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Sam Rae Interview: Green Turns to Dust

Photo by Sophia Lou

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“It’s their experimental record,” you say about so many classic artists, the common tale that they tone their traditional chops before venturing out into the realms of improvisation and loops. For Sam Rae, her upcoming record Ten Thousand Years (August 7th) represents the opposite journey. Her first two, 2014′s instrumental, improvised Stories From the Marrow and 2017′s heady Bring Us to New Islands, are drastically different than Years, a bonafide, lyrics-forward folk record born out of Rae’s experience as part of Brandi Carlile’s touring band. Carlile’s tour bus and band members provided Rae with an atmosphere to reflect and write, and as it turns out, she had a lot to say.

Ten Thousand Years is an album about all things Rae, from where she grew up (Iowa City) and where she moved (Santa Cruz, before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina a year ago), to her family and past and present loves, and growing up queer in the Midwest. Throughout, Rae remembers past events and hearing certain stories but is also baffled by the seeming unending nature of time and the world. Her interplay between feelings concrete and abstract is impressively balanced, especially for a first time writer-in-advance. (Ten Thousand Years is the first album on which Rae wrote the lyrics before recording the songs.) The involved personnel and sound, too, has expanded, perhaps to match the scope of Rae’s themes: Not only are we treated to Rae’s voice, guitar, and cello playing, but producer Jacob Hoffman’s french horn, piano, and 12-string Rickenbacker, Kendl Winter’s banjo, Dustin Busch’s hand-crafted lap steel, drummer Sean T. Lane’s homemade rhythm and atmosphere instrument, The Bike. Overall, though, Ten Thousand Years finds a way to hang on to bits and pieces of Rae’s experimentation. It’s two most ambitious tracks bookend it: “Intro”, initially improvised on organ while Rae’s father and fiancee played a game of pool, and “Dying Here”, the longest track on the album with tape and live delay.

I spoke to Rae over the phone last month, the day the album was announced and reverby lead single “Head Rush” premiered on Country Queer, and today, she’ll be doing her first streamed performance of the album’s material, at 6 PM CST on her Instagram. “It’s such a relief to hear it finally entering the world and coming out of my head...so much space is opening up!” she laughed. Of course, Rae is pining to do a real live show but is limited by COVID-19 (“What if I played on a dock and people could ride up on canoes?” she speculated), so for now, that open space will have to be limited to the mental realm. Ultimately, Rae doesn’t seem to be worried about what she can’t control, and to an extent, even the things she can. Life is large, and as she sings on “Colors of the Highway”, “I’m sure I’ll have the choice between remembered or forgotten / Either is fine by me.”

Read our conversation about the record below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Do you feel like Ten Thousand Years represented a big step for you from Bring Us to New Islands?

Sam Rae: Huge. I almost considered taking off my last two records completely. Just making them disappear. I didn’t want to get rid of them, per se, but just having this be my debut because it’s so different from my last two. I ultimately decided against it, because I basically wanted to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to how I got to where I am, which is not necessarily traditional. My first record was an improvised, looped cello concert. I recorded it live and released it. My second one is this ethereal, cello-looping, kind of synth-based record where I started to explore singing a little bit, but it was mostly focused around synth sounds and reverse cello loops. Lots of experimental stuff. This one is pretty much straight up folk. We recorded it to tape. The songs generally have structure. It’s kind of just landing in this more specific genre that just feels better. I was exploring all of this ethereal improvisational stuff for so long just because it was my comfort zone. Improvisational performance is always where I’ve been most comfortable. Writing these songs that are so lyrically exposed is this whole other can of worms. It’s less comfortable for me. But of course, I’m always drawn to the discomfort, so this is where I am. And it feels very right. I’ve finally found my...what’s the word...crevice, or...

SILY: Your niche?

SR: My niche! Or my identity in music that I’ll stick with from here on out, which feels really nice.

SILY: How long had you been writing lyrics or writing in general?

