I’ve been thinking about that early 20s urge to get a dog. A lot of us do this - graduate from school or move out of our family home and decide to take on the responsibility of a buddy who will make our lives wildly inconvenient and apartments impossible to rent.

What is it about that age that makes us crave a dog? The first taste of true independence? the need to nurture something? A nostalgia for a home life and a break from our peers?

For me it was in part due to a mental health crash that I experienced in my early 20s when all the structure fell out of my life. I had finished school and was juggling gig work, living for next to nothing in a shared house in Wedgewood Houston, partying a lot and dreaming of a music career that felt both improbable and just at my fingertips. I’m sure I won’t actually tour that much, thought 23 year old me, I’ll just go ahead and get a dog. Not 4 months later I was dropping her off with my parents in Chicago because I had been last minute added to an Australia/New Zealand tour (on which I met George for the first time!)

This was the first of many months and sometimes years that my folks took care of Hartford the dog while I toured. I felt and still feel a lot of guilt about this, but I always said… at least it’s a dog and not a child! (Wait… what!?)

I hope you are all having a wonderful week and hello from Southern California! (More in that next week)

<3

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Art Hoe’s are soccer fans, and it’s been a World Cup summer for me. Watching Cabo Verde, a country with a smaller population than Nashville, come back to equalize with Argentina not once but TWICE almost brought me to tears. Yes, I have the Messi model pink Adidas, but also Messi is like the Taylor Swift of soccer at this point, give us a break from you please!!!!

I’ve also been reading Hold Still, a memoir by photographer Sally Mann, which has honestly made me feel upset. She writes this well and she’s a PHOTOGRAPHER?

So rude. Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It’s making me fall in love with Lexington, VA and I don’t think I’ve ever even been.

The sweaty TN air smells like chemicals and dead fish, and I am reminded of why I try to spend as much of the summer away from home as possible. Luckily, I’m headed to California for a few shows next weekend and then up the East Coast with the John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project. Maybe I will see you there!

<3
Rachel

The other day, I was driving around listening to WMOT in my car, and the Tedeschi Trucks band came on. Suddenly, I got the sweats as I was reminded of one of the more embarrassing moments of my professional life.

Back in 2022, Molly Tuttle was launching her Golden Highway band, and she was between tour managers. The project was growing fast, and she needed a hand. Since we had toured together in the UK and I had sort of “managed” that, she thought of me. I could open the shows, and she would also hire me as tour manager for the week.

Of course, I said yes, although I had never tour managed before. It was a wild ride, but there were some real standout moments. On the first day, in a huge tizz trying to get the band loaded out, I managed to leave my own banjo at the venue, and drive an hour down the road. The stage manager called me and offered to bring the banjo to us, so I pulled the van into an abandoned parking lot on the side of the road, around 1 am, to await my instrument. Worst tour manager ever.

Midway through the week, Molly and Golden Highway were playing at a festival, and the backstage situation was chaos. When we got to the changeover before Molly’s set, the crew was moving like molasses. As many of you know, at a festival, if the setup takes longer than it should, it usually cuts into your set time, as they have to keep all the artists playing on schedule.

I was determined to get Golden Highway playing on time, so I started going around like a tyrant, asking why mics weren’t set up and lines weren’t run. Finally, about ten minutes behind, the band was all plugged in, but the stage manager was waiting on the MC, “Brad” to do the intro.

I began pacing backstage, looking for Brad, when a well-dressed man appeared in the wings. In a tizz, I went right up to him and said, “ARE YOU BRAD!!!!” with absolutely no chill. He looked at me with amusement, and I realized it was, in fact, Derek Trucks, come to watch Molly shred.

“No,” he said, quietly.

Ten minutes later, the actual Brad finally introduced Golden Highway and the show began.

I hope you are all having a less mortifying Sunday!!!

<3 Rachel

Recording week has come and gone. Although I have yet to hear any of the recordings that we made, I am possessed with the impulse to delete everything I’ve previously recorded off of the internet. It all feels like a lie.

We recorded this entire album, including vocals, live to tape with not a single computer screen in the room. If you’re unfamiliar with modern recording, this might sound simple, and it is, in a way. But it’s also the hardest way to work when you have the option to fix and perfect every aspect of a recording, one piece at a time. The edits we did consisted of about 5 bass notes, and they required engineer Jeremy to do a little dance with the tape machine to hit the punch button at exactly the right time, lest the rest of the performance be lost. I explain this process to people like shooting photos on film rather than with a digital camera. You’ve got one shot at the magic, and whatever reveals itself is what stays.

