Local Tavia Rhodes Chats First Album, Inspirations, Musical Journey
On September 15, I sat down with Seattleite singer and musician Tavia Rhodes. During that fleeting time, I got to experience Rhode’s creative processes, her muses, relationship with music, as well as her extensive journey to release her first album, HER SAY, in October.
Maxwell Meier (MM): When did you start singing?
Tavia Rhodes (TR): I’ve always been a singer for as long as I can remember. My first time on stage was in preschool, and I remember that moment. When I was in first grade, I got my first solo in the assembly. That was the first time I realized maybe I have something that someone else doesn’t have. I’ve sang my whole life, but I was always singing other people’s music in a play or as a backup singer. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I really started to write my own songs.
MM: As a writer, poetry is my forte, but it’s nice to expand into other mediums as well as my own projects too. I can relate to that level of wanting to find your own identity as a creative.
Tavia Rhodes
Courtesy of Tavia Rhodes
TR: I felt more like an instrumentalist in that way. I knew how to play my instrument and use my voice but the creative process and writing my own stories was a totally different realm.
MM: It takes a lot of a person to be able to do that. It is not an easy feat. You have already touched on this question, but was there one pivotal moment where everything made sense when finding your identity as a singer?
TR: It’s funny to think about my first-grade self at six or seven years old saying I’m a singer. Probably all the way back then, it was a part of my identity. Being a songwriter and an artist, that has been a longer journey.
MM: Who were your musical inspirations growing up?
TR: I feel like it has been in stages. When I was little, it was Disney and Olivia Newton John. Then I went through the Debbie Gibson and Paula Abdul era in the early nineties. Later, it was Alanis Morrisette and Fiona Apple. So, a lot of female artists and female songwriters. In high school, I was in a vocal group that did rock and roll review shows. We did all the classics like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, and Tina Turner. Trying to emulate them was probably the biggest part of my musical education.
With my dad, it was a lot of classic rock. He also really loved a lot of female bands like The Bangles. There was a lot of exposure to female bands through him. My mom loved the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s but it was more like Joan Baez.
MM: What does music mean to you?
TR: It is a language. I see it as a different dimension or realm as a way of expressing yourself and connecting. I was a choir director in my twenties for eight years. It's on the mathematical realm, the emotional realm, and an important fabric of our world. It’s a part of life for me.
MM: There are a lot of aspects to it. Lyrics and musicality. When it comes to inspiration, where do you tend to get it from?
TR: I get it from my life. My songs are very autobiographical and most of my songs have come from some kind of emotionality in my life where I am going through something. That’s the way I process and express myself. My mother is my muse in a way. She died when I was twenty-five and she was fifty-two. She had severe mental health challenges and childhood trauma. It was a tragic death. The first single I released called “Her Eyes” is about my mom, and writing that song was processing my grief at the piano. A lot of my music is a tribute to her because she couldn’t live out her dreams, so it feels imperative to live out mine. She is a big inspiration in a lot of different ways.
MM: I love that. All art forms offer the ability to release those emotions and lay out everything one is going through. Now for some fun questions: Do you have a dream duet partner or band that you would love to perform with and why?
TR: For years, I have said Stevie Wonder. He is an influence. I love his music. For a long time, that was the dream duet. Recently, I have been loving Brandi Carlile. She’s local and my age... Our voices would sound amazing together. Brandi Carlile is my updated version of that. She collaborated with so many people and is very community-oriented in the way that she does her music. I love that about her. Even at the release show I’m planning, we are going to have the whole band there, but we are also going to bring in everyone who was on the album as guest artists. Having the whole group there, having it be a community and participatory is very exciting. I see Brandi Carlile do that a lot.
MM: I know you mentioned Disney, but do you have a favorite Broadway play or musical and why?
TR: The first one that came to me was Hamilton because it’s recent and I love the music. But I'd have to say it would be A Chorus Line. A lot of my musical watching was on TV when I was young versus going to a show. The whole premise is that everyone is auditioning for a show, and they all step out, tell their story, sing their song, and audition with their dance. There are a lot of people aspiring to get the role and aspiring to be a star. When I was young, that one really resonated with me.
MM: That is relatable to any creative with a dream. Do you have any music genres that you want to expand into?
TR: I didn’t really plan on being in any one genre. Just whatever my songs come out as and whatever direction they go in with the band. With the record I am releasing, there is some soul, some rock, some folk. It is a blend. I’m just following that impulse. Because I have so many influences, I can go in a lot of different directions.
MM: Besides being a musician and a singer, what are some of your other creative passions?