SR: I was already really into stream of consciousness journaling, but I always felt too vulnerable to have those lyrics be front and center. So in my second album, Bring Us To New Islands, I decided to include my lyrics a little bit, but I still definitely hid them behind these sonic textures and cello loops and what not. When I was writing that record, I was literally writing the lyrics to those songs as I was recording them. I would go in, and my producer would be like, “That sounds good,” or, “That sucks,” and I would go home and rewrite something. I was doing it on the fly. I was exploring that discomfort, I guess. That was another big step in the direction of where I am today. Really, to answer your question, the last three years, and especially the last two, particularly in 2018 when I was out with Brandi, I was using the adrenaline and the momentum I felt after shows with her, and I’d run straight to the bus after the show, lock the door, and get out my guitar. I wrote 60 percent of these songs on the back of that bus. She’s really dialed it in--just the level of writing and the music quality and her presence. I was just absorbing it all like a sponge, and I wanted to utilize that freshness of what I was seeing in front of me every night. It was fun to throw these songs together on the back of the bus. I finally had enough songs--6 or so--and thought to myself, “I should just write a record here!”

Writing to this extent is fairly fresh for me. The last two years, I’d say, writing in the form this record represents. Less ethereal.

SILY: You still find ways where you can use your voice instrumentally, but the lyrics are more front and center.

SR: Absolutely.

SILY: You mentioned Brandi and [Carlile’s twin-brother bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth] in your liner notes as providing an atmosphere where you could write. Was that just on tour?

SR: Definitely touring. Trading songs with Tim on the bus or the green room. He’d teach me a few little chords, and I’d go and do a song. Getting a few tips from Brandi here and there about my voice, and definitely taking that to heart. I was highly influenced by their writing on this record. I guess it just challenged me to rise to this level of writing I knew I could achieve. That’s cool just to have them as an example, as a bar.

SILY: You mentioned that you made “a folk record” with this one, though it still contains some of your more experimental tendencies. But in a sense, there are a couple aspects on here associated with traditional folk but maybe not “folk” as we think of it today: homemade instruments and field recordings. Both appear on "Intro”--even though it’s not a “field” and just a basement.

SR: Yeah, the “Intro” on my phone in my dad’s girlfriend’s basement. [laughs] Then, we threw some cello and vocals on top of it.

SILY: It almost lays the groundwork for the spirit of the record, with The Bike, the homemade instrument. It’s got a sense of time and place...is that your dad saying, “Turn it down, it hurts my ears!”

SR: Yeah. [laughs] He’s got hearing aids, so he’s a little more sensitive to sound now. I thought it was just very well-suiting that his voice pops in at the very beginning, like when you’re a kid: “Turn it down! Stop messing around, we’re playing pool. We’re trying to do this thing!” And I’m over there just cranking the organ. Then I keep playing, and you can kind of hear him pipe in one more time: “Turn it down!” I just keep going because I was recording on my phone. I was like, “Ooh, this is cool! I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I don’t want to stop just because of my dad.” [laughs]

SILY: The record is called Ten Thousand Years, and on the title track, you individually go through each set of thousand years. What stuck out to me is you almost present the idea that time is more than what we perceive, when usually, people say the opposite, like, “It goes by so fast!” What’s the idea behind the record title and that track and how it relates to the whole album?

SR: Yeah, that’s a great question. I remember writing that song when I lived in Santa Cruz. I was just thinking about being in a partnership with somebody and how it just felt like every week or every day we were learning another aspect about one another. There’s a high possibility or likelihood we were never gonna learn fully everything. I was pondering that concept and definitely wrote that song in almost one go. Usually, I let it sit and go back and edit and change some lyrics to make it flow, but this one, it just kind of came out. In that song, I’m trying to address these tangible, nostalgic feelings I have for each portion in my life I can divide up into sections I’ve exposed. It gets to this point where it just becomes less tangible. Ten thousand years, and there’s more. There’s that bridge part where I’m just trying to be that ten thousand and one. It’s just based off of the concept that as humans, we’re a lot more complex that we can understand some days, and we can be hard on ourselves to that extent. Not being able to understand or be in control of certain aspects that are just human. Those are going to be there regardless of whether we have control or not. That’s kind of a long-winded version of it.

