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Rain Perry - A White Album - New
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A White Album,
by American singer and songwriter Rain Perry, which will be released on
April 15 (2022) is a lot of things, a collection of songs with an
activist theme, some original and some covers from music icons, it is
heartfelt, and it is sincere, but what is most of all is very, very
good. It was our pleasure to sit down with Rain Perry recently to
discuss her new record and why these songs are so special to her.
She says, “It is definitely a concept album. It is somewhat of a sequel
to my album Cinderblock Bookshelves, and it was a memoir in music
about me growing up as a hippie kid raised by my dad. This record, A
White Album, is me looking back at my same life and my same family,
but through the lens of race. It is called A White Album, because
it is me telling my story. I think most larger topics are best addressed
through people and it is my way of wading into a fraught conversation
and to talk about some issues that we seem to be having a hard time
talking about right now.”
Although the common thread is raising awareness of societal issues, the
songs on the album do not come across as preachy or even protestation,
but instead seem to be asking the question, why are we still here after
all these years, far removed from the civil rights movement of the 1960s
and yet in many ways the needle seems to have barely moved.
The most moving albums to me are ones that inspired this album, like,
some of the great socially conscious records of the sixties and
seventies, Stevie Wonder’s works on Innervisions, What’s Going
On by Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, Young, Gifted and Black.
They are songs that talk about your own personal experiences in life. I
think they have a way of opening the hearts of people, instead of them
building fences.
I have plenty to learn and a lot of this is me wrestling with my own
process of trying to be fairer and more open hearted,” Rain Perry says
reflectively.
The gentle opening of the first track, “Melody and Jack,” is a true to
life ballad, drawn from Rain Perry’s own life. It is the story of her
mother’s life, a white girl who had a black suitor, who had a crush on
her. The story was told to Rain Perry by her grandmother.
“Melody was my mom. That was her name and she died when I was very young
and many of the stories, I have of her were told by other people. I
remember the story that my grandmother told me more than once when my
grandfather was working at a shipyard. I think everybody’s dad worked at
the shipyard. My grandmother told me these stories of my mom and her
group of friends who were just running around. One of them was black.
Jack is not his real name. I have no idea what his real name was. One
day he told my grandmother that he was in love with my mom and one day
he would marry my mom. I always thought it was a cute poignant story
until recently when I took a fresh look at it.
I thought this would have been the mid-fifties and Emmet Till, was
murdered right around this time. He was in jeopardy for expressing a
crush on a white girl. Something bad could have easily happened to Jack,
because of that. I had so much empathy for him, because of the reality
of it, but also because of the loss of innocence. It is very likely
(Jack’s) mom had to have a talk with him. It is a talk that almost
always the parents of black children have to have, which is to be
careful. You are looked at a certain way and you have to be prepared to
deal with that. It seemed like a good way to start the record, because
it is something from my own family. It is from my own life and me coming
to terms with certain realities that I did not understand when I was
little.
When we figured out that was the one to start out with it really felt
right. This is a good way in. It is a window to look at these larger
issues through a story that I think is pretty relatable,” explains Rain
Perry.
The second song “Money,” can best be described as a fictional ballad,
inspired by real events that were commonplace and it is recorded in a
combination of sung vocals and spoken word.
Rain Perry talks about the song, “That song is an up-tempo, singalong
song about the federal housing administration practice of red lining. I
didn’t know anything about that policy. They never affected me, so I
didn’t know what they were. I have a friend who teaches U.S. history in
high school up in Oakland and I don’t know how we got on the topic, but
she explained it to me.
She explained that after World War II the sailors and soldiers returned
and they got the GI bill which made it possible for service members of
all races to get a mortgage and get an education. The purpose was to
help to strengthen the middle class, but because of the racist housing
policies they drew literal red lines around neighborhoods on maps and
they would not lend money to banks that integrated their neighborhoods.
It was perceived as a risk. If you had integrated neighborhoods, (the
perception was) people would be fighting with each other and that was
financially risky. They drew these red lines around neighborhoods and
they codified segregated housing lending.
I use in the song (the example) of two service members, who are friends
and they come back and one is black and the other one white, but when
they get their GI bill the house that the white soldier can buy is able
to appreciate in value and it is in a nicer neighborhood than the one
that the black service member was able to buy. The next generation comes
around and the white service member can get a college loan for his kids,
because his house now has equity. The other service member can’t and so
it goes. It is the building of wealth and the ability to do better each
generation and that is why even though those laws are illegal now, the
damage was done in terms of wealth and generational wealth.
For me it was really eye-opening to see how the mechanics of these
inequities are continued on and why they are still affecting people
today. I don’t know the answer. That is why the song says, “We’ve got
to talk about the money.” Certain remedies can be debated and people
of good conscience can approach these questions about reparations and
loaded issues. We can solve those if we put our minds into them. Those
are debates that we can have, but whether or not this is fair and still
hurting people that’s not debatable.”
As for why she says she recorded “The Money,” in both spoken word and
sung vocals she laughs and says, “It just came out that way. I didn’t
mean to write a little rap section in the middle, but that is what came
out. I pictured a chalkboard dropping down and explaining things in the
middle of the song. It just seemed right.”
For the fourth song on A White Album, Rain Perry turned to a song
written by a trio of iconic songwriters, Barry Mann, Brenda Russell and
Cynthia Weil and she had Austin based singer Betty Soo join her on the
song.
“I am a big fan of Betty Soon. Besides being a stellar human being, she
has the most beautiful voice. I always knew I wanted to have friends
perform on here with me, partly because I always love to invite people
that I love and respect to be guest artists on my records. I try to do
that on each record with somebody or more than one person.
