By the time the music began inside Yoga Toes Studio, there wasn’t a spare cushion left on the floor. All the chairs and seats were directed toward the four women gathered in the middle of the long, wood-lined room, and the band cast a spell of calm that swayed through the chamber.
La Libertà was celebrating the release of its debut album, Rising Light, earlier this month at the studio, which has been an important space for the West Marin four-piece. There, the band has shot promotional photographs and recorded a crew of community singers that provided a back-up chorus on the album’s titular track. They returned again to perform the album’s eight songs, written by June McCrory and featuring Beth Carusillo, Debbie Daly and Katy Larkin.
The band’s songs tend to be structured around Ms. McCrory’s cadence and guitar plucking, which become heightened by the supporting sparse instrumentation—gliding cello pulls, minced percussion and some accordion pumps here and there. But the music’s focus is primarily on the blending of vocals, the most natural instrument, which the group uses to guide tales of complicated love or the quest for quietude.
La Libertà, whose members live—or regularly visit—West Marin, traces its roots back to a 2015 event at which Ms. McCrory first played with Ms. Daly. They soon met Ms. Larkin, and the three began to play together. Ms. Carusillo, who had performed once before with Ms. McCrory, joined soon after.
They each work various day jobs; Ms. McCrory is a program assistant at The Mesa Refuge, Ms. Carusillo is a care manager at West Marin Senior Services and Ms. Daly teaches at Yoga Toes. Ms. Larkin is a bit of a nomad, traveling between her home state of Alaska and Berkeley, Colorado and West Marin.
When the time came to record a batch of songs Ms. McCrory had composed, Ms. Larkin proposed they use her housemate’s unused echoic water tower at the top of Mount Vision. At rehearsals, Ms. McCrory—who formerly played with El Radio Fantastique and Kai Xin—noticed a difference in playing music with only women. “There was a flavor to the rehearsals,” she said. “There was definitely a lot more food. Everyone brought tons of food and it was unplanned. We all love being hostesses and taking care of people but none of us had ever been treated to it. Maybe it was something about feeling safe.” (At one point during their release concert, Ms. Daly told the crowd, “We all have a history of playing in bands with a bunch of dudes.”)
The result is some of Ms. McCrory’s most personal songwriting to date. The songs call into question her perception of lost love and reopen wounds left from an abandoning parent. “I made songs about nothing in the past, [using] creative nonfiction or taking ideas from newspapers, but now it’s more important for me to be autobiographical,” she said. “I have been really dedicated to learning from the mistakes that I’ve made. Completing some of these songs took 13 years of mulling over and waiting for the right moment to match the lyrics with the right melody.”
Some of the album’s more poignant lyrics are in the song “Shine or Rain,” in which Ms. McCrory sings: “My daddy left me/Made his mind up when he met me/Chose the open road and the bottle/Now you’ve done the same.”
With their record released into the community that helped create it (La Libertà conducted a successful crowdfunding campaign earlier this year that raised donations for studio and record costs) Ms. McCrory said their compass is angled toward more collaboration and appearances at favorite venues across the county. Meanwhile, the stages of West Marin, where Ms. McCrory can look out and watch as her intimate lyrics connect with the audience, continue to provide encouragement.
“Part of the whole process of being a songwriter in a small town is saying, ‘Here’s my diary.’ After being embarrassed in front of a few people, it’s not bad being in front of a hundred,” she said. “Because what’s revealed is love—and there’s nothing scary about that.”