That theme threads itself through almost every song on the album, especially songs like “Waukee” and “Strangest Thing” and kind of delving into concepts of being present and losing family members and that life is just this kind of sometimes misunderstood thing, I guess. At least from my perspective, I catch myself trying to fully understand it and be completely in control. I have these glimpses of moments where I tell myself to let go of that aspect and realize it’s a lot bigger than myself.

SILY: You’re certainly wrestling with the tangible versus the non-tangible. “Strangest Thing” gets its title from the line, “It’s the strangest thing how the wind can blow but can’t be seen.” That line definitely stuck out to me. Another one is on “Colors of the Highway”, when you sing, “Taste the colors of the highway.” It’s like a certain form of synesthesia. You’re messing with the senses.

SR: Definitely. There’s this sort of ghost-like element to a lot of these songs that touch on things I can’t control or fully understand.

SILY: At the same time, are there any stories on the song that are inspired by or reference hyper-specific events? Like, on “Waukee”, did you really light the family car on fire with a cigarette? [“Oh, you lit the family car on fire with your dead end cigarette.”]

SR: [laughs] That’s a good point. It goes from that extreme of being a little ethereal to these super finite specific moments like that one, referring to my mom when she was a teenager lighting her family car on fire with cigarettes. She was in the car with her other siblings and one parent. I’m constantly fascinated by their stories and how they survived. That’s one of their stories, where she lights the car on fire and my grandpa walks out and just tells her to go inside and go to bed. That song, specifically, is very focused around my family and my mom’s side, specifically.

SILY: On the same song, you talk about “Something in our blood that we find so comforting.” Is that family for you in general?

SR: On my mom’s side, we’re really tight-knit, and we get together on a regular basis. At this point, it’s about 50 of us. She has lots of siblings, and they all have kids, and then they all have kids, and I value the fact that we get together on a regular basis. I value that. I was an only child, and my cousins were kind of my siblings.

SILY: Same here, actually!

SR: Yeah, nice! It’s cool. I always craved that connection to a sibling based off what I saw around me, but I definitely got some of that from my mom’s side of the family. The choruses of that song touch on watching my aunts and uncles pass away one by one. It’s a strange feeling. Every time that happens, there’s a shift in the whole family. It’s kind of rattling, and a large letting go. There’s lots of cancer on that side of the family, so it’s this inevitable shadow, almost. That song’s definitely very family-oriented.

SILY: This might be a stretch, or unintentional, but it reminds me of the saying, “My family is my rock,” and you used literal rocks on the percussion of that track.

SR: I didn’t ever think of that! I found a few unintentional things on this album that I didn’t necessarily mean to do but are cool. That’s one of them. I guess the draw to that rock sound is that textural feeling. Rather than only being a sound, it creates this texture like if you were crumpling sand in your hands. That definitely relates to my feelings around community and family. There’s almost this texture or nostalgia to it that I hold on to.

SILY: Can you tell me about the song “Delaine”?

SR: That tune, I wrote in Astoria, Oregon at the end of a solo run down the coast. I had had the name Delaine floating around my head for a few weeks, and I don’t know why or how it popped into my head. It was just kind of floating around and had no purpose other than to be a name. Then, I decided one day I would write a song about the state of Iowa and name her “Delaine” so I could almost sing to her as if she were a human, which might be kind of weird. [laughs] But it opened up the possibilities of me singing to a place--I could sing to it as if it were alive.

“Delaine” is a placeholder for Iowa, and it touches on my upbringing in Iowa, and coming out as gay in Iowa, and exploring my gender, doing drag, and it just felt so nice against the backdrop of what I felt at the time to be this mundane feeling that I was just becoming bored with the place to the point where I was like, “Get me out of here!” Of course, after I leave, I find myself laughing now about how much I missed it. But I was young and needing to get out and explore things and be in different communities. So it touched on a lot of that and just exploring my identity and a place that wasn’t necessarily surrounded my like-minded people, although Iowa City is pretty rad.

