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Rachel McCartney’s Fire Burning Bright
That voice. Somewhere between Eva Cassidy’s soaring emotion and Etta
James’ raw belting power, Rachel McCartney’s voice rips the roof off
and then points out the beauty of the night sky. She is undeniably
one of Boston's best singers.
But what makes her more than just a great singer is that she can write. Rachel’s songs transcend ‘song’ to become vehicles for her voice and a sort of emotional poetry that goes beyond the words she’s singing. It’s a funny thing because the chords she uses are so simple – almost to the point of cliché. How many times can folkies strum through an open C or D chord before audiences spontaneously combust? But when Rachel does it, it’s just a skeleton supporting the lovely body of a song that sings of unexpectedly beautiful things.
I trek out Comm Ave to the Paradise Lounge — a great addition to the
scene and a major step up from the Eurotrashy M-80 it used to be —
to see her play. I get there early and some folkie who’s listened
to way too much John Mayer is strumming his heart out. The place is
filling up and Rose Polenzani, alumna of Voices on the Verge and a
bright light in Boston’s folk scene, pokes her head in looking for
Rachel. She asks me if I’ve seen her. I say she’ll be on shortly.
She nods and ducks out. A guy ambles by with his girlfriend and asks
me where the bathroom is. I say it’s down the hall. I should get paid
for this. He comes back a few minutes later and says he and his “girlfriend
are in from Worcester for a big night out.” He’s never heard of Rachel
McCartney. His girlfriend comes back and they walk up to the balcony
and lean on the rail overlooking the stage.
The folkie-dude finally finishes and Rachel sets up. She gets the
OK from the sound guy and lilts into "Pour Me Down the River," an
undeniably great song from her undeniably great CD Interim. People
quiet. About half the room is there to see her, the other half is
BU undergrads swilling Red Stripe and munching thin-crust pizza. She
takes the BU crowd by surprise and they clap warmly at the end of
the song. Three songs later the room is hers to do with as she likes.
It’s as if she’s slowly built a campfire between her and us and she’s
singing to us as friends. It feels incongruous because we’re on Comm
Ave in the middle of Boston. But her music is like that — those simple,
familiar chords that could have been put together half a century ago
by Woody Guthrie mixed with an edgy, soaring, urgent, city voice that
makes you sit up and listen. By the time she’s in full swing on "Will
I" people are genuinely moved. She winds "Ocean Song" down to almost
a whisper: “I remember when I felt so sure/Every step I took came
with an open door.” I look around and can see the thirty-somethings
connect with the line. The BU students get the passion but I’m guessing
they’re still enjoying their open doors. But none of that matters
‘cause we’re hanging here together beside Rachel’s fire. I look up
at the balcony and the Worcester guy and his girlfriend are hooked.
I wonder if they expected this on their “big night out.”
One of Boston’s best-kept secrets, Rachel McCartney has released four CDs over the last eight years and toured the Midwest and East Coast headlining shows and opening for heavy hitters like Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin and David Gray.
Rachel’s songs are full of questions. It’s as if she’s figured out that you don’t get good answers unless you ask good questions. On the soulful "Will I" she sings of a love that’s going to fill “me up with grace” that’s “clearing my throat so I can sing/Will I, will I, will I listen?/Will I figure out it’s waiting to celebrate me here?/Will I listen now, it’s screaming forgiveness in my ear?/ Will I admit something loves me better than I do?”
She has the courage to believe that she — like all of us (even the guy from Worcester) — is worth celebrating now and again. And she has the faith to reach for something beyond her self for answers. This is particularly striking because most songwriters are scared to delve into ‘grace’ or ‘faith’ or ‘God’ for fear of coming off as ‘religious.’ It’s safe to sing about being miserable but unsafe to sing about faith, chic to be a cynic but un-cool to be into grace. As a society we’re understandably nervous about fundamentalism and its stubborn refusal to embrace either questions or the people who ask them. But why should this nervousness shut our ears to ‘grace’? There must be a place for sincere faith — and Rachel seems to be tapping into that place. In "So Good" she asks: “Is it supposed to be so cruel?/Is it supposed to be so mean?/Is it supposed to be so good?/Is it meant to be so fun?/Is it meant to be so hard?/Is it meant to be understood?”
Fortunately, she has a poet’s gift for words that makes all this work. She paints succinct portraits of her world that, like most intensely personal things, speak to all of us. Imagine Joni Mitchell edited by Ann Sexton.
“You pour me down the river
And I become a wave.
You show me to the mountain
And I will gladly walk for days.”
Interim was recorded in a friend’s living room and live after hours at Club Passim. This approach suits her and the performances, especially the Passim tracks, are stunning. This is music made by real people in a real room, which is almost unheard of in today’s digitally enhanced music world. The songs bristle with energy and every line Rachel sings sounds as if you’re hearing it come out of her for the first time. Co-producer Brian Webb plays guitar and sings, the omni-present Sean Staples plays mandolin and Plamen Jetchev plays bass. At one point, you can hear Brian Webb clear his throat before he sings a harmony. It’s intimate — like the songs and like Rachel is live. The melodies and words stick. A month after getting a copy of the CD, I’m still walking around singing "Pour Me Down the River." (To get it stuck in your head visit http://www.rachelmccartney.com/music/index.html)
Back at the Paradise Lounge, my tattooed pixie of a waitress brings
the bill. Rachel tunes her guitar and says this’ll be her last song.
She starts into it and there’s that voice — rising like a storm and
then drawing a note out like a lonely ghost. It blows my mind that
stockbrokers make a killing moving money around and here’s this singer
giving so much of herself, getting a room full of people to connect
with themselves in ways they don’t understand, inviting each of us
to warm ourselves by her fire — and she’s going to make $50 and sell
a few CDs. Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she does it ‘cause she loves
it, or ‘cause she has to, or ‘cause she’s not sure what else to do.
Whatever. She does it and she does it with passion and grace. The
song soars and then settles and then finishes quietly. Rachel thanks
people and unplugs her guitar. People clap and holler — we all want
more. The house sound system comes on and I feel the place pull towards
something more pop, more “entertaining,” which ultimately will just
be something less. I don’t want to stay for that. The campfire Rachel
built for us is down to embers and as she steps off stage it goes
out. But I collected some embers during the show, and as I step onto
Comm Ave, I take them with me. |
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