Rebekah Rolland Shares "Standing Still"

Photo credit: Amy Martell

The new single from Rebekah Rolland, “Standing Still”, from her upcoming album, Seed & Silo, is a vivid sunset gently swaying against the background of an evening prairie. With a delicate and graceful melody, it dances around abandoned plows in fields filled with quiet storied homes as Rolland’s voice paints a picturesque story and an acoustic guitar brings the setting to life. 

“Standing Still” was inspired by the character Ántonia from feminist literary figure Willa Cather’s novel, My Ántonia. With an honest, homespun warmth, the song talks about the way in which certain people, places and experiences are pressed deep into memory - which can shape the entire course of a life. Rolland explains, “I wanted to convey the vivid and intimate situations that we all experience. They’re the memories of people, places, and events that - for whatever reason - carry us through the years. It struck me that most of these things seem insignificant, and yet, they’ve affected us in really powerful ways.” With lucid imagery, Rolland’s own experience has become pieces of the whole. From attending music festivals with her sister, or the way her father’s honeysuckle would bloom every spring while the hummingbirds came in droves, the essence of “Standing Still” is that we cling to these moments for the rest of our lives.

​Enjoy the track below then read on as Rolland answers her Essential 8 and talks songwriting, I'm With Her, Patti Griffin, and more!

---

Credit: Amy Martell

With any particular song, was there an “a-ha” moment when you knew the song was completed and perfect?
“Looking to the Sun” was one that took awhile to shape. We had toured on it quite a bit and were going for more of a driving feel, but it was continually problematic in the live setting and we couldn’t seem to settle into a groove. Ryan Green of the Tucson-based duo of Ryanhood had released a Christmas album and it had this song with a beautiful nylon-string guitar part. I was driving the I-10 when I heard it and it was an immediate epiphany: a guitar part similar to this was exactly what “Looking to the Sun” needed. So that’s what we laid down and we asked Ryan to do it (he recorded the electric guitar on this tune as well). We slowed the tempo, but the guitar part maintains a drive, while keeping things mellow and creating a lot of atmosphere. It lets the lyrics breathe in a way that I think is really important for this tune.

When/where do you do your best writing?
I do my best writing while traveling and, specifically, when I’m in the driver’s seat. So...I’m not physically writing, but I try to have my headphones/mic handy because sometimes inspiration hits and I record a voice memo as quickly as possible. The early inspiration or final lines of several songs on the album have happened this way, and several tunes on albums I’ve recorded previously with the band Run Boy Run. There was one time when I was driving from Tucson to Phoenix and I was fresh off of a weekend at the Folk Alliance International conference had been listening to so much music by so many great artists, and I wrote an entire song on that drive (“I Would Fly”, which I recorded with the band Run Boy Run). It was just this lovely and unexpected visit by the Folk Alliance muse, I guess. I think it’s a combination of things that make driving conducive to writing: I’m often either listening to great music, great audiobooks, or great podcasts, all of which make me really excited and trigger a creative response. I also think that something about the hypnotic and relaxing effects of driving can just send you into a creative reverie.

Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination?
A: I write about all of the above. I write most often (and I think best) when I’m writing from someone else’s perspective. It allows me a certain freedom to express emotions and ideas that I might identify with and feel strongly about, but through a narrator that is best suited to tell a given story. The songs on Seed & Silo are told from the perspectives of characters in Willa Cather’s Prairie Trilogy (the initial inspiration for the record), but a lot of my own experiences are sprinkled throughout. As an example, “Letters & Photographs” was inspired by a Willa this Willa Cather quote (from O Pioneers!): “…there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.” It speaks to experiences of love and loss that make us all truly human, and that idea resonated with me and “Letters and Photographs” came out of that. Some of the lyrics are based on imagery in these novels, though much of them are based on my own observations, feelings, and relationships.

How do you kill the long hours in the van?
BOOKS (audio or otherwise) and podcasts and music and the occasional episode of “Parks and Recreation” or “The Office.” Some favorite podcasts: “How I Built This” (this can give me inspiration and drive on even the most down days); “Stuff You Missed In History Class”;  “Radio Lab”; “Hidden Brain”; and “Pop Culture Happy Hour.” Some of my favorite road music: Iron & Wine’s Endless Numbered Days; Regina Spektor’s Far; José González’s Veneer; Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest; Crooked Still’s Still Crooked; Sarah Jarosz’s Build Me Up From Bones; Nickel Creek’s Why Should the Fire Die?; and Aoife O’Donovan’s In the Magic Hour.
 
Who would you love to collaborate with?
If the ladies from I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz) wanted to have a songwriting session or pick up one of my tunes and sing it in the most heavenly way possible, it would be one of the highlights of my life! I’ve followed all of them for a long time now and am so inspired by what they do as writers, performers, and musicians. I was listening to Aoife’s record when I was doing my NPS residency and am in love with it—it’s musically really interesting and complex, and lyrically beautiful. I love all of their solo stuff, I love all of their collaborative stuff, and their new record is incredible.
 
Which song of yours gets the best crowd response?
“Don’t Wait Around” generally gets ‘em fired up. It’s a bouncy tune with some interesting vocal stuff, though, in the live setting, it’s pretty stripped down—not very big or flashy. I think that it’s got a good flow and story and drive, though, so it energizes the crowd. It’s from the new record and inspired by strong women in the homesteading movement and in my own life. I often preface it with the story of  my grandma leaving the small town of Cutbank, MT when she was 18 and moving to California with her best friend, Gwen.

Favorite (or first) concert you have ever attended?
I attended a festival, The Huck Finn Jubilee, in Victorville, CA when I was 12 and saw Nickel Creek there just after they’d released their self-titled record. That show was life-changing. It was after nightfall and in a big field. The audience was small enough that we (my grandparents and siblings) were able to lay our quilt really close to the stage so we could see everything happening (which, between just the three of them, was A LOT). I loved the songs and I loved the live delivery. I was completely awestruck. And they ended up playing a half-hour encore with a huge fiddle tune medley that blew my mind. To this day, I think this show was the spark that sent me on this trajectory. I listened to that first record and their subsequent records on repeat for the next several years. Side note: their concert at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix is a close runner-up. They also did a crazy long encore at that one (essentially a second set) and invited everyone to the front of the stage (it was a seated show) and played some old standards and we all sang along with them. My fourteen-year-old self was in heaven.

Have you met any of your heroes? How did it go?
I met Patty Griffin almost a decade ago now. I fell in love with her music when I was in 8th grade. “Making Pies” is still one of my favorite songs of all time and, arguably, one of my first lessons in experimenting with points-of-view as a songwriter. When I was in college, she came to the Rialto Theater here in Tucson. I had the chance to talk to her backstage and I’d always wanted to ask her the question you asked me above: are these people in the songs people you know or did you invent them? Because they’re often so interesting and representative of so many of the nuances and complexities among people. Her stories are so intimate and moving and detailed. She told me that she’d invented the majority of them. Just one more reason for me to be in awe of her.

Seed & Silo, due out July 20 on Sky Island Records.

Website I Facebook I Twitter I Soundcloud ​​

---