Her multitudinous musical hats come as no surprise, given Rachael’s diverse artistic background. She debuted her original music in kindergarten, monopolizing a ballet class before the teacher arrived. “When I started, I was writing a lot of music that sounded like Elton John,” she says. “If he’d been a nice Jewish girl from a long line of Russian cantors.” Further dance study at the School of American Ballet followed, as did a drama degree from Stanford University and additional theatrical study at the Actors Studio in New York. Amidst it all, she found time to create MPress Records and release several self-produced albums on the label, and also to lend her compositional and vocal talents to numerous national commercials. A major break came for Rachael when she won a spot on Lilith Fair, performing with the likes of Sarah McLachlan and developing her live performance chops.
Two recent projects further grow Rachael’s already expansive catalog. The playfully edgy The Blistering Sun is her latest solo album, a 15-song compilation that pulls together such diverse elements as piano-woman pop and classic rock, big band jazz and trip-hop, classically-informed string arrangements and musical theatre-style storytelling. With tracks selected from over 1,000 submissions, the MPress release New Arrivals: Vol. 2 brings together many of Rachael’s favorite emerging indie artists, and sales benefit Artists Against Hunger and Poverty. And if that weren’t enough, as of publication, she is concluding studio work on another two solo albums.
We caught up with Rachael in Manhattan to hear about her creative process, experiences captaining MPress, and . . . sparkly keyboards?
On The Blistering Sun, you play a pretty big range of keyboard instruments.
For the last few records, I’ve played my beloved Wurlitzer, and I believe it’s a ’67. I got it off eBay a couple years ago after I worked with a wonderful co-producer and drummer named Denny Fongheiser, who I met on the Ani DiFranco tour. I had never played a Wurly before — only electric piano sounds from my synthesizers growing up, so in my childhood mind, [the Wurlitzer] was a synth sound. I didn’t know what a real one was like.
He sat me down on a Wurly a few years ago for my album Painting of a Painting. He just was going to have me cut basics on it, but I loved the sound so much — especially the tremolo — and I suddenly felt like I found my vibe. It was after 25 years of messing around with all kinds of other stuff like the Jupiter-8 I got for my Bat Mitzvah. [Laughs.]
Did you use a real B-3 on The Blistering Sun?
Yes. Some other folks played the organ as well. I also played a Mellotron and an electric harpsichord and a harmonium.
Those are all very different instruments. Did you find it challenging to switch between them?
They are different. I’m grateful that I had a love for and affinity for [lots of keyboard] sounds well before I found myself dabbling and playing them. I’m a huge Elvis Costello and John Prine fan, and I love producers who use great keyboard sounds. I’ve always heard them on records and thought, “Oh that’s so cool! They must own those keyboards. I’ve never seen them. Where are they? Who has all these crazy instruments?” When I found myself in a studio in Brooklyn that had a lot of them, I was so excited to mess around.
What was the most difficult keyboard to record?
Help me out here — Buddy Holly, twinkly little bells — celeste! That was the hardest because the thing is so damn loud. It was the loudest twinkly pretty thing you’ve ever heard! [Laughs.] But literally on the headphones, I had to have it on zero! I play it at the beginning of “Surprise,” which is a song from which the title of the record comes. It’s an upbeat, kind of offbeat part.
So in my head, the sound was very light and sparkly. And then it was so harsh when I actually played it. Once we got it down in the mix, it was beautiful. But while I was playing it, it was a real challenge because the track wasn’t as nearly as present as I wanted it to be.
When you’re tracking and producing, how do you decide which keyboards go where?
I often hear parts that are not so appropriate for certain instruments because I grew up being a synth-pop MIDI person, which is something most people don’t know about me. I ran a MIDI studio in junior high school and high school and I would charge people and make demos for them in my basement. I was a little budding producer chick. But I would program things that made no sense for the instrument, and when I finally hooked up with an actual engineer by the name of Andy Zulla, who I’ve since made several records with, he would just crack up. “Do you know what a hi-hat is? You could never play it that way!” I’m playing it like it’s a shaker with seven of them panned in all different directions and toms pitched to every key on the piano. He thought I was out of my mind. When I think about it now as an adult, why are there those rules? To me, when you’re recording — or even making a film — the technology is there. Do it creatively or only use live players.
