Rachel Sedacca

How did you first fall in love with music and when did you discover your song writing ability?  Some of my earliest childhood memories are singing, sandwiched between my two older brothers in the back seat of our station wagon, which we called the “battlewagon”.  We did lots of camping back then and I guess that’s when I fell in love with music, out there on the road. This was in the mid 1970’s, before the days of electronic gadgets and portable, personal music, so we relied on ourselves and somehow, we managed to stay amused.  As soon as I was old enough, I started loving music, especially Motown artists like the young Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and country artists like Crystal Gayle, spinning my vinyl records over and over, singing along with the lyrics on the album art.  I was involved in some theater ensembles and a dance troupe where I was performing at Disneyland and Universal Studios, but it wasn’t until I got my first guitar at about 20 years old that I got into playing music in the sense that I’m involved with it now.  I was in community college up in Humboldt County; a kind neighbor gave me this cool, free guitar that I took to a musician friend from math class, begging him to teach me some chords and songs to practice, which he did.  That’s when my relationship to guitar started and voice finally found accompaniment.  I’d had a bit of piano training but since the guitar can roll with me, it was always traveling to festivals and dead shows in a handful of old school buses and VW’s.  I think my friends heard “Me & Bobby McGee” about a hundred times those first few weeks, but like good sports, they all sang along each time anyway.  Soon after that joined my first band called Full Sun out of Arcata playing tambourine and singing back up.   I’d made some half-baked attempts at songwriting, but it wasn’t until I moved back to Ventura County that I wrote the first, complete original “Days of ‘49”.  By then I’d gained some proficiency with my instrument and somehow had figured out what it was that I wanted to say, and what I didn’t.

You are a hard working musician, and have spent a lot of time on the road in your 35 foot bus “Patience”. How did your bus get her name? What advice would you give to other musicians who are touring on the road?  Well, she started out as “Louise”, a 1971 GMC school bus that I bought back in 2000 from some kids in Pennsylvania.  I was living in Upper Ojai in a converted mule barn with my dogs and chickens, just about to release “Lucky Like Me and I threw a rod in the engine which meant it needed to be replaced.  Then, of course, I’d have to switch out the transmission and the rear end as well which meant major overhaul.  My longtime friend and occasional co-writer Lisbet Frey, co-founder of Ventura’s Green Art People, has an incredible knack for phrases, titles and names, insisted that it was time that “Louise” was officially changed to “Patience”.  Indeed.  As of today, I’ve traveled over 25,000 miles all over the western US and went as far east as Arkansas in my 2010 fall tour. As Bonnie Raitt puts it, “The road’s my middle name”.  My best piece of advice for touring artists is, don’t forget to enjoy the ride.  I drive my own bus, literally and figuratively and I have always done all my own booking so you can bet that my tours are amazing!  I see lots of National Parks and make sure I have time to rest when I need it and play when I want it.  I’m just happier when I’m not under the gun of some nonsense schedule.  I’ve done about 8 national tours and even toured internationally to Japan and Belize over the past 12 years that I’ve been working professionally.  I love to travel and music is my vehicle, proving to be the true universal language, opening doors for me like I don’t think anything else could.

Many of your songs are full of characters and illustrate stories from different eras, they are enjoyable to listen to because your audience really connects personally to the message your music conveys through those characters, are any characters in your song inspired by people you have encountered on tour? Most of the characters are loosely inspired by real people that I’ve met somewhere at sometime in my life or characters from the pages of history.  I have a real lust for history and always enjoy historical fiction in books, movies and music.  I am also always down for a story song, I just really love to bring color to characters like Sideshow Sam because we all can think of a character like him, “Everything about him seemed dark and mean but he was smiling anyway”. You can picture this guy right?    I love vivid imagery, part of what I love about the work of Bob Dylan; he was a master at painting pictures with song.

What was your inspiration behind the song Days of 49’ and why did you decide to write it?  I took a history of California class at Ventura College, just to complete requirements for my bachelor’s degree after leaving Humboldt State a semester early and it was a film we watched in class one night that just turned me on to writing about what the rush to gold country was really like for the men and women who braved the wild west.  It was a difficult time of hardship, broken dreams and courage, I wanted to tell the story and bring it to life in a real way.

