Teni Rane photo by Tom Netherland
Raised in the music scene of Chattanooga, Teni Rane crafts songs that are contemplative and self-examining. Her recent release Goldenrod is a case in point. Topics like mortality, self-doubt, the necessity of resolution and closure, longing to step off the daily escalator, and more prickly human experiences are thoughtfully touched on and delved into. Teni puts a lot of thought into her songs’ subject matter and it shines through brightly.
We had a chance to chat with Teni Rane about the album, songwriting and more.
Americana Highways: After listening to your new album Goldenrod what would you like people to take away?
Teni Rane: Goldenrod is a very introspective journey. I hope people may feel calmly energized to keep building a life that is worth living to them and also feel some of their own questions/doubts reflected in a way that feels relatable. If hearing any one of these songs helps someone feel less isolated and lonely in an emotion that they are navigating through, that’s a huge win for me!
AH: What was the initial impetus for the project and did that change along the way?
TR: In some ways this album has been in the making for a long time. What is it that they always say? “It takes your whole life to make your first album…”
Even though a lot of the themes explored about what it means to walk through change and still be the same person we are on the other side of it – albeit nuanced and (hopefully) wiser – have been swirling around my life for several years, I really started mapping out what an album project would mean and consist of in the summer of 2022 while I was living on Gotland in Sweden. I had just transitioned from this everyday routine of being in a corporate, chemical engineering role to teaching yoga and playing music full time in a foreign country (fortunately I had lived there before so I had a little safety net in my friends). It was a change that I had walked towards for a long time and had mapped out and managed the best I could, but it was also a really wild experience to actually be living in it and having my day to day look SO different from what it had in the very recent past. There were a lot of moments of feeling like it was working and a lot of moments of doubting myself in a very deep and visceral way. That comes out in the songs – moments of self-assuredness that are tempered with self-questioning as well. I don’t think my desire to build the album in that way changed as I went through the process but having the time and space to work on it definitely changed my relationship to the work and the topics and ideas in important ways! I can feel that working on this project and with the incredible folks that were part of it (Mike Stephenson at Classic Recording Studio – recording, mixing, mastering; Dave Eggar – cello & cello arrangements; Phil Faconti – guitars; Roger Gustafsson – bass and pedal steel; Jonathan Shumaker – bass) helped me develop a deeper confidence in myself as an artist and a musician.
AH: Your song “So Beautiful” seems like a bit of a mixed genre song. How would you describe it and what makes it different from the rest?
TR: It was really fun to lean into a little more alt-rock world with “So Beautiful.” It can be pretty tough to let go of disappointments and distractions in life and having a little more of a driving edge to the song felt important to reflect that tension. It’s definitely not a “traditional” song format either and it felt good to let this song breathe a little on its own in this darker, grunge guitar driven feeling. Even though it isn’t a fast paced song, there is a bit of an urgency to it with the instrumentation – a recognition of a need to go forward into what might be challenging and move away from anything that might be holding me back in harmful ways. It was also an exercise in “letting go” myself. I gave all the context and understory and sonic space and melodic lines and talked deeply with Phil about it, and then I really got out of his way. It was exciting and scary to let the vision I had set in front of him come to life with very little additional direction once we were rolling.
AH: If someone only had ten minutes to listen to Goldenrod, which three songs would you direct them to first and why?
TR: Ohhh that is tough! I would definitely want folks to experience the title track, “Goldenrod.” It feels like it holds a big part of that overarching question of “what changes when I change and what do I get to bring with me into that change?” Then flit over to “Passerine.” Not only am I lyrically proud of the metaphor that weaves all the way through the song, I am also floored everytime I hear the stormy atmosphere that we created with the cello and how flawlessly Dave translated those heavy feelings but still in the light context of the bird metaphor. I’d wrap that 10 minute excursion with a pass through the Rowland Salley classic “Killing the Blues.” As an artist, it is important to me not only to create and steward my own work, but also to nod back to works that have inspired and shaped my style. It is also a great way to connect with listeners that aren’t familiar with my work to have a chance to hear how I interpret a well-known and well-loved song! It’s a stripped back and pretty stark rendition that lets the melancholy of the lyrics shine.
AH: Did any of the songs for the album come to you almost completely out of the blue? If so, which ones & what was it like?
TR: A couple of them were pen to paper moments that felt fully formed. Most notably for me in this collection “Return to Dust” showed up about a month before our final recording sessions. I was going through the last several songs that were intended for the album and after having spent so much time and starting to notice different pieces and parts of the story that felt important, I didn’t feel like a couple of the songs that I had previously been sure for the album really captured or told a certain part of the story. I know they’ll find homes on other projects in the future but things had shifted a bit and they weren’t the right puzzle pieces anymore.
“Return to Dust” came from this moment of really grappling with the idea that we don’t go on forever and what that can mean and even kind of questioning what I was doing with this album as it started to draw towards the finish line. Sometimes I feel like the truth that we have that final step on earth can make it feel like we’re in this crazy race for absolutely no reason. But the other side of it is looking at it from the understanding that since we don’t have unlimited time here it DOES really matter how we use it. There was this big relief that I felt after the song tumbled out. Like I was finally able to understand a little bit better how I was relating to my time and energy and how I was choosing to use it to make music and to build a life even if it’s not going to be permanent.
