The Ewe and the Eye

The Ewe and the Eye is Mia’s first album. It was recorded in the fall of 1996 at The Spaceshed, a single car garage turned recording studio in Sierra Madre, California, engineered by Josh Schwartz and Brent Rademaker, members of the band Further which would later evolve into Beachwood Sparks. The record was released in the spring of 1997 on Further’s label, Xmas Records. It was recorded in one sitting, solo-acoustically, onto quarter inch tape and is an intimate and poetic self-portrait of a young woman’s coming of age. The songs were written while Mia was an undergraduate at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where the LA native was experiencing the dramatic changing of the seasons for the first time; they meditate on love, time, nature, romance and loss. The songs are simple and earnest like the poetry of William Blake. The first pressing is long out of print. The Ewe and the Eye was reissued on City Zen Records in 2006 and includes the original 16-page booklet of Mia’s whimsical pen and ink illustrations as well as newer recordings of three songs. The source for the title of the album is revealed in the cd tray; it is a photo of New Haven’s power plant, United Illuminating. The company’s initials—UI— illuminate the river at night. The album’s photos were taken by Meghan O’Rourke, one of Mia’s college roommates. The red seal on the cover refers to Mia’s Japanese ancestry. Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings often bear these marks as the artist’s signature. The two characters of Mia’s name, “mi” and “a,” mean Beautiful Asia.

Mia Doi Todd's The Ewe and the Eye was released by X-Mas Records in 1997 while the singer/songwriter was finishing her studies at Yale University.