Rachael Yamagata

(December 2008)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Also published on ARTISTdirect

After making an arresting debut on 2004’s Happenstance, Rachael Yamagata seemed to be headed for a rapid rise in the ranks of young singer-songwriters.  Her emotionally rich but easily accessible songs proved alluring to music supervisors, leading to appearances on influential TV shows like The O.C. and One Tree Hill, as well as a number of films, including Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown.

Then she took an unwanted ride on the music industry’s 21st century roller coaster, getting dropped from her label and spending years in limbo, wondering when her second album would see the light of day.  That time has finally come.  The two-disc set Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart documents a period of personal and professional unrest – with one disc devoted to meditative ballads and the second disc giving Yamagata a chance to rock out a bit.  The album earned a rare five-star review on ARTISTdirect.

After playing a few shows on the Hotel Café’s winter tour, Yamagata talked about the evolution of Elephants, her unusual musical education and the surprising Parental Advisory sticker on her cover.

It feels like you’ve been away a long time.  I know that you’ve been touring and weathering industry b.s. and working with other people – but does it feel like a long time coming for you, too?

Ages.  It does.  Even just playing shows – I’m like “Oh, yeah, that’s what it’s like.”  I try to keep busy in other realms and I feel like I’ve been doing something all that time, but being out of the public eye and all of those things, I do feel like it’s been a while.  There were points where I was ready to tear my hair out.  I always knew I could release it somehow – but it was like “Come on!  Let’s go!”  There was a long period of getting really excited like it was going to happen and then getting let down that it didn’t – many cycles of that.  It’s almost anticlimactic that it’s out.  [Laughs] 

So you recorded and finished this quite a while ago, then?

We went into the studio in the spring of 2006 and really had it finished by the fall of 2006.  So it’s been a while, absolutely.  I knew it was going to be a tough thing for me to be able to perform it; I warned people “It’s going to get old for me.”  The only thing I could do was stay away from it, so what I would do is take six months off from ever listening to it. Even at points when I really wanted to hear it again, I just wouldn’t.  I think that’s the only thing of giving me any hope of now going out and performing it live with a new band and remembering that it’s new for other people, even if it’s been around for me for a little while.  I’m glad I did that because I feel energized during shows and excited about putting together the formation of arrangements. 

You’re kind of like an actor who has to hit the publicity rounds years after wrapping a film.

Totally.  At least they have the advantage of it being someone else’s script and playing a character.  For me, I’m not necessarily the same person I was when I wrote these, you know what I mean?  I’ve evolved since then.

I know you were conscious of your live shows when you were writing – and that you liked the idea of having some more rock-oriented, guitar-based songs.  They’re on a separate disc with the new record, but they’re interwoven in the live show, right?

Yeah, they’re mixed in together.  The live show is much easier to mix together than the record; if you put “Elephants” next to “Faster” on the record, it would make a listener go “What the hell?”  Yet I’ve gone out and started a show with “Elephants” a capella and people are totally with you, like pin drop silence, and then you give them five seconds to breathe and the full band comes in and does “Faster” and gets the crowd moving with a different energy.  It can be an effective tool to have two different dynamics like that and to keep people guessing and to manipulate the energy in a room in a way that doesn’t allow for boredom.

Speaking of rock, I have to tease you a little about Led Zeppelin being a new discovery for you. 

[Laughs]  I’m terrible.  People ask me “What are you listening to?” and I’m not the one to ask.  My real musical education is so far behind most people in terms of the classics.  The most important records can be new discoveries for me.  I discovered The Band and The Who and even The Beatles really late.  It’s been fun in some ways, just because I still have so many first-time experiences out there.  But, yeah, Led Zeppelin was one of those bands.  I go in phases.  When I was growing up, my parents were listening to a lot of whatever was on ‘70s easy-listening radio, which happened to be a lot of singer-songwriters.  I got Carole King, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Simon & Garfunkel – that whole mix.  That was all really in my brain when I first started.  My dad and stepmom used to always go to Beach Boys concerts, so I’d go to the Beach Boys.  I had a boyfriend who took me to the Violent Femmes and PiL.  Then I joined this band Bumpus in Chicago and they opened me up to Tom Waits and John Coltrane and Nina Simone and Sly & The Family Stone and The Pharcyde.  P-Funk and Aretha Franklin, too.  I don’t know what it was that captured me with Led Zeppelin, but my tastes had changed.  I was like “What is that guitar solo?!?  I can write twelve-minute songs!”  I feel like a real novice in music in many ways.  But it worked out.  [Laughs]

There’s a certain advantage to that, because I think for so many of us, it’s hard to divorce those classic albums from their nostalgic ties in our formative years – you know, “Ah, Zeppelin…it’s like I’m back in high school getting stoned again.”