Approaching a recording without trying to hide or tweak yourself requires a certain level of artistic and personal maturity. You have to be humble. You have to be honest with yourself. You have to know what you are and what you are not. I would never have been able to do it before this moment in my life, and it was still hard as hell to sit through. Every take before “the one” was brutal. Then we’d get that magic, and it would all feel worth it. I’d hear myself singing out of tune, and I wouldn’t care because the feeling was right.

The work that happens around the master recording doesn’t show up anywhere. The days of writing and rehearsing and recording prior to those 2-3 minutes. The versions you tried that didn’t work. There are no layers of Pro Tools edits. They are erased, gone. You’re left with a pure artifact.

There was only one moment when I realized I was trying to blur something out. It was simply a bar chord that I was afraid of hitting with a muted tone, and I told Steve, “Why don’t you hit a bass note at this change so it’s not so obvious?” As soon as I said it, I thought, “I’m trying to hide, I’m trying to pretend what is, isn’t.” The idea was immediately rejected, and my imperfect bar chord is out and proud for all to hear.

Looking at the photos that my friend Kaitlyn snapped in the studio, I realized that the perspective had translated to other aspects of my life. I was seeing my face, my body, the little things I usually feel are ugly about myself and mentally going, well, thats what I look like. That’s who I am. It’s a good photo.

I haven’t yet heard back what we made, and although I hope that it’s transcendent and magical, maybe it’s just normal. In all likelihood, it will not be some life changing moment in my career from an external point of view. It’s just a girl singing some songs in a tiny studio in Burns, TN. Regardless, I am forever changed by this recording experience. The months of writing on my porch with Clare, of giddiness when we found those moments, and the ability to translate that feeling so fully into a recording have transformed the way I consider recorded music.

Numerous times throughout the day, my incredible producer Clare “Lollies” Reynolds would say from the control room, THINK OF THE PORCH!!!

May you all be enjoying a croissant on a porch this Sunday!

-Rachel

1. Hydration is key so I’m drinking 1 liquid IV each day in addition to ten gallons of coffee and two glasses of wine

2. Last night I trimmed the left side of my bangs so that they would be even with my right side

3. My daughter got explosive diarrhea, so I spent two days listening for a terrible gushing sound and changing diapers

4. I have one new song that is NOT going on the record, so I’ve been playing that one over and over, because obviously

5. Panic cooked a triple batch of chicken meatballs to “freeze for later” (studio food?), tripled the cumin, and then wondered if I put it in at all then double tripled it, so now it just tastes like cumin

6. I found mysterious buzzes in every instrument I own (psychosomatic?) so I’ve decided that I’m playing worse sounding instruments and it will sound “cool”

7. Watched every World Cup game

8. Researched elementary schools for Odelle (she is 1)

9. Listen to the audiobook Heart the Lover by Lily King and cried in the car

10. Decided I’m “Not Really Trying to be Someone” with this record anyway, so it’s all good.

In the pouring rain, I run laps around a park where I played soccer as a kid

The teenage refs wave orange flags and yell Offside! Throw-in! Corner kick!

It smells the same

In your house, our children meet for the first time

Your mother’s house was always beautiful in this way

put together, soft edges

We eat cookie dough from a tube

Watch Sex in the City, give our opinions

In this cocoon of nostalgia, I realize

that butterflies might miss being caterpillars

I was so blissed out on being home from tour I forgot I have another tour starting this Tuesday! Can’t wait to see my beloved midwesterners…My loyalty to cheese and corn products will never falter, and I will always be most at home driving up and down I-65.

I’ve been trying to tackle some of those pesky “never get around to it” tasks this week, such as going to the dentist. Musicares sponsors free dental clinics for musicians periodically, and I finally dragged my ass across town to do my most hated activity (teeth cleaning) on Friday.

