Read The Room's co-editor Alfie Whitby catches up with Wales based folk singer-songwriter and artist Rachel Taylor-Beales, via email, for a natter about her extensive music career and successful hop into the world of theatre.
Alife Whitby: I know this is a massive question for someone with a career as established as yours but I’m going to ask it! When/how did your musical and artistic journey begin?
Rachel Taylor-Beales: In many ways it all happened via osmosis… I’m really fortunate that I was always surrounded by creativity growing up. My grandparents were classical musicians and both my mum and dad also wrote songs when I was young. I have early memories of listening to them rehearsing in a folk band they once played in. I wrote my first song, aged 8. It was a collaboration with my younger brother. A micro-rap called ‘Co-operation’ (Sesame Street inspired theme I think) that went ‘Cooperation/ ba, ba, ba, baaaam/ It’s how you do it/ ba, ba, ba, baaaam… We had to perform it with an American accent and we spent hours arguing over how best to say the ‘ba, ba, ba, baaaam’ bit completely undermining the messaging of our band’s brand … I carried on writing though my teens and joined various bands along the way (you’ll be pleased to know this was indie-folk not Sesame Street rap).
Then in my mid twenties having toured as a performer in a community arts company, and as a touring musician for various arts and theatre shows, I felt it was time to focus more seriously on my own song writing. I recorded and self-released my debut album Brilliant Blue in 2004 and began working full time as a singer-songwriter… that led to me being signed to a small Independent label for a short season, before I took back creative control and began releasing music on my self founded label Hushland.
AW: Storytelling is an integral part of your music. What is your approach when sitting down to write a song? What inspires you?
RTB: I’m inspired by so many things. Everything really. Politics, myth, books I’ve read, people I meet, landscape, conversations, ideas, my own life… I think initially my songwriting was mostly inward focussed. I would write as a way of expressing my internal world. But over time, I began to look outward, experimenting with songcraft as a form of storytelling. I know some songwriters who have a very set pattern to how they craft their work. My process is more haphazard. Sometimes the words come first, sometimes it’s the music and very occasionally a song will happen quickly with words and music flowing simultaneously. Usually it’s a slow process, lots of grafting and editing until I feel I’ve found the right flow of words to music. I feel I’m still learning how to write, and I have lived through periods of time when finding the muse for a song is much harder to pin down, at these times I’ve learned to just turn up and splurge anything on a page. Even if it’s awful, there might eventually be one line or idea that sparks a song.
AW: You’ve lived in Wales for quite some time now, do your surroundings and location have an impact on the kind of art you create? Are there any locations that you are particularly drawn to?
RTB: I’m so privileged to live on the Welsh Coastline right now. The sea is always one of my go to locations, for everything. Having grown up on the West Australian coast and going swimming before school in the early mornings, I’ve realised that being near to the sea feels important to me. I go there to get clarity, to broaden my perspective, to be immersed in nature… and also to walk the dog! I’m definitely influenced by landscape, and spend a lot of time taking photographs of the way the beach is constantly changing. There’s something about the collision of worlds, land and sea that I find fascinating. I’m currently working on a series of abstract paintings inspired by a small stretch of coastline, close to where I live.
AW: You ventured into theatre with the production of ‘Stone’s Throw, Lament of the Selkie’. What was it like to work on and create that project? Did it require a different creative approach than normal?
RTB: It was an incredible experience on so many levels. In 2012, my career as a touring singer songwriter had a major hiatus when I fell off an extremely high stage in Italy. I was 24 weeks pregnant at the time. The venue was a former cinema in the beautiful town of Centallo and just as I’d got up on stage for my soundcheck, someone asked a question and as I turned to answer the stage lights that were being checked, flashed in my eyes and I missed my footing and fell of the side of the stage, landing on the marble stone flooring. Fortunately my baby was unharmed, but I suffered severe injuries and mobility loss, and a few months later traumatic birthing complications that were impacted in part by internal injuries that had not been discovered. All of that all took me several years to recover from.