AH: When songs don’t come to you completely out of the blue, what is your songwriting process like?
TR: I’m a collector of different ideas and thoughts that catch my fancy in some way. I have a whole bunch of documents (both digital and paper) that are my “random ideas” – though I don’t really think they are truly, fully random. I also have way too much storage on my phone used up on voice memos! What can be so fun as songs pop out of those spaces is that I start to see and make sense of stories that have been grabbing at my attention for a while but needed to be laced together over time. That’s where songs come from me that need a little more time to be clear. Why did that phrase catch me in the way it did? Why does that title feel so important and what is it about it that is meaningful to me? Then I get to start pulling all those concepts together and letting the story or the thought or the emotion reveal a little bit at a time until it feels “right” or “done.”
AH: What was the process in the studio? Did you flesh things out live as a freeform jam or did you pre-arrange/chart everything?
TR: The songs were all pre-arranged going into the studio with my acoustic guitar pre-recorded as the base we were building off of! We also had a scratch vocal that I recorded so that we’d not get lost – but I re-took vocals on everything to let them feel more responsive to what we’d built instrumentally for each track. I spent a lot of time with the songs beforehand – writing down the “background” story and how the sonic landscape needed to feel. I sent lots of melody lines and ideas to both Dave and Phil on each song and had a lot of context for them to start pulling from. We had a couple sessions prior to recording to use all that info and play through together to see what started to feel natural. So with that as well as the scratch track we were in a really good place once we walked in the door. With all that in mind we’d play a bit through the song together to refresh and then jump right into the different parts for cello and guitar. Bass was also something that I arrived with pre-recorded for all the tracks, so we could really focus on the cello and guitar instrumentation when we were in the studio.
AH: Can you share a funny or interesting story of something that happened during the making of this album?
TR: Fortunately everything with recording went really smoothly – which I guess is interesting in and of itself because I absolutely expected derailments and hiccups along the way!! But the funniest moments have come from getting together all the other collateral to support the album.
Last August I had the opportunity to work with an incredible videographer and friend in Chattanooga, Rachael Porter, to bring to life a music video for the title track “Goldenrod.” I worked with a longtime friend from my performance dance days on choreography and wrote a story and had this vision of it being set in a field full of goldenrod that was in bloom. We planned the shoot to correspond with the late August blooms and found a beautiful location that was going to be FULL of goldenrod. But when we got to the week of the planned shoot, for whatever reason, the goldenrod on location was not all quite blooming… It was time to get resourceful!! I had several friends with property that was covered in blooming goldenrod and so I called around and drove around collecting goldenrod from all over Chattanooga so that we could decorate the shoot location with in-bloom plants. Everyone was a little skeptical that it would work, but honestly the video turned out beautifully and you really cannot tell unless you get the back story that we had to bring some of the blooms in! It looked so natural with its un-bloomed buddies in the field.
AH: What’s on the horizon for Teni Rane this fall and beyond?
TR: It has been fun to bring the songs and the album on the road for a self-organized tour! I’ve played in Tennessee of course, also live in North Carolina and in Virginia so far. I’ll be heading to Kentucky and Arkansas in October and on to California in November. So touring and promoting this release is taking a lot of the focus and time right now. Beyond the fall, I have plans for future albums in the works – timing on those all is tbd right now since a lot of energy is going into supporting Goldenrod! I’ve started on a winter/holiday album (working title: A Wintry Mix) as well as a geographically driven album (working title: Places) and hope to bring those into the world in the next couple of years. I’m looking forward to some other collaborations that are starting to form and exploring different aspects of my skills and how I might use them not just for my own albums and art but as a topliner or vocalist for other projects as well! I’ll have my first film credit as a vocalist coming out in October – it’s a holiday themed horror film which is a very random first credit for me to have but I am very excited and grateful for the opportunity!
Tour Dates:
9/05 – Chattanooga, TN – Heritage House Writers’ Round
9/18 – Chattanooga, TN – Asterales House Concert*
9/20 – Red Bank, TN – Food Truck Fridays*
9/21 – Chattanooga, TN – Crabtree Farms Fall Festival (10am)
9/21 – Chattanooga, TN – Gate 11 Distillery (7pm)*
9/23 – Lexington, KY – Lyric Theatre (WoodSongs) [w/ Kitchen Dwellers]
9/27 – Kingsport, TN – FunkeFest House Concert 9/28 – Knoxville, TN – WDVX Blue Plate Special (12pm)
10/2 – Fayetteville, AR – U of A Honors College House Concert*
10/3 – Fayetteville, AR – Fayetteville Public Library*
10/5 – Joplin, MO – North Heights Porch Fest*
10/12 – Chattanooga, TN – Highland Park Porch Fest
10/23 – Red River Gorge, KY – The Hive at High Rock 10/24 – Newport, KY – Falcon Theatre (Poets & Songs)
11/06 – S. Pasadena, CA – The Daily (Wine & Song) [w/ Mamma’s Marmalade]
*Trio show
Thanks very much for chatting with us, Teni Rane! Find more details and information here on her website: https://tenirane.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Teni Rane “Goldenrod”