The strangest thing about the dentist is how they try to make conversation with you while your mouth is full of sharp metal tools. At one point, I tried to reply because I felt so rude and ended up snagging my tongue on the metal pick thing. Making things even more awkward, this dentist was kind of hot! He had these nice eyes and a lovely voice and there I was drooling on myself with a bib. While inspecting my teeth, he’s like “oh you’re from the Musicares program! What do you do in the industry?” and I said “Oh, Iiii a folllll singgggg….fiiiii and baaaaa” and he said “Oh wow! I have no talent in that area” and I was like “thaaaaa ok we neee dentiiiii too” to which he replied “True…That’s the divine, isn’t it!”

Wut? Hot for Christian dentist, apparently? It would never have worked between us…

Anyway, I emerged relatively unscathed, though without my dignity and I am ready to bring these shiny teeth to sing songs for you this week!

Tues June 2 People’s Brewing in Lafayette, IN

Wed June 3 The Ark in Ann Arbor, MI

Friday June 5 Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, IL

In love and pastry,

Rachel

It’s been a while since we had a good ol’ Art Hoe Roundup and since I just got off a very long plane ride, I’m going to tell you about everything I watched between Glasgow and Newark!

First up, and ranking #1 out of 3 in Art Hoe Status is the movie Train Dreams, and I must warn you that it is SAD AS SHIT. A man works as a logger out west in the early 1900’s. The violence he sees at these work camps haunts him and feels like he will have to “pay” for being complicit in it. A few years later, all of his happiness is stolen from him, and we spend the rest of the movie waiting for him to find it again.

The movie shows a life full of potential, clipped and narrowed just as it was blooming into joy, a life that nobody remembers, that has no bearing on the turn of the world. How do we take meaning from a story like that? I kept waiting for his family to show up, for him to find a new love, for him to find a lost child to parent, something to help him find happiness again, to be able to nurture and grow something and see it live on beyond him. But, the most we get is a phantom visit from his lost daughter, which may or may not have been real, some cute puppies, and one airplane ride, which made him realize that, like the forest, his life was intrinsically connected to everything. And that is supposed to be enough, I guess. It’s too sad. It was beautiful. I loved it. I also hated it. I was crying. I can’t wait to get home and hug my little girl. And I may never leave her again after watching this film, good lord.

It did make me think, though, that the meaning of life, or of a life, is entirely dependent on where you draw the frames. Train Dreams chose to draw a frame around one man such that we see it not as his story, but as a part of a greater story about the West, the construction of the railroads, the depth of time, the power of the forest, and the fact that trees and land have demands of their own. It’s a hard pill to swallow because I wanted so badly for him to leave with something to hold on to. But, just like real life, the “why” of it all is slippery and often disappointing, but always good for a cry.

Ranking #2 in Art Hoe status, I finally watched Wuthering Heights! I had heard a lot of negative/mid reviews about this one, but I really enjoyed it! It was hotter than I expected, because most of the complaints I heard were that it wasn’t enough sex! I should say that I haven’t read the book (true for all three of these movies) so I’m sure that it makes it easier for me to enjoy without complaint.

My favorite part about this movie was how beautiful everything was; The misty landscapes, the men and women, the red dresses against the mossy green and grey countryside, and all the weird sexual innuendos like the fish in the block of jelly and the bread dough being rolled out…aesthetically, it was amazing.

And ranking on the trash-but-fun side of the Art Hoe scale was this movie called The Housemaid, which I only got halfway through before we landed. I feel like I already know what the “twist” is going to be and this is pretty much exactly the movie I expected but sometimes, you want that movie! 10/10 for a completely predictable movie about hot rich people. Bottom of the list for Art Hoe status.

Before I sign off, shoutout to all of the croissant readers that I met on tour these past weeks! What a joy to know you’re out there reading this BS across the pond! And extra shoutout to the lady in Glasgow who yelled “Read the Book!” at me when I was talking about The Silo TV show hahah. I LOVE YOU ALL!

<3
Rachel

This past week I have been thinking a lot about the solo show. I resisted playing solo for a long time… partially because what I love most about music is the interactive aspect of it, jamming with my friends, and partly because I didn’t feel like my main instruments, the fiddle and banjo, were conducive to a nice full solo sound.

I’ve been working towards treating the solo show as a performance, not only of the music, but of a character. I try to develop a rapport with the audience and ride the wave of the energy in the room. When people respond to a certain feeling, I push that further. I try to make the show a conversation between myself and the audience.

Last year, I played in the Netherlands for the first time. I found it difficult to connect or find energy in the room. The audience would politely, painfully, respond to your onstage banter, but also give you very direct feedback after the show.

