Sophie Rae is a Chicago songwriter with a deep appreciation and understanding of the blues. In Leading Lady we hear "Nothing in my pocket and nothing to gain, work hard at your woman's work and you'll be promised fame, it ain't the same", a gutsy sound that harkens back to the Odetta era of folk & blues. Think Fairport Convention, think boot stomping, Lead bellly, Kelly Joe Phelps, think good music, done as only Sophie Rae can, shooting from the hip with soul, swerve and some serious guitar chops. Wise to the ways of the world and ready to shout it out, quite simply, this is the blues. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? I’ve loved music for as long as I can consciously remember. My parents took note of this love, and when I was six, they started me on violin lessons. I continued to play classical violin for fifteen years. But though I was a classical musician and loved playing classical music, I was always wanting to listen to and learn different kinds of music. I started playing bluegrass and Celtic fiddle on violin, as well as gypsy jazz. But my taste in music extended well beyond things I could play on the violin; I grew up on incredible folk and rock musicians like Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, etc., and I was starting to feel the need to play music like them. So I started borrowing guitars from my middle school and teaching myself to play. As I started to get better at guitar and play and write the music I’d found it hard to emulate before, a whole new world opened up to me. I felt like I could finally play the music I loved and also appreciate that music at a whole new level. That’s when I started to become obsessed with both listening to and playing music. Songs I loved became not just enjoyable but inspirational. I kept collecting string instruments and learning to play them; I absolutely credit my ability to pick up new instruments to my violin training. And I credit my desire to be enveloped in music constantly to the very supportive musical environment I grew up in; though I’m not part of a family of musicians, I have a family of great music appreciators and supporters. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? I wrote so many songs when I was little, I can’t even begin to remember the first one. I wrote on violin and piano when I was very young, but didn’t find it very fulfilling (and I didn’t think my songs were any good). But when I started playing guitar, I started writing songs on guitar as soon as I had learned the basics. The first song I ever performed for anyone on guitar was called Eleven Minutes and I wrote it in eighth grade. It’s very simple, and I now find most of the lyrics cringeworthy, but there are a few lines in there that still make me very impressed by my 12-year-old self (and my friends from growing up still make me play it for them every once in a while!). That was when I truly started to love songwriting. At the time, I loved it because I was able to take my angsty pre-teen feelings and write them into cryptic poetry that I could place over music. Since I was an extremely shy and quiet kid, it was a way to be expressive without bearing my soul to everyone, and I became hooked on this idea. As I started really getting good at guitar, it wasn’t just the lyrics and melody I loved writing, but making challenging and fun guitar parts to weave in with the lyrics. I still write with equal emphasis on music and lyrics; I truly love both. AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers etc? My two biggest influences in terms of the style of guitar that I play are the Tallest Man on Earth and Shakey Graves. I learned the style of fingerpicking I use from the Tallest Man; after I saw him in concert years ago, I locked myself in my room for the next week and stayed up into the wee hours of the morning teaching myself to play just about every one of his songs. I’ve played primarily with that style of fingerpicking ever since. When it came to actual songwriting, Shakey Graves was absolutely my primary influence, at least at the start. My first EP was heavily influenced by his music and songwriting style. Since the initial musical influence of these two artists, I have definitely formed my own more “me” style of both playing and songwriting, though I still find myself pulling influence—however small—from different musicians whenever I write a new song. In terms of other kinds of artists and thinkers that influence my music, Walt Whitman, J.D. Salinger, Simone de Beauvoir, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and numerous Surrealist artists and writers initially come to mind. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? For me, there’s definitely always that “moment”. I like that analogy of the perfect angle of light, where things come together in a certain perfect way that makes you start to appreciate that all this work that’s been put into a song has paid off. But with every song it’s different. Take these three examples of songs off my most recent EP. For one of the songs, I sat down for an afternoon and wrote everything in one sitting, barely changing anything after. I had that moment as soon as it was all put together. For a different song, all I had written was the chorus when I knew it was going to be great. And for another, I spent weeks working on version after version of the song, tweaking it and never really feeling satisfied, almost wanting to throw it out. I only had that moment after all those arduous weeks of work. For me, I have this moment when I hear something really compelling, usually a combination of lyrics I’m particularly proud of paired with an interesting or complex chord progression. I suppose you can think about it as one of those really difficult puzzles that have pieces that are shaped like people, animals, and things, and when you finish a particularly hard part of that puzzle, you marvel over how the flying bird fits perfectly next to the dancing lady and the maple leaf, etc. It’s a wonderful feeling when you first start feeling really excited about something you’ve made, something that’s yours. