part of the same San Diego music scene. I\u2019d seen her perform at Lestat\u2019s Open Mic, and the impact was lasting. But over the last two years, since she returned from living abroad, Gayle has become something more to me. A friend. As a career musician myself, inspired by women like Joni Mitchell, who never took the easy route, I can tell you without hesitation that Gayle is the real deal in the same category. She\u2019s the kind of artist I once only dreamed of calling a peer. A whimsical goddess for whom the wind brings inspirations for song and laughter. She means it when she shows up, and she always shows up as her whole self.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what this story is about. The whole self of Gayle Skidmore. The magic, the trauma, the talent, the tenderness. The whirlwind.<\/p>\n

\u201cSongwriting isn\u2019t so much what I do as who I am,\u201d she told me. \u201cWhether or not I am focusing on writing, I hear songs in my head. While sometimes it is voluntary, quite often I\u2019ll simply notice that I am humming something, and I\u2019ll stop to write it down or record a voice note. So, I keep creating because that is how I live my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

It shows.<\/p>\n

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Gayle\u2019s roots go back to childhood tape decks and teasing siblings. \u201cMy sisters only hit record for me and then teased me for years about my little songs,\u201d she says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it was collaborative, sadly, but I did have the desire to record my songs early on.\u201d By middle school, she\u2019d formed a duo with her friend Kathleen. \u201cMy dad had a mic that could record to a tape deck, and we recorded enough of our little collaborations to fill up a tape. I still have one, but our friend rewound it with a crayon instead of a pencil, and I\u2019m pretty sure that ruined it. \u201980s\/\u201990s kids will understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her early performances were classical piano recitals. \u201cI was extremely afraid of performing and terrified of making mistakes,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve had to unlearn a lot of that,\u201d which is wild to think about now because on stage, Gayle is magnetic. Her music might be emotional, even devastating at times, but in person, she\u2019s disarmingly funny. It\u2019s that balance that makes her impossible to look away from.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my songs can be very serious and melancholy, but my personality on stage leans more into my quirky sense of humor,\u201d she says. \u201cMy songs often bring people to tears, but I also really love making people laugh and sharing moments on stage that feel like inside jokes with the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/em> once called her Die Schutzpatronin der Gartenzwerge<\/em>: The Patron Saint of Garden Gnomes. \u201cThis title always reminds me of the film Am\u00e9lie<\/em>, one of my favorites, which I feel combines sincerity, humor, and melancholy in an exquisite fashion,\u201d she says. That checks out. Gayle is Am\u00e9lie with a dulcimer and a trauma history.<\/p>\n

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And yes, trauma plays a role in her songwriting. She doesn\u2019t hide that. About 14 years ago, her boyfriend at the time had a mental health crisis that left her shaken. \u201cI was unprepared to deal with it and ended up suffering with PTSD because of the traumatic way it played out,\u201d she told me. \u201cA few days after he landed in a psychiatric hospital, I left to go on a three-month tour from San Diego to New York and back by myself. Writing songs through that time kept me alive. I did not have many friends who were able to walk through that experience with me, and songwriting became my best friend, confidant, and safe place.\u201d<\/p>\n

One night, on the side of the road just outside Albuquerque, a song called \u201cLittle Bird\u201d came to her. \u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t know how to pray anymore. I was shaken to my core and in incredible pain, as my boyfriend and I had planned to get married. This song became my way to pray and ask for comfort. It\u2019s often my way to pray for others.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking this sounds like therapy, you\u2019re right. But it\u2019s more than that. \u201cI\u2019ve known I wanted to be a singer from the age of eight, when I told my parents that,\u201d Gayle says. \u201cOther moments of realization have come to me over the years, and when I\u2019ve felt discouraged in the music industry, looking back to those moments has kept me going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gayle recently released a 3-song EP iin Finnish. So beautiful!<\/p>\n