After taking a decade-long break from music to raise her children, Santa Barbara native Cory Sipper is making a comeback. The celebrated singer/songwriter, who has been making music since she was 13, just released her fifth album, titled Make Your Magic. With songs featured in television shows and commercials both domestically and internationally, and creative partnerships with members of Toad the Wet Sprocket, many have already fallen under her spell. I corresponded with her in an email interview about her life in the music industry, allowing herself to be vulnerable, and raising chickens.
You are releasing your fifth album now. How does it feel? How did the recording process compare to previous albums? It feels amazing. I didn’t release any albums for over 10 years because I wanted to give a lot of time to my kids, who were very little then. I felt I couldn’t do everything at once. I did write songs for a music library under a “work for hire” agreement during that time, but I didn’t write for myself, and I didn’t know if I ever would again. And then one day … I realized I had to release another album. I felt it swelling up inside me like a big balloon. And I started writing songs like crazy! Then I ran into Thom Flowers — a musician friend from my past. Turned out he worked in a studio close to my house [Orange Whip]. It all came together from there.
Tell me about the title, Make Your Magic. What inspired it? What's your magic? Make Your Magic means doing your thing, following your heart. We are all magic, but the problem is we often fall out of touch with that part of ourselves. The first song I wrote on the album is called “Wild Heart.” I wrote it to myself, to champion myself through this huge project I was taking on, making another album after so many years away. It’s hard sometimes to trust that we can do what we love in life. There are so many voices that most of us hear telling us all the reasons we should NOT do what we really want to do or that we are not worthy of succeeding. We all “make our magic” when we feel the fear and do it anyway.