Also, a group of us are all trying to say this and do this. Once I
decide to do a cover and I usually do a cover or two on each record. It
is a satisfying way to conclude a record by including stuff I didn’t
write. Once I figured out that was a song that I wanted to do, Betty Soo
immediately came to mind. She sang it so well. Her voice is this
beautiful and supple instrument and she blows me away,” she says.
Continuing to talk about “None Of Us Are Free,” Rain Perry says, “I
wanted to do an up-tempo song that captured those great records, but I
didn’t want to do one that was too familiar. I started researching
protest music and I came upon Solomon Burke’s version of that song.
Maria Muldaur had a version of it and Lynyrd Skynyrd did too. It is
still not super well-known and as soon as I heard Solomon Burke’s
version of it, I thought it was perfect. Not only did it lend a funk
feel to the record, but it also has such a great message. That is a
message that Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about and it has been a bit
of a rallying cry for the continuing civil rights era. It is fun. It is
a winner.
(The groove) is largely due to Mark Hallman, because he played all of
the instruments on that song. He plays all of the instruments on the
record, except for a couple. Each year Mark picks a new instrument to
learn and upright bass was the most recent one.”
The mood of A White Album, harkens back to the 1960s and artists
like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.
“I see this record that way for sure. For most of my other records there
has been that amount of tradition, but they have been more personal and
about what I am going through at any given time. That is what I am
writing about. This is the first album in that kind of protest or
socially relevant album that has really had that theme for the whole
project. Those are all artists that I love. I am a big Springsteen fan
and I love Joan Baez.
Activism, being a hippie kid and being raised among people who were
doing that about various issues, it felt very normal to me and it was
just what you did.
As I became a musician, watching the No Nukes concert and the concert
for Bangladesh and just seeing how music and activism were going hand in
hand it seemed very normal for me. I have been involved in activism,
from protesting in favor of a nuclear freeze and all the way up to in
college trying to get our college to divest from South Africa. I
co-founded an environmental organization that deals with oil and gas
policies in my area. For me it comes down to the same idea that everyone
is deserving of being healthy and happy.
This is the first project where the project itself is a form of
activism. It seems it is difficult for people in the United States to
talk about race. Either people refuse to talk about it or they are
screaming at each other and neither one of those is going to get us
anywhere or improve things. I am using this project and record as a way
to have an open-hearted conversation (concerning) a topic that is really
hard to talk about. That is my goal and that is what I am trying to do,”
she says.
Those values are being passed down in Rain Perry’s own family, “I have
two daughters and a grandson. If you see your parents modelling equity
and fairness hopefully that is what you learn.
One of the most humbling things about this project for me is seeing how
much I still have to learn. I am asking myself where are my blind spots?
What do I still need to try and understand? If we do that, it can’t be
bad and it can’t help but move things forward.
One of the conversations that I find myself in is with people who are
white and say I don’t want to be made to feel guilty for something that
happened before I was born and I don’t have anything to do with slavery.
I don’t think the right question to ask is am I personally responsible
for this? The inequities continue on, we are here now and I think it is
our job to figure out how they are continuing? What can we do to help?
How can we find out the ways that we are perpetuating them that we don’t
even realize?”
Akin Adderley, the granddaughter of Cannonball Adderley appears on the
Stevie Wonder song “Visions,” which is the third song on A White
Album.
“Since the record is about being white, growing up white and looking at
that through fresh eyes, it felt particularly poignant to have a black
artist sing it as a duet with me and have us both sing it as imagine
what that could be like. Akina Adderley is such a gorgeous singer.
The song is also different, because it is not my usual Rock and Roll
instrumentation. It is more of a Jazz trio type of instrumentation. Mark
Hallman (who is also the producer) is playing upright bass and a local
guitar player Martin Young, plays the beautiful guitar part. Mark’s son
Taylor plays the piano and Wilco’s Mikael Jorgensen did the keyboard
part. Those songs are complicated (emphasis on the last word).
This song is a beast, but it is a beautiful beast. After we finished
recording it everyone was falling in love with Stevie Wonder all over
again,” she says.
The song “Lady of the Harbor,” is the next to last missive on the album
and it draws its inspiration from the poem New Colossus by Emma
Lazarus and whose words appear on a plaque at the base of the Statue of
Liberty.
Quoting some lines from the poem Rain Perry says, “It sounds like she is
taking pity on these wretched souls coming to the American shores. That
is not what the poem is. She is saying I don’t want your kings and those
(types of) people, these people (the immigrants) are the ones I want.
I started thinking of the people who came to America for opportunity,
they were trying to build a better life or they were leaving something
horrible or they were brought here against their will, those are the
best and brightest of us. If you can come here under those conditions,
make a life for yourself and build something here that to me was the
real promise of America. That is what I am hoping to appeal to and if we
can really talk about race, we can get through this, somehow
constructively and embrace what makes us strong, which are the things we
bring. I find that really inspiring.
Also on that track is the Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus
and they are a
group of girls who are all refugees. Over twenty years it has gone onto
different (choir members) as the girls get older and move on. It is so
moving, and their voices are so powerful. They join me on the bridge of
the song. It gives me chills.”
The Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus becomes a metaphor for the lyrics.
Hopefully, in
listening to what Rain Perry has to say about the songs on her new
record A White Album, you feel like you know her a little bit
better. You can listen to “The Money”
here and “This Is Water,”
here. Please take time to visit the Rain Perry
website.
You can also follow Rain on
her Facebook page.
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“Thank
you, that is what I was shooting for. I think the best way to empathize
is getting to know somebody and to see the way they are trying to solve
the problems we are all trying to solve, how to be happy, to be
fulfilled, and to be successful in life. I don’t think anybody really
changes by being lectured. 