Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rachelle Klein. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rachelle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
The kindest thing anyone has ever done for me is to believe in me. Let’s face it – being a creative or an artist in any area is daunting on a good day. One minute you are soaring high on inspiration and the next minute you’re stumbling over self-doubt and can’t see past your shortcomings.
I’ve always loved to sing and have played some sort of instrument since I was a pre-teen. But I never did it in front of anyone because I was sure I wasn’t any good. Behind my bedroom door I was belting out ballads with the best of them, but in front of people I couldn’t even finish a solo by myself. I wasn’t an attention grabber or someone oozing with personality. I was quiet and content to let others be in the spotlight because I had in my head that that was their place and the background was mine. When I was 14 or 15, I started taking piano lessons from a sweet woman who was giving them to me and my siblings for free. I was so nervous! Looking back, I realize so much about that shy, awkward teenager. I was scared of messing up because I’m a perfectionist. I was scared of someone seeing my flaws. Mostly I was afraid that all the attention was on me. I felt vulnerable and I couldn’t hide behind anyone else. I don’t remember nearly as much as I should from my lessons back then, but I remember that she believed in me as a musician. She looked at me one day and told me, ” You have what takes because you feel things and you let it come through your fingers. There are those who can play a piece perfectly without missing a note, but if you can’t convey the emotion behind the music then you’ve missed the point.”
When I was 20 I moved to this little ski town in Montana (which I’m still lucky enough to call home!) and I started singing on the worship team at my church. I was just kind of coasting. We had a lot of musicians at the time and I didn’t really know what I was doing up there, to be honest. Serving at church is one of those things where you know you’re not doing it for yourself or for accolades, but also as a musician you kind of want to feel like you’re contributing SOMETHING. All I knew was that I wasn’t that great at singing, there was already a keyboard player in the band, my guitar playing was subpar at the time and – the list goes on. Fast forward a few years and all the sudden my friend the keyboard player was leading the band and he handed me his old electric guitar and said, “You should learn this.” (Looking back, it’s so ironic to me that the wallflower gained her confidence on one of the most flashy instruments, the electric). I was so nervous to play solos or do anything that would actually cause people to notice my playing. The first riff I learned was that sweet guitar part in Hillsong’s “Hosanna” and I was so nervous my fingers probably didn’t even hit half the notes. But I kept trying. I kept learning. I committed myself to playing it with excellence because – someone believed I could do it. It wasn’t too much later that I was gifted a beautiful Gretsch electric guitar to play and to this day I still look at that guitar as a physical picture of someone believing in me as a musician. I started to realize that no on else saw me the way I saw myself and maybe I should start to look at myself differently too. More importantly, I should start appreciating the gifts and ability I’ve been given and use it as well as I can, while I can.
All these years later, I still get nervous. I’ve written songs and recorded albums and play music every single week and I still falter right before I open my mouth to sing the first note. My hands still shake when I’m up for a riff on the banjo (my current instrument of choice). I still don’t think there’s anything too special about me except that I work hard at my craft. But every time I falter in the spotlight and want to shrink into the background, I remember that all these feelings, all these stories, all these desires and yearnings and questions that I feel are felt by other people too, and music and song are the medium where we connect and realize together that we are not alone in this world. We are not alone in our struggles and our joys are meant to be shared with each other. To me this is the way I get to repay the kindness of everyone along the way who told me to keep going and made it possible for me to do so.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Originally from Las Vegas, Nevada, I have lived in Whitefish, Montana for 15 years. There’s not much about the big city that I miss and this little town has taught me a lot about community, slowing down and letting seasons have their place in life. I never went to college but have studied and become certified in things like interior decorating all the way to holistic nutrition. I love learning and excelling in my interests, and every set back and step forward have gotten me where I am today. I’ve been a secretary, wedding planner, office administrator and wedding dress shop manager. Currently, I’m lucky enough to be a Retail Manager for the cutest floral and home gift shop in the heart of Whitefish and am surrounded by people who are hardworking and creative. (If you think that it sounds like a plot from a Hallmark movie, you’re not far off!) My faith is the most important thing to me and everyday I see God’s faithfulness in my life in getting me to where I am today. He is woven in and out of my life like threads in a tapestry and any ability or gift that I have is because of Him.
As far as my journey into music and “being” creative, it’s hard to know when that happened because I think it’s always been there. Practically speaking, I’ve been singing and playing in various worship teams since I was a teenager and love learning new instruments to keep things fresh (currently working on the lap steel guitar). I’ve dabbled with songwriting for a long time, but it wasn’t until my mid-20’s that I really decided to give it a go. A friend of mine casually mentioned we should start a band and write some songs so I was like, “okay”. A lot of it was bad in the beginning, to be honest. Music and art and creating is really so personal and unique to each person, so what works for one person maybe doesn’t work for another. You kind of just have to find your way and find your voice. One of the truest things I’ve ever realized about being a songwriter is you need to learn who you are as an artist and stay in your lane. The minute I start thinking about how others would tell a story or write a song, I’m stuck. Sure, influences and tips and feedback matter, but my strength comes in telling my stories with my voice and perspective. No one else can tell it the same way and being genuine is more important to me that appealing to the masses.
