Unity Sundays are a series of community gatherings, curated by the Bring Forth artist collective centered around ritual, song, prayer, and movement. The first one is October 18th in Leavenworth, WA followed by Ecstatic Dance with DJ Klarity!
register here

We spend much of our lives disconnected from our bodies and from each other. Welcome Back to Your Heart is built to bring us back to our hearts, using song as medicine for transformation and connection. This is a fully curated evening of song, story, presence, and communal singing where the boundaries between self and collective begin to soften. The evening is centered on the songs from Benjamin Jay Thomas's new album, Behind Your Eyes, The Stars Are Born, along with the new music Targol has been releasing this season.

Benjamin Jay Thomas is a singer-songwriter, music producer, and song coach based in Leavenworth, Washington. His new album, Behind Your Eyes, The Stars Are Born, is a journey from head to heart, written around presence, return, and the idea that true seeing happens through love, not just the eyes. As the founder of Bring Forth, he creates music and experiences that remind us why we're here on this planet.

Targol is a singer-songwriter, author, and conscious life alchemist. After fifteen years as a tech executive, she stepped away from the life she was told to want and turned toward a more intentional, present way of living, a path she tells in her book Fearless and Connected. Her songs grow out of time spent with herself, with nature, and with the many parts of who she is. Learn more at fearlessandconnected.com.

"Living Like We Mean It is my first full-length album, and it came from diving deep into the heart of existence, into human connection, resilience, and the kind of medicine that life hands you whether you’re ready for it or not. Each track came from a real place. A stepping stone. A moment of healing or growth that needed to find its way into a melody.

These songs are for anyone learning to embrace vulnerability, cultivate joy, and find strength in their journey. To live in presence. To actually, intentionally, live like we mean it.

I can’t do this alone, and I don’t take lightly the fact that you’re here. This community showing up around this project means everything. Thank you for being part of this with me."

— Targol, April 2026

"Releasing" an album carries a multitude of meanings for me. The image that comes to mind today involves me standing barefoot, calf-deep in the Wenatchee River near our home, catching seeds of songs, nurturing them for a few years, and then releasing them to float downstream into the Columbia and then out to the Pacific Ocean.

Over the past 5 years, this particular batch of songs has served me in more ways than I can count. They've taught me a playful way of being with my inner 12-year old that gives him power and a voice. They've given me eyes to witness the Divine spark of life inside every being. They've given melody and language to honor the process of healing the earth holds for us.

These songs have assembled themselves in a 2-part 53-minute arc that illuminates the creative, masculine impulse of the Sun with Side A, and the nurturing, ancient feminine Wisdom of the Moon with Side B. The production kept pulling me more equally into pop territory, with its programmed dance beats and 80s-textured synths, than the songs themselves seemed to originally ask for — while keeping me steadily connected to folk music with the gentleness of a 50-ish year old nylon stringed Yamaha guitar that found its way into my life for $100 via Goodwill a few years ago.

Joining me on the record are a beautiful community of souls (listed below) that have been by my side as these songs have been shaping me. All of whom I am honored to call friends and family. To create with people you love is one of life's most potent gifts. Joining me energetically on the record is my wife and life partner, Joy. Today we celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary. Her consistent, whole-hearted support continues to sustain, teach and guide me.

Back to releasing at the river… Once these songs are released from my hands, they belong to you and they belong to the earth. The more turns around the sun I have and the more opportunities I have to do this work (this is record number 8 for me!) the more I see how the creative process itself heals and transforms us… this mystical yet dedicated rhythm of listening to the intuitive whispers inside us, and then responding with open and generous hands, brings us face to face with our joys and fears and loves, and becomes a pathway of becoming our True Selves.

Thank you for the gift of your witnessing the true Me. May the true You also be witnessed through these songs.

Behind your eyes, the stars are born,

Benjamin Jay Thomas

July 17, 2026

PS. - Though it should be on the streaming platforms in the next few days, it would mean the world to me if you would purchase and share the album on Bandcamp. Getting the record across the finish line required a few personal credit card charges and I'd love to pay those off. ;-) #realityofmakingrecords

And, if you're at all interested in learning how to play these songs and carry them yourself, over the next few months I'll be sharing chord charts and videos of me playing them in my Patreon community, so come join me over there.

More gratitude:

Side A ☀️

1. Sunrise (feat. BOSAYA & Shine Song Collective)

2. Is There A Life? (feat. Ms. Bright Sea)

3. Here With Me

4. A World Of Our Own

5. Come On, Time Machine

6. Echo Of The Sun (feat. Shine Song Collective & Carrie Wright)

Side B 🌙

7. Welcome Back (feat. Jenn Beauvais, Nora B. Heath & Targol)

8. The Joyful Eye Of God (Part I & II)

9. The Wisdom (feat. Mandy Hughes)

10. Heal Yourself, Heal The World (feat. Targol & Nora B. Heath)

11. It Starts With A Pause (feat. Cora Landgraf & Elliana Thomas)

The night after his eighth album releases to the world, Benjamin Jay Thomas comes home to celebrate it. Behind Your Eyes, The Stars Are Born is a record five years in the making — a joyful, searching, ultimately hopeful celebration of the divine creativity alive in every human being. The release show at Snowy Owl Theater is the first full live performance of this music: an evening shaped as a Guided Concert, moving through song, poetry, moments of silence, and communal singing, supported by a handful of other voices from the Bring Forth community.

The set will be a carefully crafted arc... an experience designed to let the music land the way it was written to land: in a room full of people, together.

 

Behind Your Eyes, The Stars Are Born is Benjamin Jay Thomas's eighth full length album, five years in the making. It is his most sonically adventurous record yet - blending indie folk roots with the warmth and lift of indie pop - and his most personal: a full-throated celebration of the seed of divine creativity at the center of every human being.

The album moves through longing and reconnection, through the rebel cry of imagination refusing to be shrunk, through the medicine of faithful witness and presence. It ends where it begins: in the heart, in the body, in the deep knowing that the Wisdom is you.

 

Benjamin Jay Thomas is a Leavenworth, WA based singer/songwriter, creating music and experiences to remind you why you’re on this planet. His “guided concert” format melds together storytelling, performance, poetry, mindfulness, breathing, and a bit of communal singing into an experience that gives participants space to breathe, be and connect.