Rachel McIntyre Smith has been at music for a while – she started piano at the age of 9 and she soon got pretty good at it as she won the Tennessee State Piano Competition twice and earned the Paderewski Medal for Guild for 10 years of superior ratings in a row. And then she taught herself ukulele and guitar and also served as clarinet section leader in her school band. Rachel also recounts how she made her Mother – who was an English Teacher – explain poetry over and over again, not because Rachel found the concept difficult but because she was “fascinated with rhyming and pretended to not understand it so my mom would keep explaining it to me.”
The two interests come together naturally through Rachel McIntyre Smith’s song writing, such as ‘Parentheses‘ which is taken from the upcoming EP ‘Honeysuckle Friend’ which is due out this Summer. ‘Parentheses‘ is a song about catching up with an old friend and the difference between what is said out loud whilst the brain is saying “don’t say, don’t say, don’t say“.
Rachel told Americana UK about where the idea for the song came from saying “I’m from a really small town called Oliver Springs. It’s a place where you run into a person you know every time that you leave the house. If you’re ever trying to avoid someone, odds are that you will run into them when you’re at your lowest and looking your worst. To help me overcome the anxiety of leaving the house, I wrote this song, which is essentially a script of what I’d keep to myself and what I’d say if I unexpectedly ran into the one who got away. ” It’s a song that clearly resonates with many people as she added that “I’ve had the opportunity to perform this song a few times before I’ve released it. After every performance, someone has come up to me and told me a story about how they related to it. One woman told me about her divorce and how she feels like she can’t go to the same grocery store anymore. One father told me about the falling out between his daughter and her best friend so she was nervous to leave the house. As humans, I think we frequently find ourselves in situations where you have to be polite when there’s so much more you want to say. I hope this song makes folks feel understood. ”