The chorus, I was thinking about just the other day, and I was thinking kind of related to this feeling of screaming into an empty field--my mom used to take me out to an empty cornfield to just scream into the top of my lungs. I would do that, and it was this great release and always felt like the cornfields were there to hold it, hold the scream, or just be simple and calm. So I wrote those choruses, and in a sense, to kind of relate to that feeling of this spacious calm and the ability to release in the midst of that.

SILY: “The prairie fields of rural love.”

SR: Uh huh. This super expansive chorus gives me that same sense of relief as when I would go out and scream into a field. Overall, it offers a lot of space, but it’s pretty angsty. There’s a lot of built-up angst around what it was like to grow up in the Midwest.

SILY: This is probably a hard question to answer, but to what extent do certain songs address a little bit more head-on your experiences growing up queer in Iowa?

SR: Ooh...on this album?

SILY: Yes.

SR: Definitely “Delaine”. There’s a line in “Ten Thousand Years”, one of those segments I go through is, “My TV screen blew up, and I learned how to run.” That’s definitely referencing coming out and just ostracizing myself. I thought everyone was gonna disown me, and they didn’t. I was creating this thing in my head that if I came out, everyone would just stop talking to me because I was definitely abnormal and there weren’t a lot of gay people around me. It turns out I was just scooting around the issue with even my friends after almost a year, and finally, one of them brought it up and was like, “It’s okay, you know.” Because I had been coming to hang out with them with a girlfriend of mine but not saying who she was. It was just this suppressed thing I was creating for myself. “My TV screen blew up, and I learned how to run” refers to the fact that I was suppressing it pretty hard, to the point where I just decided to move away. In retrospect, kind of realizing that a lot of that was in my own head and my family has fully accepted me...although there’s still this kind of passive, “Oh, maybe some day she’ll date a man again. Maybe this is a phase.” My family is getting over that aspect, because it’s been a long time now. [laughs] It’s clearly not a phase.

SILY: And you’re married, right?

SR: Yeah. Well, I’m engaged to be married in October. But my parents and relatives still call her my friend. So there’s a passive underlying, they don’t want to acknowledge it. Not to say that they’re not supportive. So that line, “My TV screen blowing up,” I was creating this explosion in my own head, but it was outwardly existing in a passive way.

SILY: What about the song “Love Is Love”? The title of it is the most common expression for support for marriage equality, and there’s the phrase, “time’s a changin’” in that song, which is one of the oldest political statement tropes. Would you say that song is political in a way?

SR: It definitely is. To be honest, it wasn’t inspired by that. My being gay or queer is a different topic. But it of course applies to that and it’s perfect for the listener to find their own meaning in. I wrote that more around feeling privilege around me in the industry--especially white male privilege--and feeling its effects. It’s obviously a different topic, and I didn’t pinpoint that because I did want the song to be applicable to however the listener wants it to be.

SILY: The last song on the record is intriguing, and one of the things that stood out to me was how you ended it and therefore the album. I thought to myself, “How often do you hear the phrase, 'For example,' in a song, let alone to close the record?” It seemed to be a radical acceptance of things not being tied together entirely. What were you going for with that ending?

SR: I guess it felt like it did tie the whole record together. I sing, “For example, take the green / It turns to dust eventually,” which is basically the summary of the entire album. Everything evolves and changes and dissipates and starts over again. Trying to deny that just feels like you’re running against a current. It’s easier said than done--it’s definitely a process, realizing something like that. And then the following line, “The fire’s not in the rich / It’s in the fire that lights the ditch,” so it definitely ends on a pretty political note, and something I feel very strongly about, which is that in order for change to happen, we have to be a little more than forceful and less passive.