I went down a rabbit hole of comedy about the Dutch backhanded compliment, like this:

After that tour, I played in London, and a Dutch man came to see the show who had seen me in the Netherlands.

“This show was much better than the last one,” he said. “Are you pregnant? I can tell.”

Thank god I was pregnant.

On this tour, when we played in Utrecht, NL, I tried to break the ice with the audience by explaining how I struggled with Dutch directness, and I told everyone about what that man had said to me at the London show. I got a good laugh! Unbeknownst to me, a reviewer wrote that bandter up and published it in a Dutch music blog as part of a review of the show.

Two days later, playing in a tiny town in Belgium called Waregem, a man came up to me after the show. “I read a review about a man at your show in London” he said. “I was that man!” he laughed. He thought it was hilarious.

“And how was the show tonight?” I asked him.

“Oh, it was much better again than the last one!” he said enthusiastically.

With much love and pastry,

Rachel

Faces are joy

Faces are sorrow

Faces are you

Faces are me

-Selena Chavez

Once when I was about 25 years old, I was hired to join a European band for a small US tour. The band was made up of folk musicians from Finland, Denmark and England. One of their fiddle players had a family emergency and they needed another fiddler for a big festival in North Dakota, which had sponsored the tour.

So, after a brief phone call, I got off a plane in Minneapolis , walked into a parking lot where a white van with 4 four men I didn’t know pulled up and I climbed in. Then we drove eight hours across the country to rural North Dakota where I proceeded to live for the next week.

The festival was at a state fair grounds which was mostly concrete slabs and each day at 2 and 8 PM we played for one hour on the same stage for 6 consecutive days. The festival was a celebration of Nordic heritage, and was headlined by ABBA impersonators.

I stayed in a motel which had clearly been built during an oil boom in the 80s, there was crusty velvet everywhere, and my room had a full wall and ceiling of cracked miror. I could almost see the historical hookers and blow!

There was nothing in or around the hotel to eat and since I didn’t have keys to the van, I woke up one morning and decided I would just walk into town and see if I could find a diner or something other than Wendy’s to eat.

As I was walking down the road, which had no sidewalk, a pickup truck pulled up next to me and a man asked if I needed a ride. I looked at this guy, he was probably in his 50s or 60s and thought, rationally, this seems sketchy, but here in this little town, it also seems completely normal. So I hopped in the truck and he gave me a ride to main street and I got out. No murder! Just a small town where people give still offer a ride if they see ya walking.

Somehow, the worst thing that happened to me on this trip was that while driving the van on the nightshift back to Minneapolis, I slammed into a racoon that was crossing the highway and the van bumper broke off and started dragging. It scared the shit out of me and I am not proud to say that I took the life of that poor creature. But on the up side, one of the other musicians was able to tie it back on using some string from his smallpipes, and the rental car company never knew the difference.

The reason I thought of this story is because I am currently en route to Europe to start the WesternAF Review along with fellow songwriters Northcoate and Chris Acker. On this trip I will be visiting Sweden and Denmark for the first time! Take that Nordic festival in North Dakota! I’m gonna see the real thing!

If you’re reading this from the EU or UK, Come see us!!!

Will report back soon on Scandanavian pastries!

Yours in kanelbullar,

Rachel

Can I borrow your toothpaste

I got you a coffee from downstairs

Do you need any hand sanitizer

Can you eat anything on this menu

Should we go somewhere else

Do you want me to drive for a while

Can I sleep on your sweatshirt

Did I tell you about

Oh sorry! You’re taking a nap

I got you some sour patch at the gas station

Do you want me to get out and check

Do you have anything else to load in

Can you help me with this pedal

Do you have an extra cable

Is my amp too loud for you

Do you need a water

Is that weird guy coming tonight

Does my makeup look OK

Can I share your set list

What key is it in

Do you want me to stay with you at merch

Do you want me to grab your stand

Amazing weekend

Love you get home safe

Do you remember when we

So lonesome

I miss that

It was this very day last week when I realized I had not prepared a Sunday morning croissant. I was in North Carolina teaching at the Ola Belle Read Songwriters Retreat, and was running on very little sleep due to a hole in Odelle’s stomach which is refusing to heal….(more on that below) so I had to reheat something real quick for y’all. Well, here we are at the next Sunday and I am back in North Carolina for a dear friend’s wedding and said hole is still not healed! Deja vu! Life is just one big circle at the moment….(the CIRCLE OF LIFEEEEEEEEE)

