Rachel Ries

I've been playing so much music I'm getting my calluses back and my wrist aches!  Good good pain!

I've also spent much time mulling over the word "Retreat."  It really isn't accurate in the least.  Sequestering yourself within the work of writing feels far more like charging into battle, intent on facing the darkest within, yet hellbent on making it out to the rise on the other side.  This is no retreat. 

Can you tell by my analogy that I've also been reading Game of Thrones?  I've had to make myself stop due to productivity and sleep levels.

Mostly I want to direct you over here to listen and download my song for week one: "Holiest Day."  Next Monday I'll wind back down out of the mountains to sit here at the Tellico Plains Library and offer up a song for week two. 

Now I'm going to treat myself to a diner meal on Main Street!

Warm wishes,

rachel

I feel so good.

I feel both joyful and calm which is a particularly sweet place to reside.

On Friday (the 13th!) I'm tossing into the car myself, a heap of instruments and recording equipment, a couple important (to me) books, some song sketches and my running shoes.  We're heading out for a long, long drive.  Destination?  Some mysterious, tiny place called Laurel Lake, Tennessee.  Purpose?  Writing, recording and diving as far inward as a month'll get me.

Months ago Adrian suggested I claim a winter writing retreat for myself as it's been hard - this tiny home in the city living.  Songs don't find their way out near as often as they once did and my melody-cycling mind has atrophied and forgotten it's own rhythms.  It used to be the song strains never stopped.  Now it's just a monotone babble in here.  So I'm getting out!  Getting to where it's quiet so I can get back to being loud.

I know virtually nothing about where I'm going but my intention is to find a way, once a week, to upload a new song for you to hear.  I'll post them in their own little "Laurel Lake" album on my Listen page.  And it'll be healthy to make my way into town once a week, right?  Walk down some unknown Main Street of the South, a stranger? 

So, if you would, please check up on me on Monday the 23rd.  See if I've been good on my word!

See you in the country,

rachel

On Friday I'll be donning my wedding dress, stuffing it with a pillow or two, only to give fake birth to, heaven help me, my husband??  Perhaps him as my baby wasn't the greatest casting decision after all.  Too late now!

The idea for this was born on an island at a music camp:  theatrical retellings of achingly gorgeous (and sordid) Scots & British ballads.  They're just full to brimming with action and imagery!  Witchcraft, adulterous affairs, bar fights, hangings, true loves and on. These songs cry out to, well, make you cry.  But they also cry out to become Monty Python sketches.  And that's just what some brave and talented musician friends and I are setting about to do! 

It's gonna be great.  Rehearsals have been a hoot and it's a rather gifted and good-natured cast, if I do say so myself.

Friday, Dec 2, 9pm
Jalopy Theater and School of Music
Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn Ballad Theatre Presents:
Willie's Ladies
Facebook for videos and such

Come if you can!

love, rachel

Here's the official blurb:

If my friend Jeremy hadn't already written the most impecable graveyard concept album, I'd be inspired to give it a go.  A lush resting place can be seen from most every window in this new home of ours and it's already creeping in when I write.  Leave it to a graveyard to go sneaking about in my mind, insinuating itself.

So, a new city.  New songs.  New views, hopes & prospects.  And it's time to play!  Enough quiet already.

This month I'll be relearning the viola and getting acquainted with a harmonium in preparation of some more shows with Anaïs.  California!  We're coming over!  We'll see about that whole viola business - I tossed it aside in a bit of a tantrum yearsandyears ago and I hope my fingers recall how?  Deep in their bones they should know?

Next month I head back to Chicago to play in Millennium Park, opening for Ted Leo & the Pharmacists.  And oh! to play with Ari, Evan and Matt again!  July 25th.  Free.

Listening to lately:

Karen Dalton - In My Own Time  (what a voice!  weird, gorgeous, addictive)

Steeleye Span - Hark! The Village Wait  (can't stop, can't stop, don't want to stop)

P.J. Harvey - Let England Shake  (she can do no wrong)

Ólöf Arnalds - Innundir Skinni  (don't know what she's saying but I like it)

Where are the men?  I don't know.  Somewhere, waiting.

Back to watching the cemetery,

rachel

March 19th at the Hideout.  That's gonna be the last night for playing a show here and calling it home. 

It feels strange.  And important - to have that one last time, this one more chance for it to feel like home and not just a visit. 

Perfect that it'll be at the Hideout - before I moved to this city, I knew of the place and had my sights set.  I was a shy homing pigeon and the Hideout was gonna be my nest.  The first time I went out to see a show here (8 years ago?) I was so lonesome for music I could feel so I went there to hear Kelly Hogan & Scott Ligon.  I sat quiet in the corner with tears quiet down my cheeks.

Our move is fast approaching - Brooklyn-bound - and I guess I've turned the corner into wistfulness.  Next I'll start tearing up to hear "Sweet Home Chicago" or something.

-rachel