Rachael Sage photo by Tom Moore
Rachael Sage Reaches For The Inner Roots Of Her Songs For Another Side
Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Rachael Sage released the album The Other Side in 2023, via her own MPress Records label. It drew on writing during the lockdown periods and was recorded in careful conditions coming out of the pandemic, but the songs were then brought to life again through Sage’s characteristic active touring. Experiencing the tracks in that way, watching and noticing the ways in which they evolved and tapped into audience interaction, continued to inspire Sage.
Back at her home studio later, she embarked on an experiment of inviting musical friends over to reimagine these songs together acoustically, also introducing new elements that might elucidate the core qualities of the songs. The result was a totally reimagined album called Another Side, out now. Longtime collaborators Kelly Halloran (violin), Dave Eggar (cello), Trina Hamlin (harmonica), and Quinn and Katie Marie (percussion) all contributed to this exploration, and additional vocals were provided by Crys Matthews, Annalyse & Ryan, Amy Speace, and Grace Pettis. The spirit of springboarding in new directions is one that Rachel Sage values highly in her live shows and inviting friends to take part at home enabled her collaborators to get in on the fun, too. I spoke with Rachael Sage about the experiment, why she’s so pleased with the outcome, and about how she incorporates her past and her personal experiences into her work.
Americana Highways: What impacted your decision to take another look at these songs from a different perspective in order to create Another Side?
Rachael Sage: I recorded a lot of the songs on the album The Other Side when I hadn’t really been out in the world in the world again much, and everything was still masked up. It was amazing to be able to convene in the studio at all, but it was a lot different when I was able to reapproach these songs, having performed them live, and do them in my home studio. I was able to get a lot of neighbors, and friends, and special guests to come by sort of casually. It’s kind of how I have imagined the Laurel Canyon-type recording sessions would be. It’s saying, “Come over, have some tea! Maybe you’ll sing some background vocals.” So it was very idyllic. [Laughs]
AH: That’s great. You made The Other Side in a more isolated way, so was that a contrast to your previous albums also? Do you usually try to bring live feedback into your recordings?
RS: Absolutely. The difference was that I’d maybe workshopped the songs on a livestream. On Wednesday and Sunday, I was mainly live from wherever I was. I would just plug in a USB mic. That was a blessing, of course, but there’s nothing like getting together with your band and having that instant chemistry and rapport. Their very presence informs the musical choices that you’re making.
AH: Have you experimented between acoustic versions and electric versions of your music before?
RS: I have done acoustic versions of songs before, putting out bonus tracks and an EP. But that was very particular to the circumstances that I was in, which is that I was going through my cancer experience, and I was trying to find ways to make music and be expressive without using energy I didn’t have. I was trying to stay present and motivated. For that project, I enlisted a lot of external help. This was quite different because there was the song, with me on acoustic guitar or keyboard, and it was, “How can we reimagine this, not just acoustically, but reimagine it as a new approach, a new perspective, and a new experience for the listener.”
Annalyse & Ryan, who are my dear friends up here in Beacon, New York, have toured with me during this past year. They’d jump up on stage and sing harmonies with me, and Annalyse would rock out on her electric mandolin. When it came time to do this recording, I said, “Come on over. We’ll figure it out on the fly.” We’d listen to an original version, and maybe hear an electric lead part, and think, “Hmmm, wonder how that would sound on the mandolin?” And we’d build the whole arrangement around that. It was a lot of fun, and I think, in some ways, it enabled me to get to the heart of the lyric and the melody in a way that the bigger production didn’t.
AH: I was wondering about the differences you might feel when it came to the songs. Through performance and recording, your experiences of the songs would probably change anyway. The feelings and associations might develop.
RS: Oh, one hundred percent. That happens on a nightly basis, and it’s part of why I tour and keep myself on that schedule. This is a craft. I know that some people approach it differently, and think that the moment of recording is “it.” Then they move on. To some extent, my spoken word project Poetica was like that. It was really capturing lockdown for me, and my psyche at that time. Then I had to really memorize and re-learn it to perform it live! But with these songs, every time I sing them, it might mean something different, based on a conversation I’ve overheard at a café, or a movie I’m watching, or a book I’m reading. That’s a perfectly natural thing for me.
I kind of count on that so that I won’t get stale with them. I think it’s kind of similar to acting, which is another part of my background, where you do have to breathe new life into things. The only way to do that, and have it be authentic, in my opinion, is to really be reacting in the present moment. It’s whatever’s happening on stage, and in your own body, in the biochemistry of the moment.
AH: That reminds me of the setting of having people over and creating that unpredictability for this reimagined album. There is no way around that creating a totally different experience.
RS: I’m suddenly thinking of cooking, even though I’m not a chef. If you cook one dish, you might do it differently every time.
AH: Even the smallest thing, the smallest ingredient change or alteration, can have a big transformative effect on cooking, so that really works as a metaphor. Personality-wise, though, some people would be terrified by so many variables during recording.
