Rain Perry
One of the highlights of Rain Perry’s career came not at a packed concert hall, but at a small rural elementary school. She was invited to perform her song “Yosemite” for the year-end concert, and arrived to find that over fifty kids had learned the words and were assembled to sing it with her. “I wrote the song from the perspective of an adult looking back on a difficult childhood, so it was wonderful and unexpected to see that kids understood and connected with it.”
Blessed with natural, poetic gifts on both sides of the singer-songwriter hyphenate, Perry is a distinctive artist who, to her credit, fits neatly into no particular genre but has an immediate appeal. Musically, her song craft encompasses folk, country and pop, and gray areas between, to suit the spin of a particular song. Lyrically, she paints pictures and tells stories with a personal and often autobiographical honesty, yet with enough universal imagery to broaden the emotional impact.
Such strengths helped earn Perry her first notable success when Tom Russell covered the song “Yosemite” in 2003, with Nanci Griffith. It was the winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, among other songwriting awards. Of the song--and its creator--Russell said: “It slapped my heart around like a good song should…watch out for Rain Perry. She writes with her heart, and she’ll blindside you with her art.”
These and other qualities come together in the most ambitious musical endeavor yet for Perry. Cinderblock Bookshelves, a multi-media project involving an album, a book, and a one-woman play.
The album was recorded at Congress House Studio in Austin, Texas, with producer Mark Hallman (Carole King, Eliza Gilkyson, Ani DiFranco), and is enriched by a cast of special guests, including Victoria Williams (on the rocker “Wild Child”), Sara Hickman (on “Dear Dana”), Gilkyson (the guest and subject of the song “Eliza on the Car Tour”), and Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen, the former Leonard Cohen background vocalists who share with Perry the adopted hometown of Ojai, California.
Cinderblock Bookshelves is full of anecdotes and sharply etched insights into Perry’s own long, winding path. Her songs convey a twisting, troubled childhood and personal path to her current life as a wife and mother to two young daughters.
Rain is the product of a restlessly creative lineage: her mother was a songwriter, whose song “Kind of a Woman” was cut by Nancy Sinatra, and who separated from Rain’s free-spirited screenwriter father, became a born again Christian and then died at the age of 27. Rain went on to be raised by her itinerant, proudly counterculture father.
In her early 20s, Rain was afflicted by Rheumatoid Arthritis and was forced to retreat from music for a spell, devoting herself to raising children and other non-musical modes of expression. But her musical muse—the subject of the new song “So You’re the Muse”--wouldn’t let her be. The results on her upcoming album show the freshness and the maturity of her vision.
In addition to developing her own career as a performing artist, Rain has found herself in the role of concert promoter, producing Agility: a Women’s Music Festival to Benefit the Arthritis Foundation. She created, as well, a sold out concert series that has featured some of her favorite troubadour songwriters. Rain lives in Ojai, California with her husband and two daughters.
Quotes
Rain…is going to be a big star in about a year from now, mark my words. Her songs are wondrous, and her voice is soothing and chalky. You’ll love it. – Sara Hickman
“[Perry’s] poignant song wowed the judges.” – ROCKRGRL Magazine
“There’s a joy and enthusiasm that shines through Rain’s music…[her] songwriting is passionate, intense and solid.” – Victory Review
“Witty and slyly sarcastic, open and honest, a sweet voice of sharp observation, she’s truly a local treasure.” – Ojai Valley News