When we brought Odelle home after all of her surgeries, she had a g tube, which we fed her through every three hours around the clock while she slowly learned how to drink milk from a bottle. Since she couldn’t eat for the first three months of her life, it was slow going for her to figure out the process. At first, we had to dip a pacifier in milk and let her suck on it, and that was all she would do. A day after she turned one, we celebrated her huge progress by getting this tube removed (she is now eating like a champ and no longer needs it).

Here is me feeding Odelle in the van on tour last June:

OH MY GOD hahaha it was insane

Side note, I promise this is relevant; When I was about 10-11 years old, I had a pet rat. I named him Robin because he was a “hooded” rat. I was obsessed with Robin. I would take him out to play, and he would curl his tail around my arm. It was disgusting. Anyway, at some point he got sick and I took him to the vet. They told me that he had a brain tumor. Then they took $400 from a child (all of my fiddle contest money from the previous 2 years) to do a BRAIN OPERATION on this tiny rat! They sent him home with a gaping hole in his head and told me to put antibiotic drops on it twice a day. He died 2 days later.

(This is not Robin, it’s a random hooded rat from the internet, but this is what he looked like:)

OK, so I was reminded of this (sad, funny?) story when we went to get Odelle’s G tube removed. (There is no death in this baby story!!!) But, they basically took out the tube and left this hole in her stomach and were like, ok, put a bandage on it, it’ll close up! Well, here we are 6 weeks later, and it’s still just a big ol’ hole. She drinks milk, it comes right on out. She eats a blueberry smoothie? Blue juice and blueberry seeds all over her onesie. We are getting her scheduled for a surgical closure of this thing. But in the meantime, we are changing dressings and pajamas all night, hence my aforementioned lack of sleep.

I hope you all are having a great week and that your food and water are staying in your belly where it belongs!!!

I apologize for this deeply unappetizing croissant

<3

Rachel

This partial Jew is happy for the confluence of Passover and Easter this year, because it means I have gotten to enjoy not only fluffy matzo balls (which count as a pastry btw) but also George’s homemade Hot Cross Buns. As a child, I played “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder and had no idea that they were a real thing. Then I started dating George, and he goes, “I’m going to make Hot Cross Buns for Easter.” Say what? They are so much more delicious than that shitty song would have you believe!

My personal relationship with religion is mainly food-based, although I do enjoy my dad’s annual “Humanist Liberation Festival” Seder, which this year included passages about climate cooling technology, God’s “grave moral error” in killing Egyptian children on Passover, and Israel’s many current abominations. Traditional Passover foods exclude everything with yeast, so it’s important to make up for that with “he is risen” bun consumption.

Last weekend, I completely forgot about the Croissant because Sunday was my first day in the studio producing a new record for Philip Bowen! Production is my favorite job and it triggers a hyperfocus, which is both helpful (for the project) and destructive (for the rest of my life). Luckily, the only victim of this particular project was the poor Croissant, which I didn’t even REMEMBER I was supposed to write, Imagine!

Me, last Sunday, oblivious to my Substack duties:

Finally, this Easter, I want to give a shout-out to Whittaker’s chocolate. When Americans talk about their trips to New Zealand, or dream trips to New Zealand, they go on and on about the scenery and the hiking and the pristine air and water and perfect social programs, but SELDOM DO THEY DISCUSS Whittaker’s- the chocolate that made me love chocolate. If you ever have a chance to try Wittaker’s Berry and Biscuit flavor… run, do not walk!

George’s family is big on Easter chocolate, and his parents got us these adorable chocolate kiwi eggs! As delicious as they are cute!

Yours in pastry,

Rachel

First things first, I hope you have all caught up on the Afroman defamation trial news. This video, courtesy of George, has been providing some much-needed levity in our news cycle:

There is nothing more Art Hoe than creating music videos out of the security camera footage of cops raiding your house and looking longingly at the lemon pound cake on the kitchen counter while wearing an American flag suit and matching glasses.

