Laura Brino Talks Love, Trauma, and How Songwriting Saved Her After a Near-Death Birthing Experience
Maryland indie rock artist Laura Brino’s come a long way since the days of open mics on the outskirts of Baltimore and Annapolis, buoyed by a love of alt pop and ‘90s rock while finding her own voice. And what a beautiful voice it is — pretty, airy, and soaring over the whimsical soundscape of “Tether,” the lead off track from her latest album Cactus Moon.
Yet while it’s the lovely, transcendent quality of Brino’s voice that initially draws the listener in, it’s the weight of her lyrics — the raw honesty and poignant articulation of her experiences – that keeps the listener lingering. This is a woman not in her twenties or thirties, but a mother of two whose best work is intertwined with parenthood, love — and coming to terms with trauma. On so many levels, I relate.
Her solo album Cactus Moon explores the many moods of love, motherhood, and healing, from the coffeehouse intimacy of “Five-Alarm Fires” to the emotionally wrought “Floating” — which was inspired by a near-death experience during the birth of her second daughter. We recently caught up with Brino to learn more about the inspiration for this record, motherhood, and how writing music is healing her soul, one song at a time.
Rockmommy: Can you tell me about your background in music?
Laura Brino: I grew up in Arnold, Maryland, near Annapolis, and I started playing piano when I was eight. My sister, who’s four years older than me, was taking piano lessons, and I just was so interested in playing by ear-I would just sit down and kind of put my head down and I eventually taught myself. I learned how to read music, but I hated taking lessons because I just wanted to play what I wanted to play.
Rockmommy: When did you pick up guitar?
Laura Brino: I got my guitar on my 16th birthday on January 7th, and I’ve never even put this together but … and I was sexually assaulted that week. And the way I turned to music for that, to use music to heal, and to process it was so cathartic for me. And it’s just so interesting that I received this instrument really days before that happened. And so, from 16 until I started playing shows, all of the music I was writing was very, very much coming from a place of healing and need — like it was a necessity.
My first show was when I was at MICA. During the first few weeks of my freshman year when 9/11 happened. After that I began playing in a lot of cafes and open mics and community gatherings.
Rockmommy: When did you start releasing music?
Laura Brino: My first album was 2006, my second 2008, my third 2009. And then I got a licensing deal when the next album came out in 2012. At that point it was suggested that I go by a band name instead of my own name, so I came up with Lily and the Pearl. My husband did all the instrumentation for that album. And we were playing a lot-up and down the East Coast. We got married in 2015. And then I got pregnant with my first daughter, who came along in 2016.
Rockmommy: How did motherhood change things?
Laura Brino: For a couple of years, I wasn’t playing because I was creating babies. But I was so invested and just obsessed with mommying so it was okay. But then I headed back into the studio in 2018 while I was pregnant with my second daughter, after I had miscarried in between. And the next few years were a complete blur.
Rocmommy: Can you tell me a bit of how the traumatic experience birthing your daughter inspired your music?
Laura Brino: I had an emergency C section for my first daughter and had a scheduled C section for my second. No one examined my belly prior to the C section; had they, they would have known that she was transverse — she was side to side really high up, which is a difficult delivery.
So when they started the C section, which usually takes a few minutes, they were unable to get her out and then they cut my uterine artery and I bled out very quickly. When my daughter came out, she was unresponsive. I didn’t know any of this because I was losing blood and passing out. Once the baby was out, and I just was laying there, I somehow knew, in my heart — if I close my eyes, I’m not waking up.
In the end, I got a blood transfusion that saved my life and the baby was also okay. But what resulted was terrible PTSD and added trauma of the entire experience by the way I was treated by medical professionals. The doctor kept insisting on asking me about my anxiety — place blaming, instead of checking in with me. Nothing hit me until the next morning when I was trying to get up and walk and I would just black out when I’d try to stand up.
Rockmommy: How did you process those feelings afterwards?
Laura Brino: I was in shock so it really didn’t hit me until I tried getting back to normal life. Shortly after I came home, we lost a loved one to suicide. A lot of things were piling up. And so the first nine months felt like total survival. I couldn’t think of anything but just staying alive and keeping the baby alive.
Rockmommy: Was Covid, and 2020, more triggering for your anxiety, as a mom of young children?
Laura Brino: Yes, because I wanted to keep everyone healthy. But March 2020 still stands out as one of the most beautiful months in my life because we shut down completely, and I felt so safe. I was in this cocoon, just with my girls and my husband. And it felt like we just made art, we cooked and were present. I began homeschooling my kids. As a former teacher and music and arts integration specialist, I was so used to using art and music to teach. So, I was teaching them George Washington Carver and I wrote a song that’s like, “GWC! George Washington Carver, he studies botany!’”
It’s so funny, but that is what got me back. It was writing these jingles. And I had so much fun doing it and it made me feel grounded — instead of looking at C sections online and triggering myself constantly you know?
Rockmommy: The song about the birth trauma is ‘Floating.’ What did you hope to capture by recording it?
Laura Brino: ‘Floating’ captured that year following the birth. It captured sort of the invisibility that you feel post trauma. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m gonna die,’ ‘I feel like my kid is gonna die.’ When I told my therapist, I can’t stop thinking about this, she said, ‘Well, that’s the thing about trauma. It happened to you. Everybody else moves on.’ This song is about that feeling like yeah, I’m walking around and everyone thinks I’m fine, but I basically feel like I’m dying.
When I created it, I pictured it as a soundscape. It was really intense because it became this symbol of my experience, with these sounds — the sounds of the heart monitor, the machines, almost a siren sound. And at the very end, you hear my daughter cry. And that’s from a video from the first day of her life.
Rockmommy: That probably gives it lot more dimension.
Laura Brino: It gives me anxiety listening to it. But that’s part of what is so profound about it. I wanted someone to feel that feeling. My husband played bass on it. And I remember being in the basement and in our studio and he was playing and he was sobbing crying. And he turned around afterwards and he was apologizing. I was like, ‘you don’t even have to apologize for anything.’ I think the song just brought us both back not only to the birth, but the postpartum time.
Rockmommy: What about the rest of the record?
Laura Brino: it’s funny- the song Floating doesn’t get much attention because people are interested in the poppy, catchy things. But really the album is definitely the thread of being a woman and being a mom — not being a 16-year-old woman or a 20-year-old woman. But, being a 40-something year old woman on the other side of a lot of these experiences.
Some of the experiences are my own and some are other people, like other women in my life. The first about getting out of an abusive relationship. Then it goes into th love story with my husband, my anxiety, all of these things that are really the kind of roller coaster of life experiences and resilience as a woman, and particularly as a woman who can carry on the voice of women before us that didn’t get to tell their story.
Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.