[Laughs]  Right, that’s so funny.  In high school, I was listening to Les Miserables while sitting on a swing set wondering if I’d ever fall in love.  It was a very different experience.  [Laughs]

You got tagged with a Parental Advisory sticker!

I did!

Does that mean anything anymore?  Does that keep you from getting sold in Starbucks?  Does the label think it won’t sell as many copies to 14-year-olds?  Are there any ramifications at all?

Well, I don’t think Walmart is taking me anymore.  [Laughs]  No.  I’m such a fan of the particular songs that contain “the bad words” that I don’t regret them in any way.  If anything, for me, I think it would perk people’s ears up to be like “What did she do that got her that sticker?”  I don’t think people look at me in that way.  I’ve never wanted to be the artist where my main fanbase is young girls who are looking at me in a pop vein.  At 14, you know a lot.  You have a much deeper perception of the world than I think people give you credit for; not to say they know everything, but I remember feeling like I knew a lot.  So I don’t want to discredit 14-year-olds – but I don’t want the audience looking at me to be a Kelly Clarkson, because I don’t feel that’s where I’m coming from.  If anything, I feel like a little sticker like that might give me a little cred.  [Laughs] 

A fair chunk of Happenstance had a second life with licensing for film and TV.  Is that happening again with the new one?  How much do you get personally involved – do you veto things?

Unless it’s something I really disagree with, I’ll let it go.  Certainly with Happenstance, the songs had these universal themes that seemed to work with the stories they were doing on film and television.  There were a couple that matched up really well.  My only hesitation every now and then is that I don’t want to be known as the artist who only gets on TV and film.  I keep maybe more of an eye on it now.  There are a couple things floating around for this record.  As long as there’s artistry behind it, I think it can be a really good thing.  But I don’t go out and actively seek them.  I’ll be excited to see what does happen.  These are darker songs and there’s an intensity to them that I think might actually keep them out of placements.  But if they do make it in, I think they might be really strong.

How do you feel about Happenstance in hindsight?  Do you feel that the new record is quote-unquote better?  Just different?

I think it’s enriched from Happenstance.  I love what we did with Happenstance; I still love that record.  I think there’s something more intense and harder than grasp about this record.  If you have one magical listen with this, then that’s what I got out of it.  I’ve gone through so much with rearranging sequences and wondering whether it would ever come out, but I knew I had one super, super solid listen by myself that broke my heart in the greatest way.  For me, I feel like there’s a richness and risk-taking and poetry to it that’s new to me – and it’s because I went through different experiences and evolved in many ways.  Before I learned to hate it because it’s been so long… [Laughs]… there have been times when I truly loved it.

I understand that you’re a night owl when you’re writing.  Are you always on that odd schedule or is it a cyclical thing?

That’s when I’m writing, really – because I love mornings.  I can’t sleep during the day most of the time.  Even holidays – I like having my holidays when other people aren’t having them.  I like separating myself on a time level, especially when I’m doing something creative.  It’s more magical for some reason.  There’s something special and secretive about it – almost like you get all the creative energy that’s out there because everyone else is sleeping through it.

You recently played some shows on Hotel Café’s winter tour.  Hotel Café has become a real brand out here in L.A. and seems to inspire a lot of loyalty from the artists who play there.  What makes it such a special venue for you?

It has some sort of gathering quality – you can go any night and run into people you know.  I think people love it from the artist side because we’ve all spent the past five or six years watching each other succeed on different levels together.  Hotel Café didn’t even have its current construction when we started playing there, and they gave us all a shot – all of us unknown artists.  I think we all feel like there’s a great hangout vibe, and they have a keen eye on interesting music.  It will be interesting to see because now artists from all over are clamoring to be on the Hotel Café tours and there’s not this background of having played it without it being a brand.  Now there will be this transition – how does it become this brand and still stay authentic?  You know you can go there and you’ll always see something unique.  They helped me tremendously.  I have a whole West Coast fanbase and I think that’s very much to do with just playing that club. 

Most of the talk about the music industry these days is pretty doom-and-gloomy.  Having freshly signed up with Warner Bros., I’m guessing you have a slightly more optimistic take, at least for the short-term?  Maybe? 

I do.  For right now.  It took a lot for me to go back into the system, and the only reason I did it was because I had known the A&R guy for a number of years – Perry Watts-Russell, who signed me to Warners.  He had tried signing me years ago and he was the one guy who… I know it sounds weird, but he was the A&R guy who got away.  [Laughs]  I was fascinated by the stuff he gravitated toward.  When I met with everyone at Warners, they were the one company that had this lively energy to them in a way that was like “We like going to work.”  There’s still an optimistic quality to their company – and there’s a great logic to how they’re keeping the creative side going while making necessary financial comebacks.  It wasn’t “cut the artists that don’t sell anything” and it was more like “Be more frugal about the $300,000 video budgets.”