After a long hiatus, musician Meredith Sheldon is set to play a sold-out show at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse this Friday.
The event is hosted by Circuit Arts and will showcase Ms. Sheldon’s new album Once We Were Dust, her first in over eight years.
“It’s so rewarding to me to see a body of work take shape in this way from so many years of such an intensive life experience, and then to have it come out in 10 songs, in a way that feels like a complete kind of alchemical process…it was a ride,” she said.
Ms. Sheldon spent her childhood summers on the Vineyard, and teamed up with Ben Taylor to go on tour after high school. Eventually, she settled in Los Angeles, living in an apartment with six other artists. She played with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads as well as Johnny Marr of The Smiths, whom she credits with pushing her to start writing again.
In recent years, she moved to the Vineyard to live full time and raise her son.
“There’s such an influx of culture, people and diverse views on art [here],” said Ms. Sheldon. “It’s such a rich kind of petri dish and I feel really blessed to have this as a home base and be able to kind of just anchor into my community here.”
Ms. Sheldon started writing songs for Once We Were Dust a few of years ago after taking a break from writing and performing when she gave birth to her son.
“What came through me, not from me, was what I needed to synthesize all of my experiences and what I needed was sort of like a sonic homeopathic remedy,” she said.
When Ms. Sheldon started writing again, she returned with a whole new perspective. She began to notice how much she had evolved over the years and found that she wasn’t interested in following the rules. She was going to write when she wanted to write, record when she wanted to record and release her album whenever she felt was right.
“I had expanded in so many directions and the result was that what came through and out was as close to my experience of being a human as I could hope to get,” she said.
For her upcoming show, Ms. Sheldon gathered support from both friends and family. The set was designed by a close friend and she will perform alongside an assemblage of Island musicians and artists, including Vineyard photographer Matt Cosby, who was a bassist in the band Jeremiah Freed and photographed the cover for Once We Were Dust. Wolftrap, a Los Angeles-based band led by Ms. Sheldon’s sister Bailey Mae Gardener and her husband Miguel Samuel, will open the show.
“All the creative people here that will show up to do this magical show at the playhouse with me are the same people that would show up and help me build my house,” said Ms. Sheldon. “They’re the same people who I’ll take my kid to learn specialized skills. That feels unique to me.”
Currently, Ms. Sheldon has not scheduled any other performances to promote her new album but she is open to the idea of doing a tour that her son is older. But she is adamant that it will be on her terms and she’s not interested in making music for the wrong reasons.
“If I can really be honest, I want life to feel like a good stretch,” she said.
This article appears in September 11, 2026.