Love, Death and Birth — and a 7-Year Wait — Went Into New Album ‘Traveling Shoes’

Time is a tricky variable when creating art. Some ideas take years to fully mature. Others happen with a random stroke of genius.

For composer Damani Rhodes, vocalist Vadia and poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, it took a combination of brief stints and long breaks — seven years total — to complete their just-released album, Traveling Shoes.

A 33-minute soundscape of poetic phrases, harmonic piano keys and soulful vocals, Traveling Shoes features guest appearances from Aja Monet, Saul Williams and the East Bay’s own renowned flutist Elena Pinderhughes.

“This is a body of work that I’m proud of,” says Damani Rhodes during a recent phone call. “I know Tongo’s proud of it,” he adds, and his wife and partner in production, Vadia, says she’s very proud of it too.

So proud, in fact, that on Oct. 18 the trio plans to record a live version of the album during a ticketed performance at Tiny Telephone Studios in Oakland.

The story of the album starts back in 2018, when Tongo and Damani were introduced through a former director at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. He insisted that Tongo and Damani, both YBCA 100 honorees, perform live together at a celebratory gala — without a lot of time to practice.

They met for the first time at soundcheck the night before. Yet as soon as Damani and his band Mino Yanci started playing, Tongo began reciting poetry. Something clicked. “I wasn’t even a guy that was really into poems, if I’m honest,” admits Damani. “But when I heard him, all of a sudden, I was into poems.”

Realizing they’d stumbled onto something, Damani extended an invite for Tongo to meet up again at Zoo Labs studio in West Oakland. From that five-hour session came a smattering of ideas; recorded concepts that grew into songs, like the album’s first track, “Not A Poem.”

Damani took the tracks home and continued to work on them, including one that would eventually become the lead single, “Nature of The World.”

Tongo opens the song by saying, “A, you know, a whole of God can happen in three seconds, not much heaven tho.” As he lays bars, Damani’s keys and Vadia’s vocal harmonizing set a soulful tone.

Tongo, an acclaimed author and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, proceeds to paint a picture of the current state of society. Highlighting “the wire hanger empire” and the perseverance it takes to survive in this world, he says “I’m going to make it, even if I have to drive backwards.”

He poetically flips reality, convincing the listener that “running water is a myth”; instead, he says, we’re the ones moving all around it. At the end of the piece, he goes further into reshaping people’s perspectives, asking the audience to let go of the four walls that surround them in an effort to accept the ever-present heaven that exists in the universe.

Directed and produced by Benjamin “BJ” McBride and Elie M. Khadra (both worked with KQED in 2020 to produce the award-winning film Dear Beloved), the accompanying short video for “Nature of The World” shows Twin Peaks, Treasure Island and close-ups of Tongo near Golden Gate Park, as well as intimate shots of Damani and Vadia embracing.

The climax of the video shows Vadia going through the process of childbirth, a visual that, like the album itself, was all a matter of timing. Pregnant when she was presented with the film’s treatment in early 2024, Vadia says a doctor’s visit revealed that the baby might come early, turning production plans into a mad dash.

“Everything is set: the cameras are ready, and all the lighting and the locations,” Vadia recalls. “I was trying on the outfits for the video,” she says, “and then I get a call that my father passed away.”

Pastor Essex Hubbard of Sacramento’s Saint James Holy Missionary Baptist Church was 68 years old. Roughly two weeks later, Vadia gave birth to her and Damani’s daughter, Eloura.

And in the midst of everything, they filmed.

“Coming from an artistic family,” Vadia says, “we all felt like it was OK to move forward with completing the project that we had started.”

On the album’s title track, inspired by a hymn, Vadia sings, “I’ve got my traveling shows on / I’m headed to my new home / And if you want to go with me, it’s too late, too late, too late / I’m already gone.”

With vocal tones she learned as child while singing in church with her siblings and father, the recording at Tiny Telephone Studios was “one of those magic points” that happen during a studio session, Vadia says.

Reflecting on the seven-year process of making Traveling Shoes, Damani says, “We had the time to grow into the people that we needed to be to make it. Because if we would have finished this in 2018, it would not be this project. It would be something else.”

“We already had good seed in the ground… now is the time where it’s sprouting,” Vadia adds. “Rain happens, and then things grow.”

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Vadia and Damani Rhodes record a live version of their album ‘Traveling Shoes’ on Saturday, Oct. 18, in front of a live audience at Tiny Telephone Studios (5765 Lowell St., Oakland). Tickets and more information here.