So obviously, I’m in much more of the live performance mode at this stage of my life. But I would be very excited at some point to dive back into all of that and have that childlike freedom, to not feel like I necessarily have to imitate a band every time I program a song, which was what ultimately frustrated me about that type of production.
What are the songwriting and arranging processes like for you?
An interesting thing for me now in the studio is finding new ways to bring out everything that I hear in my head, now that I don’t employ MIDI so much production-wise. As someone who is self taught and who learned all her musicality from listening to classical music in ballet, I hear all these different contrapuntal parts, and a lot of them are kind of classical. I usually work with my live touring band — it’s trumpet, upright bass, drums, and keys, and no guitar. In the studio of course, I hear everything but the kitchen sink.
When I’m overdubbing or working with a player who’s not in my normal ensemble, we sit at the piano and I’ll hum parts, or play the melody with my right hand. Or I’ll play back the track and sing along with it, or even if we’re already tracking and it’s a cellist, for instance, I’ll have some cheesy substitute cello sound up on a keyboard at the studio. I’ll just play the parts and we’ll go a few phrases at a time. If it’s something that I know is going to take more than 15 to 20 minutes for one of these very quick, impressive players to latch on to, I certainly will have recorded it in a demo for them.
But if it’s something that can be absorbed very quickly and is more spontaneous, I enjoy a lighter approach, where you haven’t become so attached to a part that you’re unwilling to change it. A good example of that would be strings. I love using my voice to help the teaching process. Sometimes the way I sing a part in the control room to someone who’s recording will give the player a sense of the dynamics — if it’s breathy, more intense, etc. Also, I often double a lot of string parts with vocal parts. A bunch of cellos and my voice become one sound, but I don’t want it to be instantly recognizable. I want it to be like a pad, or work the way I used to use vocal patches on synthesizers. So I’m sure that all of that sitting alone in a room for however many years and not playing with other musicians, but hammering out all those ideas by myself, absolutely influences the excitement I have now to work with human beings.
What keyboards do you use on the road?
For the last few years I’ve been playing a Kurzweil SP88. I do have a PC88, but it’s just such a beast. The last tour that I took it on was opening for Ani DiFranco and that was like ’98. Nowadays, I opt for the much lighter SP88, and I have two of them. One of them was painted red for my Lilith Fair debut some years ago. I had it plain for a long time, and then a combination of nerves the night before, not being able to sleep, and my little arts and crafts fetish led me to stay up all night the night before my biggest gig at the time and decorate it. [Laughs.] I do decoupage, rhinestone, glitter, and all kinds of craziness. It’s therapeutic for me and helps me feel like I’m endowing a vibration to something that’s otherwise very — I don’t want to say generic — but I felt that it was kind of important to give it my own spin.
And then this past year, I had a situation where I was playing a big show in Boston at a CD release party and my Kurzweil just died. We got another one from the good folks over there with whom I have an artist arrangement. I couldn’t leave it plain for more than a couple days, so I outfitted it to match my new art-pop, blue-faced artwork for The Blistering Sun. Again, I was going on the road literally the next day. So I went to my office, sat down on the floor, put out the newspaper, painted the keyboard blue, and then cut out every interesting word and image I could find from a huge stack of magazines that were in our recycling pile at MPress Records. The next morning my staff came in and they were a bit concerned I was getting high on the fumes from the polyurethane. But it all worked out. It dried in time and that’s my new instrument. I do guitars too.
Your music seems to have a strong visual component — it reminds me of an article I read about Christina Aguilera, and how non-musical elements play into her creative process. She said that before she records, she always has to put on bright red lipstick. Do you have any rituals like that?
Absolutely. When I cut basics for the last record, I was like an insane circus chick. I was determined to have fun with it. I tend to take myself so seriously, especially when I’m in the studio, and especially when I’m juggling all these plates producing, performing, and trying to be my own best singer at the same time.
So between the vocal warm ups and eating the right food and everything else, I get overwhelmed. This time I just approached it like Cirque Du Soleil. I would go into the bathroom — everyone else would be on lunch break — and I would change into some kooky, bizarro outfit with nine tutus and a mask and pink wig. I would come out like nothing was going on and my bandmates would just like spit out their food. [Laughs.] It was a blast. I have the nuttiest photos from these sessions.
It sounds like you’ve had some great adventures as a musician.
Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. I went from being a budding Jewish Debbie Gibson, to — I don’t know what I am now, but it’s definitely different from that. [Laughs.]