Author: Abby Graham
In a music scene as textured and collaborative as Seattle’s, artists often emerge not just from practice rooms and studios, but from coastlines, mountain trails, and shared creative spaces. Jessie Thoreson — songwriter, performer, and bandleader of Jessie Thoreson & the Crown Fire — is one of those artists whose work feels inseparable from the landscape and community that surround her.
Raised in Seattle and playing music since middle school, Thoreson formed her band in 2019. Since then, they’ve been performing across the region and steadily growing their sound and audience. Now, as they approach the release of their sophomore album, momentum is building
For Thoreson, performing is not the end stage of songwriting, it’s part of understanding the song itself. She explains that songs often reveal their meaning only after being shared with an audience. Each performance reframes the work, showing how listeners interpret and internalize the music differently. That exchange, she says, is part of what makes music powerful.
The single “Tides” began as a songwriting exercise in a 2024 workshop led by Adrianne Lenker through the School of Song. The prompt encouraged those to experiment with alternate tunings and create cyclical drone patterns, paired with a continuous freewrite.
Thoreson wrote the song while riding to Golden Gardens Park, capturing fragments of beach imagery and snippets of conversation around her. What began as abstract freewriting evolved into a meditation on cycles: ecological, emotional, and human. Inspired by the rhythms of the Puget Sound, the song uses tidal motion as metaphor: renewal and decay, endings and beginnings, erosion and rebirth. The cyclical guitar pattern mirrors the lyrical theme, reinforcing the sense of perpetual movement.
Though conceived in early 2024, the track continued to evolve before recording at Bear Creek Studio. Working with producer Timothy Robert Graham and a close-knit creative team. Instead of entering with a fully finalized arrangement, they embraced experimentation and “studio magic,” resulting in a recording that feels looser, more collaborative, and distinctly alive.
Thoreson’s earliest influences came from the folk music playing in his childhood home: Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Tony Furtado, and The Chicks. These artists shaped the folk-rock foundation heard on the band’s 2021 album Round River. Over time, collaboration within the band broadened their sound. Contemporary inspirations now include St. Vincent, Madison Cunningham, Fenne Lily, and Saya Gray.
Beyond the city, her work in wildfire ecology research with the University of Washington has taken Her into the North Cascades, Mount Rainier, the Olympic Peninsula, and the San Juan Islands. Long hikes in these landscapes often spark the first fragments of new songs.
“Tides” represents both a personal and artistic evolution. A willingness to experiment, to collaborate more freely, and to trust in process. It captures the rhythm of water, the passage of time, and the cycles that define both ecosystems and human lives.In an era marked by uncertainty, Thoreson’s work offers something steady: the reminder that change is constant, renewal is possible, and meaning often reveals itself only when shared.
Thoreson is also preparing to share the stage with Arthur James at Cocolea Legato — a performance that celebrates both artists’ new releases and highlights the interconnected nature of Seattle’s music community. For Thoreson, these connections matter as much as the music itself. Seattle’s scene operates like a web: collaborators, venues, and friends intersect in ways that create opportunities and sustain artistic growth.
Abby Graham | Digital Media Director