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BGS 5+5: Her Crooked Heart’s Rachel Ries

Jun 24, 2019

BGS 5+5: Her Crooked Heart's Rachel Ries

Artist: Her Crooked Heart
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Latest album: To Love To Leave To Live
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): My choir calls me ā€˜Coach Racketā€™ or just Coach which is super sweet. (My sister calls me Racket because I make noise, despite being a generally quite quiet person).

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Iā€™m the founding director and choral arranger for a weirdo charming 60-voice indie choir in the Twin Cities. For our first season finale, I arranged a backup choir part for a song of mine called “Ghost” off my last album, Ghost of a Gardener. That moment there on the Icehouse stage [a venue in Minneapolis], when the outro hit and all the vocals coalesced into one determined statement of faith in humanity and purpose — holy is the best way I can describe it. Iā€™ve never felt so proud, satisfied, gratified, faithful, boundless on stage.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?

I very much enjoy using my hands to create things I find beautiful and pleasing ā€“ from linocut prints, hand-sewn CD sleeves, detailed pencil portraits, to homemade rhubarb sour cherry jam… While I canā€™t say these art forms inform my music, I steadily strive to find ways to merge the various expressions with my music. I make handmade editions of releases, draw portraits of my patrons from time to time, make jam to sell at the merch tableā€¦ I used to be a fairly unhappy monochrome musician. Itā€™s helped me immensely to find ways to bring more of my entire self to this music-presenting table.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I have no idea what led up to this moment, but I clearly remember being a 4-year-old, the youngest daughter of Mennonite medical missionaries in Zaire, sitting on Sueā€™s lap in our little house in the village. She was my friend, minder, and a fellow mission-worker. I gazed up at her (I adored her) and declared ā€œI wanna be a singer when I grow up.ā€ I have no idea where that came from and why. But it sure stuck. Itā€™s been my engine of purpose; my wheel of longing for as long as I have memory.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Ah the toughest timeā€¦ When I was living in a relationship I knew in my core was not right for me; for either of us. The denial was deep and I wouldnā€™t let myself see it clearly, let alone articulate it. During that time, whenever Iā€™d sit down to write a song, it was as if Iā€™d lifted a manhole cover and this dark demon snarl of ā€œGet me out / Run / Abort! Abort!ā€ was trying to rush out and burn my life to the ground. So Iā€™d quickly slam the cover back down and do something, anything else. Curiously, once Iā€™d finally been honest, all those snarling sad song fumes justā€¦ vanished. They dissolved into the ether and I finally had songs again.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use ā€œyouā€ when it’s actually ā€œmeā€?

Almost never. And if I do, itā€™s an intentional choice with a reveal at the end when the pronoun switches to ā€˜Iā€™ and I claim my role within the song. If memory serves, Iā€™ve played this card a few times, though, so I might have used up that hand…

But this links up with something quite important to me in songwriting ā€“ attempting to articulate universals with emotionally resonant specificity. ā€œPleasant Valley Reservoirā€ describes the day I got dumped and willfully got lost driving the backroads of Vermont. It ends with the lyric, sung almost as a dare: ā€œAm I lost if it’s where I choose to be?ā€ Iā€™m the ā€˜Iā€™ but thatā€™s totally for us. Itā€™s one of my favorite lines to deliver live. If Iā€™ve done my job, I swear I can almost hear the click of recognition in the audience. Pronouns are wonderfully mutable at times.


Photo credit: Nate Ryan

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BGS 5+5: Her Crooked Heart's Rachel Ries
BGS 5+5: Her Crooked Heart's Rachel Ries