We recently connected with Rachel Deschaine and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I began writing music pretty young. I was nine years old when I wrote my first full song that included a verse/chorus/bridge/chorus form. After that, I wrote almost completely through intuition. I think you can become better at a craft just by doing it over and over, but I think studying songwriting in college is what gave me the tools to bring my writing to the next level. At this point, I don’t perform any of the songs I wrote pre-college at shows. I just don’t feel they are as strong as the songs I wrote using the tools I learned at university. One of the most essential lessons I learned studying my craft was re-writing and editing the songs, sometimes five times over. My teacher would push me to keep re-writing until the song communicated exactly what I was trying to say. I think as creatives we can sometimes be a bit precious with our work. I was never really like that for some reason. I was always willing to take criticism but I could see how it may be difficult considering how personal art can be. I completely believe in “kill your darlings”. I think artists should be brutal when it comes to tearing apart their work and rebuilding it. This doesn’t mean being overly critical or telling yourself that you suck. It means knowing that you can do better. It’s really about believing in yourself and your skill set.

Rachel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My real start in music and performing was in theater. I started when I was in kindergarten and did camps until I reached high school. I was heavily involved in my high school’s theater program, performing in most of the shows. When I was around 9, my dog died. It was my first real experience with loss and it inspired me to write my first song, “My Angel.” After that, I kept writing. I took piano and voice lessons and learned to accompany myself on piano. I performed in recitals and occasionally at local events and cafes. I went on to study commercial songwriting at Webster University. During this time I started releasing music online and performing more frequently, solo or with a band. For some reason, the time I got really into performing live was around the end of the pandemic which was a pretty insane time to try to book venues. There were so many pre-pandemic shows needing to be rescheduled that it was difficult to get booked anywhere. I think weirdly this was a good thing overall because after that season, booking at a venue seemed much easier. At this point, I’ve performed all around St. Louis and have recently started performing in Nashville. I’m pretty proud of the knowledge I’ve acquired over what seems like a short time. I can help out-of-town artists get booked in my area which is a great skill to have. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been doing this for ten years and it’s crazy to remember I’ve only been pursuing music at this level since college. I think it’s very important to take stock of how far you’ve come. It’s so easy to only look at how far we have to go to reach our goals, but you need to celebrate how much you have already accomplished. It’s easy to miss all the little steps you take along the way but that is what drives people to reach their goals, not the huge leaps that we often expect. It’s so cool to look back and see how the chance encounters and connections I’ve made along my journey have led to so many amazing opportunities, oftentimes things I never would have imagined myself.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I always talk about this with my artist friends. It’s also a reason that I think people who don’t consider themselves to be creative should pick up a creative hobby anyway, regardless of inherent talent. Whenever I go through something difficult in life (losing someone, learning a difficult lesson, failing) I can always get a song out of it. It’s the definition of something beautiful coming from pain. And if I communicate the feelings effectively, hopefully, someone else who is currently going through something similar can find solace when they listen to it. Painters, poets, filmmakers, any artist has this ability. You can look at a difficult situation and say “Well, at least something good came out of it.”

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

One aspect of being a creative that people outside of this industry won’t necessarily understand is how the industry itself works. This can cause you to get a lot of unsolicited advice. The music industry is what is often referred to as a “hidden industry” meaning that the only people who know the ins and outs are the people working in it. This also leads people to believe that the only way to work successfully as a creative is to be in the one percent of individuals who are at the top of their chosen field. They don’t see the millions of people making a living from their creativity at all different levels of the industry. You don’t have to be world-famous to be a successful creative. But because these people are less visible to the general public (unless they happen to know them personally) a lot of people think that you’re either at the Grammys or out of work.

Contact Info:

• Website: racheldeschaine.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/racheldeschaine/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/racheldes99
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC94geREEL2t8oxr4649zoYw

Image Credits
All performance pictures are mine. Photoshoot images by Elizabeth Kearns. Album art by Elizabeth Kearns.