It’s a funny thing, being a creative and being a musician in this day and age. Everything is available at your fingertips whenever you want it. We have access to anything we want to hear, which actually makes it really difficult to “make it” as an artist. Musicians are a dime a dozen but also – no one is me. It’s something I talk about with my bandmates and musician friends on occasion and we go round and round the cycle that is the music industry today. The only thing I’m left with is that I love making music. I love playing music with my friends. Writing songs has gotten me through some of my hardest seasons, giving me words to sing when I couldn’t necessarily form words to speak about grief and loss and heartache. I get the privilege of being in the lives of some of the best people I know and it’s all because of music and creating and art. If I never make a dime off my songs I’m still satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. I’m still going to show up each week on stage at my local church. I’m still going to have living room jam sessions and say yes to gigs because I can’t help it – I’m a musician. If there is one person who hears the music I make and feels a little less alone, that’s the best reason I can think of to create.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I love a good inspirational quote. I love the high of inspiration and feeling like you can do anything you set your heart and mind to. The thing about inspiration though is that it doesn’t last. After reading the quotes, there is still the actual DOING part. Creating is wonderful, but it’s this not-so-glamorous thing called discipline that leads to success.
I decided to record my own solo EP in 2020. I had just come out of the studio with my band, Brightling, and was riding high on successfully completing our first project. So I let my producer know that I was definitely going to do it and started digging into some potential material + finishing some songs I had started but couldn’t use with the band. This was my opportunity to introduce myself as an individual artist. I had decided I wasn’t going to just record an album to say I recorded an album, but like any true creative it had to have layers of meaning and nuisance and depth, some of which would only be known to me but hey, that’s why I’m an artist. So I decided to write about some big things – coming out of a cult, coming from a divorced home, wrestling with sadness and what to do when desire is unmet. (Nothing weighty or anything like that).
The thing with creating anything is you need time to do it. And time doesn’t just fall into your lap, you have to make it. At the time I worked from 7-7 (including commute times) during the week and would usually be too tired to work on anything once I was home. (I’m not like most musicians who get their second wind at 10 pm.) So during the week I set my alarm for 4 am and got up and wrote. Sometimes I wrote nonsense. Sometimes it was the same thing over and over again that never turned into anything. It was a lot of free writes and sorting through memories. A lot of the things I wrote I couldn’t turn into music. But I showed up anyway. I kept getting up and I kept writing. And it was hard. I was tired and honestly it was really painful to dig into some of the things I was writing about. I’m not actually sure I was that great of a person for a few months – I felt like this raw, exposed nerve that was vulnerable. My fingers were raw and I played the same melodies over and over and over, changing little words and notes till I couldn’t tell which version was better or if they were actually terrible.
Writing an album with my friends was a blast and I had the best time recording with them, but doing it on my own took everything I had. And you know what? Long story short, every time I hear my album I am so proud that I kept going. I showed up to the studio and watched my little demos become songs that feel like me. The thing about “being an artist” is you kind of have to become one through those hard seasons, the make-it-or-break-it moments. It feels like you are purposely throwing glass at a concrete wall and everything is just breaking apart. Then you pick up all the pieces and make something that showcases the beauty and the brokenness together and say, “See this? This what I made from this life and these experiences. This is me.”
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?
I think non-creatives are very practical people, for the most part. I think they weigh the merit of doing something over another and if it doesn’t make sense or benefit them, they don’t do it. Not all non-creatives are like this, but I think it’s true for the majority.
When people hear that I make music and that I play and sing, they automatically want to know if it’s profitable for me. Honestly, I don’t make much money from it. I know people who do and that’s great for them. For me, I work a normal full time job to support myself and probably always will. I spend my extra time creating because I love it and I can’t help but be creative. I think that’s hard to wrap your mind around for some people. “Why would you spend so much time and effort on something if it doesn’t monetarily benefit you?” Or, “Why don’t you just work harder to see some actual profit?” These are the questions that I face and my best response is this: Beautiful things aren’t essential to our survival but they make surviving a whole heck of a lot more enjoyable.
God is a creative being and He made me to be as well. Does He need to paint a one-of-a-kind sunset every single night for me to enjoy? No, but He’s creative, so I don’t think He can help Himself. He does it so it can be enjoyed. A flower blooms for a day and is so grand in it’s beauty and the next day has drooped over and will soon fall from the branch that it spent so long growing on. Why bother with flowers that fade so quickly? But what would our life be like without their splendor? Art is seen as something so “extra” but honestly it is essential for filling our souls with childhood magic that we lost somewhere along the way and deep connection that our hearts were made for.
Contact Info:
- Website: linktr.ee/rachelleklein
- Instagram: @rachellekleinmusic
Image Credits
All images by Hope Kauffman Photography