Rachael Yamagata has toured everywhere in the past year, including all the big late-night talk shows. But to play Summerfest, the Chicago product needs only to drive about 90 miles.
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Rachael Yamagata
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6 p.m. July 3
U.S. Cellular Connection Stage with Leinenkugel's and WXSS
For more on Rachael Yamagata, visit www.RachaelYamagata.com
For more Summerfest information, visit www.Summerfest.com
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When seen live, Rachael proves that you can rock without necessarily driving. I liked her debut full-length album "Happenstance" a lot and told her so when I interviewed her. But it was difficult, when talking to the giggly, bright-voiced young woman over the phone, to picture the serious, jaw-dropping rock chops Yamagata exhibits from the stage. Her personality bubbles out from behind a keyboard or an acoustic guitar as she trudges, wails, and punches her way through her intriguing set of original songs of lost relationships.
I’m a guy who looks for a secret weapon with any performing artist and Yamagata says hers is the honesty in the writing.
“There’s no hype or thrill in writing about, say, an affair,” she explains, “but instead you get the real story. You’re not judging it, you’re just presenting it.”
She spoke of universal connections with other people.
“I don’t complicate the lyrics. It’s simple language. I wish I could write like Fiona Apple or Joni Mitchell – these amazing sensual images and that way of picking out just the right words.”
Yet I’m pleased that she doesn’t do that. She said that co-writer Mark Batson came up with “feel like I’m loving you in 1963” around which they built the song “1963.” Yamagata later realized that “Flowers in my hair and little bitty hearts upon my cheek” were more images of ’69, but that “It sings better as '63.”
This mixture of honesty and naievete is abundantly clear in person. While her stories setting up some of the songs are pedestrian and lightweight, the songs themselves – frequently starting acoustically, then building in intensity, often to a point of bursting – exude incomparable feminine strength and perception.
I finished my interview with Yamagata by asking her feelings on downloading. She says that while “it’s great for artists to get their music out there,” it does take away from the sacred relationship between artist and listener, likening it to the difference between reading a hardcover book or reading the same thing on a Web site.
So if you’re a fan of ‘Worn Me Down,’ buy the whole record – and see her live. Enter into your own sacred relationship with a fabulous singer during her breakout year.
Photos provided by Rachael Yamagata
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