ShockHound

Interview by Tom Lanham

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men. Four short years ago, Rachael Yamagata was poised for stardom, riding a wave of popularity that had crested with Happenstance, her critically-kudoed debut for RCA. But hanging ten wasn’t easy; instead, the pensive, smoky-voiced chanteuse wound up beached, her dreams shattered on the rocky shoals of fate. Within a few months, she’d lost her manager, the A&R rep who’d signed her, her record contract — and, consequently, a good deal of her self-respect.  To cheer herself up, she flew to the Dominican Republic, but quickly blew out her right eardrum diving into the ocean.  And that was it, she thought — the heartbreaking finale to her once-promising singing career.
        “I actually wrote a blog to my fans, saying, ‘This might be the end’,” sighs Yamagata, 31, now breaking through the surf again with a killer two-disc comeback Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart, for her new label Warner Bros.  “And I added ‘I’ll write this right now and tell you all about the emotions I’m going through if this does, in fact, become the end.’ I penned this whole thing about what might happen if my hearing should be gone. And it was terrible. But I’m very positive thinking. So of course, my hearing started to come back — I just had to think that it wouldn’t be the end.”
     In fact, she’s experiencing something of a Renaissance. Her old A&R guy became her manager; the reality-TV series “Survivor” offered her a slot on its recent season (she declined), and her songwriting is sharper than ever , as indicated by the piano-driven ballads of “Elephants” and the guitar-boosted rockers of “Teeth” (which features one of her wickedest-ever dirges, the grim “Don’t”). It’s far from the finish for the plucky Yamagata — it’s a whole new beginning.

SHOCKHOUND: In “Don’t,” you utter a strange phrase, but it works:  “Don’t fuck me in front of me.”

RACHAEL YAMAGATA: It’s odd, right? You know what it is, even though you’re like “What?” My previous manager said that in passing — she was telling a story and said "Don’t fuck me in front of me, ya know what I mean?" And I thought “That’s brilliant!” I loved that phrase.

SHOCKHOUND: So, uh, at whom is it directed?

YAMAGATA: Oh, I can’t tell you that. I went through a situation that inspired that, definitely. It was a breakup of sorts happening at a certain place, and literally I was in tears in one room and they were in another room, hitting on someone else. It was just awful, it was traumatic.

SHOCKHOUND: And now, relationship-wise? Things are better?

YAMAGATA: They’re good, good. It’s been on and off for a year and a half. And it’s not the easiest thing in the world to date another artist, that’s for damn sure. But I protect his identity.

SHOCKHOUND: Are you still in Chicago?

YAMAGATA: I’m in Philadelphia now — it’s the last place I could think of going. I grew up in DC, spent time in New York City, LA, Venice Beach, ten years in Chicago, two years in Woodstock, New York, and then I was losing my mind. And I had a lot of friends in Philly, and it reminds me of Chicago, but it’s not as intense as New York. But it’s a direct flight to New York, and there’s a big music scene there. So there are a lotta reasons I ended up in Philly.

SHOCKHOUND : And you actually turned down “Survivor”?

YAMAGATA: Funny, right? And I’ll never get another offer like that again, I’m sure, now that I’ve talked about it. But somebody contacted me on the website and said they worked for “Survivor” and asked if I’d be interested in being the 15th member. I was like, “Sounds great! Tell me more about it!” But I was like, “Are you serious? Is this for real?” But they didn’t know me as a singer — they just saw my MySpace profile. And MySpace can be really dangerous, I tell ya — I’ve gotten some crazy messages before. I’ve gotten ex-girlfriends saying “Don’t go out with this guy!” But you can’t take that stuff seriously. And I write everybody back, or at least try. But regarding “Survivor,” “I don’t think my schedule will permit me to do it,” is what I said. But I’d wanna be a character on “Lost” — I’d totally do that kind of desert-island experience. But the strategy of the game and its cutthroat nature? I’d be the sweet, naïve girl who gets ousted in the first round, ‘cause I wouldn’t wanna get evil. Either that, or I’d get really evil and horrify myself and everybody’d see it all on TV.



SHOCKHOUND: Your claws are out on this album, that’s for sure.

YAMAGATA: I’ve got some claws, yeah. But I’m just not sure about the reality-TV aspect of “Survivor.” Killing your own fish and stuff? I like that part of it. If they had ways where you didn’t have to be so mean and awful to other people, where you just had to literally survive, then I’d do that. But the game-winning contest of it? I dunno. Then again, why would you even do it if there wasn’t a game to win?

SHOCKHOUND: How did you get the memo that you’d been dropped from your old label?

YAMAGATA: Well, it’s not like it happened as a surprise. I’m pretty intuitive about people’s reactions. And this record isn’t an easy sell, per se, if you compare it to the last record. And this record was presented to RCA. But the idea of it, the final songs and the concept of splitting it were all presented to them. And it wasn’t some sort of nasty stereotypical split or label-land disaster where artist and label hate each other. They let me keep the masters, and that’s a testament to the working relationship I had there — there was a healthy respect from both sides for many, many years, which allowed it to be possible to get my record back.  So it was a business decision and I didn’t take it personally. I mean, it affected my life and because it’s my work, I took it personally. And I would be angry, if I didn’t always believe that there was some higher reason for it to all happen. And was it two years of absolutely frustrating circumstances? Absolutely. But now I have the guy who’s been with me there for eight years as my manager, which is amazing. And I have this great artistic label that tried to sign me years ago, even though I wasn’t necessarily gonna sign with another major label this time around. It was a big decision.

SHOCKHOUND: So you were diving in the Dominican Republic when your eardrum ruptured?

YAMAGATA: Yes. I dove 30 feet, to the bottom. You could see the sand. We were two miles out on the ocean, and this German friend of mine Miriam, who had no fear, kept diving down, grabbing some sand and bringing it back up. But I couldn’t do it because my ears would start to hurt. So I kept trying, since it was my vacation of facing all my fears. And on the seventh try, I said “I am gonna do this — I’ll figure it out.” So I made it down, grabbed some sand, and I hear a loud pop and I get real dizzy and there goes my eardrum. But it was one of those things where I’d put myself in a new culture without any reference points, on a business level and a personal level. No family, no one around me that I knew. And the purpose was, “Who am I when the music world is out of my life? When my family and friends aren’t around and I can’t speak the language? When I don’t know anything about my surroundings? Who am I? What do I do with my day, how do I spend my time? It was like reclaiming my identity for a month. But it was there that I listened to this dark, dark record of mine, and I had a moment sitting out by the beach, listening to it, when I found my love for it again. Because it had been hard to go through 8,000 changes on the business side of my life and not be riddled with self-doubt. But I listened to it and I was like, “I love it!” And Eureka moments are like that — it’s quiet when they happen and there won’t be any trumpets.

SHOCKHOUND: Was there ever a point where you wanted to quit?

YAMAGATA: Yeah. Every night before I go onstage. You walk the line, every day. You have to think you’re the shit and you have to think you are shit — that’s how you survive it. It’s a balancing act. You can’t be too self-involved to be intimidated or affected by your surroundings. You can’t be immersed in what other people think to let it affect the truth of you. So there’s something in the balance of self-doubt-meets-tremendous-ego that lets you go out and present something you’ve composed.


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Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart

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