Rachel you have been diagnosed with MS and have organized Ventura’s ASA (Americans for safe access), can you explain your journey and how important the organization is to you?  It started with vision loss in 2002 which is usually a tell tale sign of MS but as I have relapsing-remitting MS, I regained my vision and went back to life as normal.  After another loss of vision in 2005 and an exhaustive barrage of tests, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in Feb. 2006, while planning my first major national tour in “Patience” that started in May.  Today, as I compare my current condition to those with the same diagnosis, I know that I am really lucky to be as well as I am.  I think I try not to let it become too big in the grand scheme of my life; I’m just too busy with other things.  I certainly have good and bad days, but I honestly feel it’s the fact that I’ve been a regular pot smoker for over 20 years that has made such a difference in my overall health.  I have been a marijuana proponent and activist for many years and research has shown that cannabinoids help to suppress the attacks that can cause permanent, disabling nerve damage that is such a major cause of mobility and cognitive skills for patients with neurological disease.  I have started a local Ventura Chapter of Americans for Safe Access, the largest, national, grassroots medical cannabis organization to help us educate, clarify and protect the rights of law-abiding, conscious adults to choose to use medical marijuana.  I have had huge support from all kinds of different people in my community because this is an issue that transcends politics, social status and religion.

You have a number of talents that keep you busy, from crafting, to your bazaars, to Steve your beautiful dog that you recently rescued, and all of your music projects and gigs, it is now rumored that you have a man in your life who is also a well know musician from the band Bass Ackwards (Jack King) have you two considered doing any collaborating on a project?  (smile) Yep, the cat’s out of the bag! It’s true; I have an amazing dog named Steve who I adopted from the National Search Dog Foundation.  He is well on his way to earning his keep as my certified service dog and although he’s been a 65 lb handful, he is really a joy and very smart.   As for the other rumor?  Also true; I’m happy to say that I have found an incredible partner in Jack, who I’d known for several years through the local music scene.  It’s that same old song about falling in love with the roommate and I’ve gotta tell you, I’m really loving our song so far.  I feel like I waited a lifetime to find a man like him and was starting to think it just might not be in the cards.  I even wrote a song called “Dear Love” when I was feeling especially hopeless when it came to love.  For some reason I had I had real draw for unavailable men for a long time.  I guess it just had to be right; I was never one for forcing the issue.  So I’m feeling really fulfilled, grateful and pretty balanced these days.  These days I’m working on making some space for him amongst my big dog Steve, balls of hemp twine, thousands of beads, a couple sewing machines and several of my Luna guitars, but he is patient, he also loves my cooking so that helps.  Suddenly the future holds all this promise and we’ve been busy making all sorts of plans. We’ve been having a great time working together in the studio getting some of my unreleased stuff recorded and putting our talents together in some brand new songs.

What’s coming up for you this new year, and where can we see you perform?  Been playing as a 4 or 5 piece band that I call “Scarlet Fire” quite a bit this last year so I’m looking to doing more in that format along with my more intimate house concerts and acoustic sets.  Planning to release another album later in the year that will include a couple of my favorite new originals “Time Well Spent” and “Old Soul”.  I’d love to get over to Europe with a new album in hand and of course I always miss the roads that take me all over this beautiful country.  For now, the bus is parked and needs some transmission work so no plans to hit the road again just yet, other than a trip to Utah in April on a plane to play a couple house concerts there. I have some upcoming shows close to home here in Ventura County including a big show opening for The Maykers at Crave Lounge in Ventura as part of the revived thursday music scene by Mos Higha Productions, a residency on the third Sundays at Big Buddha Lounge in Oak View and a show at The Lab Brewing Company, the brand new home for music and microbrew in Agoura Hills.  So for now, I am just enjoying time at home in Ventura where my muse visits, my garden grows and my love blossoms.  My complete tour schedule is posted at www.rachelsedacca.com