SILY: Maybe more from a prose perspective, it’s almost a very cool rejection of what you’re taught: “End something with a concluding thought.” You’re showing, not telling.

SR: For sure. It doesn’t end in a conclusive, “Here is the answer,” manner.

SILY: Many of the people you worked with--Jacob Hoffman, Trina Shoemaker, Joe Gastwirt--they’ve got pretty big resumes. What’s something you think you learned from working with them, and what might they have learned from working with you?

SR: Good question. Starting with Jacob, he just has this way of making me feel supported. He admires my songs. It’s really refreshing, because he sees me as a human. We have a lot of mutual respect for each other. Building this record off that mutual respect that was already established via touring with Brandi for almost a year on the bus was really crucial. [Hoffman plays piano in Carlile’s band]. He was one of those people I played my songs to after I wrote them on the back of the bus. I would be like, “Hey, come back here, I have a song to play you! What do you think?” I was definitely bouncing these songs off him. It just felt absolutely appropriate to invite him to be the producer.

He’s also this one-take wonder. He absolutely lights up when he picks up an instrument. Whenever he had a part on the song, he’d just go and get these crucial parts. In “Waukee”, that strumming. In “Love Is Love”, those very strong chords. He just nailed those parts on the first take and then he was just done. He was a very positive element in recording this. Him, and my drummer Sean T. Lane, and Mike Davis, the engineer, the three of them just offered these unique sensibilities and experiences. They always looked me straight in the eye when they had anything to say. From day one, they were like, “I’m following your vision.” I was like, “We’re gonna record this to tape and get live takes.” Whether they were hesitant or not, they didn’t show it. That’s not their way of going about it. They had to believe I could get these songs in full takes. I definitely felt that. I think you can get a sense for how comfortable I felt based on how the songs turned out. Jacob was one of the people to spearhead that feeling.

I started working with a different mixer at first. I can be pretty stubborn and like to do everything by myself, so I was like, “I’m gonna find my own mixer!” It just wasn’t working out. I was kind of not willing to admit it at first and ended up learning a pretty big lesson on that because I spent quite a bit of money on the first round of mixes and decided to trash them all--or set them aside, really. I was feeling a little vulnerable to call Trina. Initially, I was thinking I would just call her and have her mix one to two or three songs, and my partner Cat, who has been kind of my strong voice that’s whispering in my hear the whole way through this album process, was like, “Don’t cut corners.” I was running errands one day, and she called me, being like, “What are you gonna do? Are you gonna call Trina?” I was like, “Aw, man, I don’t know if she’s gonna have time, she has work for Sheryl Crow and Wood Brothers.” I was just feeling vulnerable about that. And she was like, “No. You’re gonna call Trina, and you’re gonna ask her to mix your whole record.” I was like, “I don’t know if we can afford it,” and she was like, “We’ll figure it out. Just do it!” It was just this reinforcement that I needed. I immediately called [Trina], and she immediately agreed to do it. It was so easy. I had built up this preconceived notion in my head that just wasn’t true. I called her, and she was super awesome. She actually thought I was a telemarketer, because my number’s from Iowa. She answered, “Who is this?!?” I was like, “Oh, dear!” [laughs] “I’m Sam, I play cello for Brandi.” “Oh, I’m sorry!” Working with her just blew my mind. She told me from the beginning that I’d have to wait for her to finish some projects and be patient, and I was like, “Absolutely, I’m willing to do that. It’s worth it to me.” And so we figured out how to make it work. She nailed a lot of them on the first mix. She really nailed that feeling of aliveness and spaciousness, and she brought out these little treasures I didn’t even know were there, which I thought was really crucial.

I don’t know. She’s an absolute genius and an artist, and working with her was definitely an honor. At some point we were talking on the phone--we ended up kind of becoming friends through this process--and she was telling me how she still studies string recordings and how they’re mixed. Even in her professional years, after so long, she still wants to grow and study these things. It definitely translates into her mixes because she’s not trying to put a thumbprint on them, just trying to make them what they should be. That’s the key, really.