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing-art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Absolutely, all of the above. I think music can be incredibly cathartic and personal for both the creator and the listener. As a listener, I definitely seek out music that supplements a current feeling or mood, speaks to my current state in life, moves me in a certain way, helps me heal, etc. As a creator, my songwriting process is deeply personal, thus I write about stories of mine that I’ve been wanting to tell, feelings I need to process, things that I’ve kept internal that I feel like I need to externalize in some way. I do a lot of thinking, processing, philosophizing, and healing when I write. It absolutely “saves” me, as you put it. And I really do write for myself; I don’t write thinking “I hope people get such-and-such message from this song” or “I hope this song makes people feel this certain way”. There is often a large discrepancy between an author’s intention and how that text is read and perceived by those who consume it, and I keep that in mind when I write. Even if I did try and write for other people, intending for my work to be read in a certain way, there is no surefire way to make sure that my intentions line up with how people react to my music. For instance, one of my songs is an upbeat and silly tune that was intended to be a funny and almost satirical account of a woman who treats men poorly, yet men still keep chasing her. However, I played it for a friend once before it was recorded, and he read it as a song about how sometimes we fall for people who are bad for us, and it really moved him. His feedback made me truly realize that music can touch us and move us in ways that we never expect it to. And that’s so much of the beauty of it. AHC: When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? It really depends. Like I said above, I write from a very personal place. I first and foremost write from my own experience, and sometimes those lyrics contain a pretty narrow scope that I feel like is sometimes only relevant in my own life. But in the past year and a half or so, I’ve been conscious about expanding the scope of my music to use personal experience to speak to larger social issues. For instance, over half the songs on my most recent EP have to do with feminism and female empowerment in some way or another. I’ve been a conscious and self-identifying feminist for as long as I’ve known what that was, so these songs have a lot to do with womanhood and my experiences with feminism over many years. But at the same time, the historical moment we are currently in gives a frightening new relevance and importance to feminism, and provides important context to the subjects I discuss in these songs, even if I’m telling stories from a long time ago. So I suppose “where the world is” is indeed important to my songwriting, however it doesn’t necessarily take the front seat. And I don’t necessarily foresee myself writing a protest album any time soon… AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road? Well first of all, I don’t really have any musical memories that aren’t fond! But it’s funny—even though I played alone exclusively for many years (well into when I started writing music on guitar), many of my favorite musical memories are of playing and sharing musical experiences with others. Many of these memories are from Denver, which is where I started fleeing to when I was around sixteen, as it’s close to where I grew up in Boulder. Denver is definitely the place I feel like shaped me the most musically, mostly due to the incredible people and musicians I’ve known there. But many of my favorite musical memories also have a lot to do with travel and experiencing music outside the context of what I’m normally familiar with. Some of these memories include befriending a Spanish classical guitar player on the street in Madrid and teaching each other our respective styles of guitar playing, listening to and playing with a group of Son Jarocho players from Mexico, and improvising tango on violin after having not picked up my fiddle in years. I love being thrown into interesting musical situations that are well beyond the scope of what I normally participate in musically, especially when I can share and learn from those experiences with others, old friends and new friends alike. AHC: With the traditional ways that we listen to music rapidly changing, does it affect how you write and put together an album? Too often people are downloading and engaging with singular songs rather than albums as on ordered and thematic canvas, do you regret that your work may not be received in the way it was intended or created? I started recording music in this strange new era of music, where people have extremely short attention spans and get most of their music on the internet. So from my beginnings as an artist, I’ve had to shape how I put out music to fit this modern model. I release everything online, and though I’d love to have physical CDs or vinyl records made for my albums, it’s just not feasible. And even though I want so badly to release full-length albums, I’ve so far released two singles and two EPs because I know that those are just simply more digestible for people to listen to, if I want them to listen to all the songs I put out. Even though I put out shorter projects, I know that even a five or seven song EP is a lot for people to want to listen to, especially since I’m a relatively new artist. It’s something I just have to come to terms with. I’ve put together both my EPs as full project entities, in that they’re best listened to in full and in order. However, knowing that people mostly don’t listen this way, I don’t think it’s at all damaging to my songs to listen to them sporadically, one at a time, etc. When putting out music these days, that’s just something we all have to keep in mind. People listen differently now. AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters or anyone who is struggling to create something of value out there, who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Honestly, I feel like I’m in no place to give advice, as I’m a new artist myself. But I do think about this kind of thing a lot, and how it relates to me and other musicians. I struggle every single day with the idea of really going for music or not. I love writing, playing, and recording, but performance is hard for me, and so up to this point, my musical project as Sophie Rae has essentially just been for fun, a side project of sorts. Right now, it’s an incredible outlet, but not yet a career, and I don’t know if it ever fully will be. And that’s how I like it for now, because I do it for me. I love sharing my music with people, but it’s not my priority. That’s why I don’t obsessively worry about how people interpret my music, or how many plays or attention my songs get online, etc. All I want is to continue creating in order to play and say the things that I need to externalize in some way, because for me, music is the best and most enjoyable way for me to do that. I think more musicians need to think like this. Do it for yourself. Spend time finding a musical voice that works for you, that expresses what you want it to, but don’t obsess over turning that outward. Because I don’t think creating something of “value” needs to be dictated by external validation. To me, music is an expression of self, so why not just start there? AHC: Do you have any projects you'd like to mention? My most recent projects both came out in the past two months. The latest EP “Sirens” is out on Bandcamp at sophierae.bandcamp.com/album/sirens-3. The latest music video, for “Leading Lady” from Sirens, can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq9eCMwA6D8.
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