PIANIST RACHEL ECKROTH STEPS OUT AS A SINGER/SONGWRITER WITH LET GO
Eckroth’s Revealing Album Of Relationship Songs Comes Out March 12, 2014
Sometimes it takes a change of scenery to give an artist a fresh perspective. Rachel Eckroth moved from New York back home to Phoenix in 2008 as an experienced piano player who had played in New York for years but hadn’t sung since she was 18. She emerged five years later as a mature singer/songwriter whose new album, Let Go, is a powerful look at love and relationships. The album comes out March 14, 2014, on Virgo Sun Records.
All the songs on Let Go “reflect relationship stories — breakups, love, and all the stuff that comes along with it,” Eckroth said. “I called the record Let Go because when I wrote the songs, I realized I could let go of it all.”
Eckroth said she’s excited about the record’s often revealing lyrics. “This is the first time I’ve performed my own original lyrics, and I feel like people have connected to them more than I ever thought they would. I’m not used to having people coming up to me to say ‘I loved the story on that song.’”
The album’s first single, “Words Don’t Mean,” comes out on February 12 with an accompanying music video. The song’s protagonist spares nothing in denouncing a former lover:
I heard you wrote a song
about my eyes
with a countermelody
of lovely lies
* * *
I told you all the things
I could recall
now I wish I never knew you
after all
“I don’t like to tell too much of my life,” she said, “but it’s all pretty much out there in these songs. It’s what happened to me in the last 15 years.”
Eckroth moved back to Brooklyn in 2013 and worked on the album with pianist and composer Jesse Fischer. Fischer produced and engineered most of Let Go, and also co-wrote two of the songs, “A Million Dreams” and “More Beautiful Than That.”
“When Jesse and I got together and started working on the project seriously, it became a whole different thing than I ever expected,” Eckroth said. “I think we made a really good team. I honestly didn’t know I was going to do a whole record. I had three or four songs I was happy with. Jesse was inspiring. He shared my ideas and we were able to collaborate together and make these songs happen.”
Eckroth also makes special mention of guitarist Chris Parrello’s contribution: “Chris is a big part of the sound. He helped me work out a lot of the songs and wrote a couple of them with me. He also helped me hear things from a guitarist’s point of view.”
Let Go represents an entirely new world for Eckroth, whose professional career has thus far been as an instrumentalist. She’s eager to pursue this new direction.
“I want to be both a singer/songwriter and an instrumental musician. It’s a new thing and I feel like it’s something that people recognize as good,” she said.
Eckroth and her band plan to tour this summer in support of Let Go. Her goal is to book both East Coast and West Coast tours. Learn more at http://racheleckroth.com.