When I began to write about my experiences for the first time via blog posts, I began receiving messages from many different people saying that they’d resonated with my story and found it helpful to read. I realised that the struggle of needing to rebuild yourself, is a universal one, and I began to wonder if I could find a way of telling my story, beyond songs. Gig theatre seemed like a good option. I was very keen to broaden the focus beyond just myself, so theatre and storytelling became a device for me to combine my own story with Selkie myth. I also used verbatim experiences of others who offered me sound bites of their stories in their own words.
Teaming up with award winning theatre makers Lucy Rivers and Lou Osborn, really helped me find a new creative practice. They were both wonderful and multi-skilled colleagues. Their combined experience and expertise enabled my fledgling ideas to be realised as they helped me to shape the show. Collaboration was crucial to me being able to create that work. It’s opened up so much for me as well. The process also made me realise that I really enjoyed writing scripts, and so I’m currently on a Creative Writing Masters Degree at Swansea University to focus on learning more about script (and other writing forms) as a craft.
AW: Your latest record ‘Out Of This Frame’ is a really beautiful folk album, the songs often quite personal lyrically. What did you enjoy the most about writing and recording the record?
RTB: After wrestling (and often getting frustrated) with the writing part that will bring a song into being, I always really love the creative process of arranging musical parts for a song. For this album all the material was brand new and not gigged before so I hadn’t had a lot of time living with musical arrangements. I asked my musical collaborators to respond to the different songs with a series of improvised takes. This meant that I had lots to experiment with and cut and paste from all the different recordings that we made. Sometimes an unexpected harmony world emerge between the different takes, that was far more interesting than my composing could have come up with!
AW: There’s some incredible artwork that accompanies the album, did you have a concept in mind when you started or were the portraits a natural offshoot? How long would a portrait normally take you to create?
RTB: Thank you! I began focusing on painting portraits again during lockdown and I was also recording the album at the same time so there was a bit of a natural offshoot about it all. Then as the album developed I felt that the artwork I was making really connected and decided that it would become a more integral part of the project. As far as how long it takes… I’m quite slow at painting, each portrait would take me several days.
AW: You mention quite an array of instruments involved in making ‘Out Of This Frame’, do you have any favourites that you love to play? Is there an instrument you haven’t tried yet but would love to?
RTB: I always love playing my two semi-acoustic Avalon and Maton guitars, I’ve currently got them both set up in different tunings so they always feel very different from each other to play. Likewise it’s great to get my Tanglewood electric guitar out too. For this album I wanted to explore different sound textures, so I did a fair bit of experimenting with different instrumentation. I’d been gifted a steel tongue drum for my birthday and was pleased to be able to find a few songs that it worked on as a background tone. Similarly using a little kalimba to create a jazzy vibraphone sound on one of the songs was unexpected.
As far as instruments I haven’t played- I had a lovely time touring with an American singer-songwriter Jude Brothers earlier this year (do check them out, they're wonderful!) They had a beautiful travel sized celtic harp (that could fit in the overhead lockers of a plane) that they gigged with, the tone was so beautiful, and I definitely had instrument envy for that one.
AW: Finally, can you tell us about any music, film/tv or literature that you’re currently enjoying?
RTB: Re music: I’ve been listening to Sufjan Steven’s new album Javelin on repeat this week- it's heartbreaking and brilliant. I thought Josienne Clarke’s Onliness was a gorgeous album earlier this year and I also enjoyed a live album Live at The Pound by a band I’ve only recently discovered called The Little Unsaid… And Kae Tempest The Line Is A Curve, I saw them performing their album live, absolutely stunning performer and artist. Re books: I’ve always got loads of books on the go at once, right now on my desk there’s a great book of short stories by comedien Josie Long called Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and You Don’t … Blood Harmony is a play I’m reading by Welsh playwright Matthew Bulgo (who has written some brilliant plays in recent years).... A few years ago I decided to try and read more science alongside all arts and literature and I’ve just started Helen Czerski’s new book Blue Machine- it's all about how the ocean shapes our world and is really fascinating… I recently finished Experiments In Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi. I'm still thinking about it - definitely recommend… I’ve also just started The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma which has beautiful writing… as far as TV: I loved Good Omens - so much fun, (and that ending!) And filmwise I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once it was fantastic!
You can find out more about Rachel’s music and creative projects on her official website: www.racheltaylor-beales.com
Words: Alfie Whitby (they/them)
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