Nicholas Jamerson and I are in the middle of our 4-show run in the Pacific Northwest, along with ride-or-die’s Steve Haan and Aaron Smith, and I am grateful and fulfilled and also missing my little girl so much. It does feel easier now that she’s a little bigger and less fragile, but I do wonder if it will ever stop feeling fundamentally wrong to be apart from her. As my wise friend Claire told me, it’s hard to nurture all the different parts of yourself…I need to play, I need to write, I need to harass Odelle and steal her from her crib to snuggle with me while she’s asleep…best case I get to do them all in the same day, but often I have to compartmentalize.

I came across this post from one of my favorite writers Hanif Abdurraqib this morning… he has the rare talent of making Instagram a place of meaning with his transcendent writing:

“And in its momentary emergence, that beauty…asks what we can do to tend to it, or care for it well for as long as we can, which maybe takes a tiny bit of sacrifice or a tiny bit of close attention. Close attention, which, when paid to beauty, can broaden our capacity for curiosity and wonder in a violent and unforgiving world.”

(click below for entire post— it’s worth it!)

As always, I leave his writing feeling inspired to do better, both artistically and as a human, and as a human trying to make art to inspire doing better as a human.

Hope you are all having a beautiful week, I will see you in Portland tonight!

<3

Rachel

I have not played a show since the beginning of 2026 and I am SO ready to get back out there with y’all. This upcoming Thursday-Sunday, I will be in the Pacific Northwest with my bestie Nicholas Jamerson. We will be joining by Steve Haan (bass) and Aaron Smith (drums). These are technically co-bills, but we will be playing together most of the time, so it’s more like a mash-up bill.

Shows are as follows:

Seattle: Thursday March 19th at Tractor Tavern, TICKETS HERE

Prosser: Friday March 20 at Brewminatti, TICKETS HERE

Hood River: Saturday March 21 Sold Out

Portland: Sunday, March 22 at The Showdown, TICKETS HERE

This trip to the PSW is reminding me of when I was in Portland mixing Common Nation of Sorrow with Tucker Martine. I went to a coffee shop to do some computer work and there were these two biker guys (bicycle not motorcycle) having a loud and seemingly jovial conversation at a big picnic table. There was no other seating available and I wandered over with my laptop and was like, “hey do you guys mind if I sit here on the other end?” and they looked at me with disgust, and one of them said, “I mean, we’re kind of having a conversation here…”

I have never been so culture-shocked in my life! I thought they were joking at first but they were not. So I backed away and stood against the front of the store, awkwardly holding my coffee and computer and looking at the empty end of the table! My Portland friends have assured me that this isn’t normal behavior but I think I’m too scared to ever try again.

On that same trip, my friend Marissa and I were trying to have a “wild night” (aka being idiots) and I went into a restaurant at closing time and asked the bartender if he knew where I could get some mushrooms, and he looked at me like I was the scummiest scum of the earth and said, “The kitchen is closed”.

The moral of the story is I’m not popular in Portland. Please! Come to our show and prove me wrong!

And, speaking of making albums, I am so excited to be producing my friend Omar’s first solo record, which will draw on many different folk traditions and be bilingual, which is a first for me and will be sick. If you’re able to support him on Kickstarter, it would also mean supporting me having this producer job! Thank you!

Here is Omar’s dog Kala at Sean’s studio when we started this project!

And here is Omar and BB Odelle!!!

That’s all for now!

Much love,

Rachel

I hope everyone is having a nice, pastry-laden Sunday. I had the privilege of attending the AWP conference in Baltimore this week, which is the Association of Writers and Publishers, but I am just calling it “the art hoe conference,” and/or “Writer’s Alliance” a la Folk Alliance.

TLDR: Writers are much better panel speakers (to be expected), but wear fewer hats than musicians. Ratio of Dr. Martin’s is about the same.

On day 1, whilst I was wandering around like a fish out of water (how do you connect with people sans jamming???), a kind man who was working the volunteer shift (and wearing a hat) said, “Hey, I recognize you.. You play the fiddle… I’m a musician too, and I read the croissant!”

ALL HAIL THE CROISSANT I MADE A FRIEND!

This was the lovely Owen Lyman-Schmidt, who plays mandolin and writes fiction. 30 hours later, I found myself in a puppet theater across town with a group of writer/musicians doing my first ever “reading’ of a short story at Owen’s event. I was so nervous from all of that reciting that by the time I got to the “playing a few songs” part, I could barely form my basic chords. Botched the music part but did ok on the writer part.