TR: I do love writing. At one point I was working on a book. I would say it was a memoir. I wrote four chapters. I made the mistake of saving it on my work computer and then we had a ransomware cyber-attack, and I lost it. It was so devastating. I could try and recreate it, but I was in the pocket when I was writing it, and it was a very creative time. At some point, I wonder if I’ll pick that back up, but I do love writing. I can imagine doing more writing or poetry that is not music.
MM: For those uncreative times or whenever you have writer’s block, what do you find to be the best remedies for it?
TR: I get a lot of writer’s block. I have had seasons of just not being creative at all when it comes to songwriting and music. During the pandemic, some people were super creative, made a whole album, and did all this online stuff. It was a creative desert for me. It just did not happen. Lately, after the last year, I have been reflecting and I realized the songstress is always there, the part of me that can write. There is always a song there. It’s more about slowing down, tapping in, and listening. We will see over time, but that part is always there if I slow down enough.
Back cover of HER SAY album
Courtesy of Tavia Rhodes
MM: If you could describe your album HER SAY in one word or a couple of words, how would you describe it?
TR: That is tough. I would say either confessional or breaking free. The album is a confessional. It holds my stories. They may be hidden behind the words, but you can also tell what I am talking about. Then also, a big theme in my music is breaking free, whether it is from old belief systems and old ways of being, to changing your life and the way it looks. There is a movement going from being trapped in to breaking free and breaking open.
MM: It took about a decade to create your album HER SAY. How have you seen your growth from the beginning of the album to where it is now?
TR: Like I mentioned, I didn’t become a songwriter until my late twenties. That was when I admitted to myself that I wanted to create a record. When I think about the timeline from the moment I admitted to myself I wanted to make an album to today, it has been a long time.
In the book War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, he talks about when you are making your life’s work, resistance is just a part of it. So, through the last 15 years I have wanted to do this, I have been up against any kind of resistance you can think of. Between having to work a day job and prioritizing money, it has been hard to keep music on the front burner of my life. That is one dimension of my growth over time, is just figuring out how to structure my life in a way that I have space to do this.
Then there is the actual project. From those first songs to learning how to play guitar and piano, so that I could write more. That changed my songwriting. Then there was getting all the tools and the recording equipment and setting up structure, fast forward to setting up a band. There were so many stages and steps. Sometimes I forget all of that because I think about where I want to be in the future and what I haven’t done yet, but when you look back…all the steps have been difficult.
MM: Now I want to talk about some of your songs. I noticed that you have a lot of nature imagery, specifically in your song “Down the Path.” Can you explain that a little bit?
TR: So, the house I am living in now I moved into three years ago. I moved in with my partner and his kids. There was a lot of change during that time and stress. I took a week off from work so I could integrate everything. This one morning, I was sitting at my altar, lighting a candle, and burning some sage. I was in solitude, and I looked out the window. There is an area on our property that we call the secret garden and there is a little path. It was February so it was a little wet outside. I had this urge to go outside and walk barefoot in the secret garden and on that path. I did that and then the words came to me. I made an audio memo and that is where the first lyrics of that song come from. There is a lot of imagery in that song that comes from our property and the secret garden. As I kept writing that song, I was thinking about the universal themes of expansion and contraction, cycles and circles, so there is a lot of that in that song.
MM: You also have a lot of fantastical elements in your song “The Last Witch.” Can you elaborate more on that one?
TR: Most of the songs have been from my life and my experience. There have been exactly two times I have written about something specific. I wanted to write a song about a witch. The other one was writing about the protest I went to at SeaTac airport about Trump’s travel ban. These were the only two times. The political song is on the new album. For “The Last Witch,” I sat down at my piano where I found the repetitive melody for that song. I kept playing it repeatedly and that song poured out of me. Even though I was writing about the witch, the lyrics in that song are also for my mother, her guarded secrets, and her sadness. That song is really about the witch as an archetype which is what I would see inside every woman. A woman’s magic that cannot be snuffed out.
MM: That is extremely powerful. For your album debut at Madame Lou’s, is there anything you are doing to prepare both physically and mentally?
TR: We are rehearsing every week and getting ready for the show. For me, I do a lot of visualization when I prepare for a show. I’m visualizing the show, how I will transition from one song to another, what am I going to say, how am I going to feel. That really helps with preparation.
MM: Are there any future projects you are working on?
TR: So much has gone into this record that I am obsessed with it right now. So, I am not working on any future projects. I am starting to look forward to being on the other side of this. I feel like it is going to be freeing because I have had this promise and commitment to getting this done. On the other side of this, I can do whatever I want to do. I have a lot of song starts that I would love to go back to as well as working on new material. The band has really evolved, so bringing songs to the band now is going to be different now that we have defined our sound a bit more. Maybe I’ll do some jazzy lounge singing with my keyboard player at some wineries.
Tavia Rhodes recording in a studio
Courtesy of Tavia Rhodes
