Soon after finishing her acclaimed 2008 album Apple Tree, Colorado-born, Nashville based singer-songwriter Katie Herzig received a fateful phone call. 'I sat down to paint one day - I hadn't painted in years - then I got a call asking me to write a song for the Sex and the City movie,' she says. 'So I put down my paintbrush and haven't painted since!' What she did instead, as one assignment led to another, was write music for numerous films and television shows, and in the process, find a surprising and exciting direction for her new album, The Waking Sleep, her first release on Marion-Lorraine Records/Mercer Street Records. 'I was trying new things,' says Herzig, 'getting outside of what I would normally do as an artist. It was really fun and invigorating to use samples and build tracks digitally. I loved creating like that, and it really allowed me more freedom, because I was doing something less personal, and creating for something else.'

But there was also no doubt that at some point, this accomplished artist would return to the distinctive, heartfelt material that made her name. After initially fronting the Colorado-based band Newcomers Home, Herzig released her solo debut, Watch Them Fall, in 2004, followed by Weightless two years later. When she relocated to Nashville, she immediately started to catch the attention of her fellow artists and was invited to perform as part of the remarkable new talent showcased on the Hotel Café and Ten Out of Tenn tours.