“My new album is my sixth, it’s called “A White Album” and it’s a record about trying to talk about this taboo topic of race. So, for me as a songwriter, it’s the way I try to figure out the world and the stuff on my mind through stories and songs and that is what this is.”
Rain Perry is an upbeat, talented performer, musician, songwriter and activist who has “Bounced” around a bit over the course of her life-time and with each stop; like a sponge, she willing immersed herself in various waters and soaked up all around her.
Rain’s mother passed away when both were of a young age, leaving Rain to be raised by her “Hippie” father who was an actor and writer, whom according to Rain’s website, “Moonlighted as an oyster fisherman, a chef, an ecstasy dealer, and a traffic school instructor” and one who moved with his young daughter 25 times between two states but as previously stated, Rain soaked it all up and became a by-product of her environment in the process. Her upbringing in a hippie culture of creatives, artists and musicians whose talents and ways of activism became the patches which made up her quilt; a quilt she wrapped herself in and embraced while walking some of the same paths of her communal upbringing.
Over the course of her foray into the arts, Rain has attended anti-nuclear rallies, been arrested protesting Apartheid, produced a local music festival, formed her own label called Precipitous Records and released five other recordings. She has also written a play based on her father’s passing, produced and directed a documentary, won multiple awards for her songwriting and even played herself in an episode of The CW Network’s “Life Unexpected.” Did we mention that she has done so with rheumatoid arthritis; a condition she has had since her early twenties?
One might think that given all of her experiences that she has pretty much seen it all and one would be almost correct but the question for Rain herself became; through whose eyes? One day it occurred to her that perhaps she needed to look at things differently; way differently. Living in a world that has many gray areas where all is not a simplistic black and white, she decided to challenge not only herself but all of us to consider the other side of the coin and look at things exactly that way; black and white. A very gutsy move in today’s racially charged environment but a move she thought well-worth taking.
“There are so many great records that came out in the ‘60s and ‘70s by the likes of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye that are about the experience of being black,” she began. “I wanted to instead of trying to talk about the topic which is in the forefront of our culture right now and is hard to talk about in a productive way or in a way that gets us or makes things better; it seems like everything is so fraught about this so, for me, I just thought; what if I look at life as a white person? What if I really look at that; what will I see? I came up with some family stories, some songs about me looking at life, what is it like to be white right now; so, yeah, that’s what these songs are about. For example, the first song on the record is called “Melody and Jack;” I was thinking about these stories my grandmother told me; my mom died when I was young and I was raised by my hippy dad; I wrote a whole record about being raised by my dad. My grandmother, my mom’s mom, she told me stories about my mom when she was a kid growing up in Northern California. They lived in Valeo, my grandfather worked at the Naval Yard and my grandmother had this one story she would tell about my mom and her friends and this one was about a group of her friends that were all white and one was black and one day he told my grandmother that he was in love with my mom and that he wanted to marry her one day; it was just a passing little comment that a nine or ten year old kid says and I always thought it was a sweet story and kind of sad in a way because it was impossible, I mean they were ten; right? I never really thought too much about it and then when I was working on this record I thought, wait a minute, this would have been around 1952 or 1953 and they would’ve been about the same age as Emmett Till and all of a sudden him having a crush on a girl that was white had a whole different set of implications that I had never thought of before. I felt for this kid, I thought gosh; did his mom have to talk to him about this? It could’ve been bad for him and so, the first song on the record is called “Melody and Jack” and it’s just about these two kids and me looking back at it in a different way that I hadn’t before.”
History of race in the United States has not always had a good track record and even today in the internet age where the media drafts narratives, stories are altered to fit those narratives and in some cases retracted far after the damage is done; we as humans allow emotions caused by what we see on television, online or coming from Hollywood to skew our viewpoints and perspectives. Why is today’s society being held accountable for what happened a century ago and how do we reduce any lingering animosity? Have things changed and if so; how? Rain says that she found herself struggling with those same thoughts when putting this album together.
“That’s exactly what I’m kind of wrestling over with this record,” she said with total sincerity; “What do we do going forward? I mean, I’m having a lot of conversations with people about this and that is something that resonates with people, if these things happened in the past; how do they affect me now? To me, I look at it like; whatever we can all do to make life more fair, to the extent that things are still unfair, then that is what we should do. The question of how that happened or what we do specifically, those things can be worked out when we put our minds to it; the inequities of the past are not over. The first single from the record is called “The Money” and it’s about the policy of redlining which I never knew about or had to know about because it didn’t affect me but I learned about this policy of banks after World War ll drawing red lines around neighborhoods and not lending for houses in those neighborhoods. So, that continues to affect people today because they don’t have as much equity in their homes because of these policies of the past, they can’t get college loans because they don’t have equity and it continues to perpetuate and whatever we can learn or do to untangle what happened in the past and continues to happen is all for the good.”
Although the concept of abolishing racism is a noble one; people are always going to have prejudices because it is just who we are as humans. We will always feel a certain way about groups, colors or genders based on our own experiences and environments around us; the very environments who make us each, like those same experiences, different. Rain says that she too has been guilty of the very things which caused her to look deeper inside herself and perspectives; the things which led to “A White Album.”
“I think that is such a good point,” she said in a reflective tone, “Because I think that so much of this conversation has been about either/or, either you’re racist or you’re not racist. There are some people who are happy to be called racist but most don’t want to see themselves that way and don’t want to be that way. I think a better and more productive conversation about it is; how? There are assumptions that I have made about groups of people whether it was based on race, gender or political beliefs; I don’t want to make assumptions based on people as a group, I want to see people as individuals and I always better be learning. I want to dream that we can solve this but I think that we need to all challenge ourselves a little more and that’s what this record is for me, that’s what I’m trying to do; OK what assumptions am I making? What did I used to not know and now I understand better? Can I look and not be scared to look? That’s what this is.”
On this album, she has brought in a cast of backing players to add certain nuances; Ben Lee, Akina Adderly, Betty Soo and Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco all contribute to this latest effort. However, it is the collaboration with her producer that she values most during the creative process and who she leans on as she puts together the latest leg of this; her post Covid journey.
“The main person is my producer Mark Hallman and he plays all of the instruments except for when we brought people in to do specific things; this is our fifth album together and he’s my right-hand man on all of this stuff. The second single will be the duet with Ben Lee so that’s pretty exciting and we’re just gearing up for this release because the record comes out on April 15, the first single “The Money” came out recently. This is going to be a theatrical thing, I did a one-woman show years ago called “Cinderblock Book Shelves” which was about being raised as a hippy kid by my dad and this is kind of a sequel to that; it’s me looking back on my same life but through this lens. So, I’m actually working on the performance part of it, I’m still writing it and that’s in process right now. I’m still debating how to do it, I don’t know how to perform these days in the days of Covid so, I really don’t know; I’m kind of figuring that one out (laughs). My First show like this was me and a guitar player. These songs are more arranged, they’re not as easy to do with just a guitar although I think I probably could so, I really don’t know for sure; the jury is out on that one but I’m working on it right now.”
To discover more about the “Hippy Kid” that is Rain Perry or “A White Album,” please visit www.Rainperry.com .
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