Joe was also super awesome to work with, although mastering is a different experience and a little less involved. He was recommended to me by Trina, so I absolutely trusted that right off the bat. Trina thought he would be a great person to finish this project out, knowing that he, too, is not one to put a huge thumbprint on something. He doesn’t want to leave a mark. He just wants to maintain its integrity and slightly lift it up. That’s what Trina told me, and that’s exactly what he did. So it was a pleasure working with him, too.

Photo by Pete Souza

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

SR: Pete Souza took that photo in Mexico at the second Girls Just Wanna Weekend with Brandi Carlile. I met him years ago through Brandi, because he’d come to shows now and then and take pictures during the show. We started to become friends during that. I asked him one day whether he’d be able to take my album cover. It kind of didn’t work out a few times. He was gonna come to New York for the Madison Square Garden show and ended up not being able to because he was traveling a lot previously. There were a few times we were trying to get together and it didn’t work out. It came down to perfect timing because I still hadn’t found my mixes with Trina, and we hadn’t settled on an album cover yet, and we were in Mexico, and I was like, “Hey, wanna just go have a fun photo shoot?” It was so much fun. I was really nervous because I get super dorky in front of cameras. [laughs] My face just doesn’t look natural. He had this way of making me feel super comfortable. We were just having fun playing with sunlight and different colors of walls. It was just fun! It felt like two artists just working together and collaborating without any intent on what we were gonna achieve. He captured that shot, and then, yeah, the rest is history!

SILY: How have you been holding up during quarantine?

SR: At first it was kind of fun, and I had a lot of time to myself and to work on this release. But honestly, it’s just been hard. The range of emotions is something I’ve never felt quite before. The diversity of them. I’ve never experienced that many in such a small period of time. Usually, they’re stretched out into multiple experiences over a longer period of time. But I’ve gotten to this point where I’m super stir crazy. Cat and I have been really strict, and we have literally just been sheltering in place. We’ve left the house to go see the sun set, but we don’t get out of the car. We go to the grocery store like once a month and wear masks and gloves and are really conscious, so we’re just staying home most of the time.

It’s definitely getting to a place where, for me, I’ve just been completely diving into promotional stuff and album stuff and have been constantly been working on the computer. So it’s been a way for me to cope with my anxiety, but also, maybe not so healthy, because I don’t really have a firm boundary between when I’m doing it and when I’m not. But I’m learning a lot about myself. I think my biggest takeaway is I’m really glad to see how much support has been offered by friends and community members. It’s easy to get down on the world and the state of our government, but it’s been a little uplifting to see people rising up through that and offering their support. Even the smallest little posts, like, “Hey, let me know if I need to buy you a bag of groceries and put it on your doorstep.” Humanity is still good. That reminder is definitely driving me through this. My hope is very high, and my anxiety levels are very high.

SILY: I think a lot of people would agree with that statement...I know you’ve been busy with this record, but have you been consuming any other media, like music, books, movies, or shows?

SR: I’ve definitely been listening to some new records that just came out, including Laura Marling and Fiona Apple. I’ve really, really been diving into the Laura Marling album.

SILY: It’s incredible.

SR: It’s so good. I miss that feeling of putting on an album and immediately feeling relieved about how good it is. It’s more rare these days, me listening to something and want to obsessively listen to it after that. So I’ve been listening to that and definitely watching some shows and sitting on my back porch throwing a ball for my dog. [laughs] My three main activities.

SILY: Is there anything I didn’t ask about, the record or otherwise, that you want to say?

SR: Hmm...I guess the only thing that comes to mind is that, overarchingly, with this record, I really wanted to have a live feeling as if you were in the room. My intention around trying to catch these live takes, with guitar, main vocals, and drums, is that the drums and I could kind of create that vibe and then we’d build off of that. Sean and I were just working off of each other with those initial takes. At first it was an experiment, those initial takes, but we ended up being really proud of it.

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