RS: I used to be that person! I changed. I wouldn’t have necessarily anticipated that in my youth. My mom keeps on finding old demos in the basement and sending them to me. I was very meticulous and probably wouldn’t hit “record” on the 4-track until I’d played it one thousand times on the piano. Then, as I played with more and more people, jazz musicians specifically, who were able to take my melodies and make suggestions, I learned to flow with that. Also, with my violinist Kelly Halloran, we’ve developed a love language of looking at each other and knowing exactly what is happening. It is fun to bring those playful ways of handling music back into the studio after you’ve been touring.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IwIdgMsviM4%3Fsi%3DA8ygmSEyM7H4AyvA
AH: I think it’s amazing that you’ll still listen to your old demos from when you were younger and can connect with that person and be tolerant of the differences. That’s great. To work with material from younger years, you have to be sympathetic towards yourself.
RS: That’s true of Anais Mitchell and Hadestown. She wrote the bulk of those songs and that treatment in college, from what I understand. Then it kept evolving. At some point, I was on the same a bill with her at a divey little bar in London, and she and her accordion player what eventually became about half of that show in a folky way. We said, “Oh, those are lovely songs.” But no one in that room could have envisioned, “Wow, that is going to become Hadestown, the Broadway musical!” It’s so interesting.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HmSiFS0bJII%3Fsi%3DRD_lQMZCcQjT5o1L
AH: We absolutely should not write things off. It’s great if you can make something now of the past. The song “Deepest Dark” harks back to your youth, I’ve heard. And the space where the video was recorded is amazing, almost a sacred space.
RS: It was a chapel for an asylum. I think some good and some bad went on there from the history I’ve read, but it was a magical day. The director also chose it because of how he thought that light would stream through those stained-glass windows. He had a real vision for that.
AH: Is that a song where your feelings about friendship and support have changed since your youth, or is it more about your feelings about friendship now?
RS: It’s entirely about that, since I didn’t have any recollection of how I wrote the song long ago at all. It was just words on a piece of paper, and a demo of something I didn’t remember making. I picked it for the album because it reminded me of the dynamics and friendships of the characters in Stranger Things, which I really got into late in lockdown and binged. I love the young actors in it and was the type of thing I wanted to act in at that age. Basically, the young people, who are highly intelligent, are doing better than the adults, really.
AH: It’s very much a kids’ world, where the adults are like the guest stars. Life can feel like that sometimes. Listening to this song reminded me that friendships, when we’re in grade school and middle school, are the first time that we realize that other kids can be helpful, courageous, and giving. And that goes for ourselves, too. It’s inspiring and stays with you. It’s formative.
RS: That’s one of my favorite words, “formative.” It’s true, you remember those people, even as you drift apart, and it makes you laugh, and smile, as you go through life. You remember the friend who introduced you to The Doors, and the friend you snuck out and went to your first concert with.
AH: Some of these songs have a little more narrative to them. As the song begins to feel different, does the narrative shift for you, too? I’m thinking of “Whistle Blow” and “Butterflies At Night” which have a bit more of a narrative feeling.
RS: Those are the more narrative songs. “Butterflies At Night” was the hardest song for me to write and record, originally. It’s about a friend who very suddenly passed away during lockdown and there was some mysterious around his passing was never resolved for me. This was someone I’d seen recently, and gone out after a show, and had a drink with, and chatted to for hours. They were in my Folk music community, and I loved this person. When they passed, there was a beautiful outpouring and we had a Zoom memorial, that was bittersweet. This song is my version of that.
I actually wrote it right before the memorial Zoom, and when people read poems and played songs they’d written for him, I also ended up playing this song on a Zoom with a few people. Putting it on a record was something I wasn’t sure about, and I spoke to someone in their family about it. They were more than okay with it. All this time later, I think I’m just further from those challenging aspects of writing and recording it, and now it is more a story to me as I perform and play it. I’m able to understand that other people didn’t even know this person, so they will project onto it what they want to hear. Sometimes I will say a little bit about this person when I perform, sometimes I won’t. That’s just part of the evolution of a song.
AH: Thank you for sharing that. So many big life events happened during that time, and so much had to become virtual.
RS: Human beings are so resourceful. I like to write about that.
AH: If we didn’t need those rituals, we wouldn’t find a way to do that. I think the detail in that song is very human, and therefore really helpful. Painting a picture, setting a scene, and giving a feeling to things actually makes it more accessible.
RS: A lot of my favorite songwriters are able to do that much more consistently or easily than I am. I do both. I also write the big, broad, more ephemeral pop songs that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. But when I write a song like this, those are the harder songs to sing live, because it does require that you’re putting your fuller self into them. They have that level of detail. There’s a time and a place, and I’m painting that picture.
Thanks very much for sharing with us, Rachael Sage! More details on her album and other updated information can be found here on her website: http://rachaelsage.com/
Find our album reviews for Rachael Sage here: REVIEW: Rachael Sage “The Other Side”