Other highlights of my trip included meeting up with my esteemed manager, Melissa, for a visit to the Visionary Art Museum. This venue specifically curates visual artists made by artists who are not classically trained.

The art itself is only surpassed by the artists' stories. Ray Materson made embroidery art in prison using the thread from socks. Wayne Kusy made an enormous model of the Lusitania out of toothpicks in two pieces because he lived in a tiny house and his sculpture wouldn’t fit. Romain Samworth became a famous sculptor despite being blind since early childhood. Hers was one of my favorite pieces. Check out the feet!

I also had way too much fun drinking and buying scratch-off Lotto tickets at a bar called Butts and Bettys with my friends from Kentucky. We won $15 and this photo.

Yours in buttery flakes,

Rachel

“Man, I should have been standing over there, free tuition!” - girl on a college campus when ice block fell off the roof

“If you want me to pay my taxes
If you want me to pay my taxes
You better come over with a crucifix
You're gonna have to nail me down”- Geese, Taxes

“I’ve got a house, with two pianos” - Caroline Spence and Michaela Anne, Two Pianos

“Never compel yourself to say words to which the heart yields no response.” - Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall

“He loved her more; she needed him more. Was that, then, equality? The patience, the commitment, the stability. Without Wyatt there would be no it. He held the means of production, so to speak. Or was it the other way around? Was he the labor? It had been thirteen years since Sociology.” - The Happiest Day of Your Life by Katherine Damm

“You were born to break my big hairy football arms / like clean windows kill the birds” - Cameron Winter, Try As I May

Tips on constructing an outfit from The Creative Pragmatist: Big/Slim/Skin and One/All/None

“Let’s be more honest about the struggle … I am constantly telling young mothers it’s coming. You don’t have to get off your career track. And I don’t even recommend it,” the former first lady said. “Because kids grow up fast. And then they’re gone. You’ve sacrificed everything. And you know, when they leave, they leave. They close the door and act like you never sacrificed.”

“They’re like, ‘I remember you. I don’t need you anymore,’ right? So I’m like, you better have saved something for yourself so that when that period comes and they’re ready to move on, and you’re also not holding on longer,” she continued. “Because now what am I going to do? I devoted everything to you. And now I’ve got to fill my time. So I encourage people to hang in there and keep something for yourself throughout this process.” - Michelle Obama

Happy Sunday! It’s been a wild couple of weeks and I’m feeling overwhelmed by the idea of trying to put something coherent together for this newsletter, so I am instead going to try a list of noteables…pastry flakes? crumbs?

I hosted a fundraiser for Fuerza last Saturday. I got really stressed out trying to make sure people came through the door, but it ended up being a pretty special event, and I made these sugar cookies for the occasion. Also shoutout to Amelia’s flowers which has the best DIY flower bouquet service in Nashville.

I started writing songs with Clare (Lollies, producer of A sides/B Sides) for a new record. After months of feeling completely stuck, these sessions have been opening up a new kind of creative flow…I’m approaching lyrics from a more poetic standpoint than a storytelling one. It feels like I’m writing to a question instead of an answer.

I did two long interviews with John Hartford’s first wife, Betty, for a story I’m writing for The Bluegrass Situation. Our first interview was so emotional that it sent me into a kind of creative tailspin, imagining how I could capture the specialness of all that she told me. “We used to talk about dying together in rocking chairs on the porch,” she said at one point.

Odelle had another planned surgery on Thursday. It was to close up a cleft in her larynx, which is allowing moisture into her airway and making her cough all the time. There were 3 different Jackson children having surgery that day, and then a Dr. Jackson came out to speak to us about the procedure. Along with her blonde hair, Odelle’s common last name is something I will never be able to relate to. Anyway, everything went well, and she’s back home now in good spirits. Spending the night at the hospital with her reminded me of how horrible those three months were that she spent in the NICU. It’s strange to be so grateful for a place and also feel so repulsed by it.

Here are some souvenir pics they gave us of her visit!

George and I watched the first season of Andor, and although it has some too close for comfort analogies to our current political landscape, it was pretty great. Cassian and Bix are both hot.

WesternAF Europe tour was announced! Hope to see some overseas folks in May!

Much love from Nashville,

Rachel