Rachael Sage

Rachael Sage is a singer-songwriter, poet, actor and visual artist from Port Chester, United States, based in New York City. Her music is associated with folk, pop and rock, and she is also a label owner who founds MPress Records in 1996.

Career and work

Sage teaches herself piano by the age of three and wins the ASCAP Pop Songwriting Contest as a teenager. After hearing her winning song, producer Tony Visconti offers to produce her demo. Her parents encourage her to attend Stanford University, but she instead self-produces her first record, Morbid Romantic.

She later builds a long-running career as an independent artist and entrepreneur, and she appears at events including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She also produces the fourth volume of MPress Records’ annual charity compilation series, New Arrivals, which benefits homeless youth. Her label earns its first Billboard-charting and Grammy-nominated releases.

Albums and songs

Delancey Street, released in 2009, is described as critically acclaimed. Her tenth album, Haunted By You, is a song cycle about passion and love, and much of it is composed on guitar rather than the piano-based approach used on earlier records. The album includes the title track, “Abby Would You Wait”, “Invisible Light”, “Hey Nah”, “Everything”, “California”, “The Sequin Song”, “Confession” and “Soulstice”.

Sage writes several of these songs on a 1966 Martin acoustic guitar she inherits from an ex-partner. She says the record reflects a period after a breakup and a later overseas relationship, and it explores freedom, loneliness, fleeting happiness and the idea of soul-mates. “Invisible Light” appears in two different arrangements, including one with guest vocals from Dar Williams, and Sage names it as her favourite song on the album.

Collaborations and performances

Sage has collaborated with Phil Ramone and shared stages with Judy Collins, Marc Cohn, The Animals, Shawn Colvin and Sarah McLachlan. Haunted By You is recorded with members of her touring band The Sequins: Quinn on drums, Dave Eggar on cello and Russ Johnson on trumpet. The album also features guitarists James Mastro, Mark Bosch and Jack Petruzelli; bassists Todd Sickafoose and Mike Visceglia; mandolin player David Immergluck; drummer Doug Yowell; and guest appearances from Dar Williams, Lucy Woodward, Katie Costello, Ryan Hommel, Seth Glier and Joshua Leonard. John Shyloski and Kevin Killen engineer the sessions.

Recognition

Sage has earned three Independent Music Awards. She begins writing songs to make sense of bullying at school, and she describes music as her main form of self-expression.