Daily Inspiration: Meet Rachel Anne Rosson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Anne Rosson.

Hi Rachel, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Hiiiii! I am a solo artist, cLear.H, aka Rachel Rocksavage (As I’ve been known in the music scene for quite some time as my stage name/alter ego). I am a Nashville folk/alt/rock/ambient/blues & soul, singer/songwriter & lead vocalist for the prog/alt/electro pop/psych/experimental rock band, Emperatrix, with my long-time best friend/bandmate for 10+ years, Whitney M. Henson. I made the decision to put out solo tracks under a different name, cLear.H, in order to keep a separate outlet from the band. I started singing when I popped out of the womb, wrote poetry by age 9, & began to play piano by age 10 and guitar by 11. I’ve known my whole life I was meant for the stage/performing, meant to be in a studio, be on film, entertain people & sing. As a kid, my mom said I sang so much that the locals of Panama, where I was born, in Central America, would give me Panamanian coins on the street because I sang so constantly that they thought I was a street performer. I once swallowed a coin, probably thinking it was candy, because I was only 3, lol, & it got lodged in my windpipe; I was rushed to the nearby hospital turning blue & nearly died.

Since then, I have struggled with an extremely sensitive windpipe, so I actually choke quite easily on the water, my own spit, etc. lol, which I have gotten used to hiding on stage & coughing discreetly between lines, lol. My mom said she knew I was obviously born to be a singer from a young age & I knew early on that I was born to spread joy to others through songs, arts, writing, performing & Entertainment.

I have lived all over the world as a military kid & it gave me a unique perspective of how beautifully diverse the world truly is so I literally love everyone (unless you’re mean) and feel that differences between us are what truly make us unique & special!! But thanks to my world travels, I am able to speak in many accents (I grew up partially in England, so the British accent is my strongest and my default, haha) so I have done a lot of acting: theater, plays, skits, etc. and have been in one short, indie film actually (which was never widely released but it’s a totally brilliant concept & completely ahead of its time!) called Static, written and Directed by the brilliant videographer/cinematographer, Pascal Wilt, who also filmed our band’s first music video for our previous single, In My Feelz, here in Nashville, which you can find on the band’s youtube, Emperatrixband (which is our name for everywhere if you find us across the web, lol). I had some of my solo music also featured in that short film I was in, which I realize now was like a huge honor at the time but back then it just felt so natural, I don’t know, haha, because the artist group of us (Who were all Murfreesboro based) where such a tight-knit group, really. But I sang in my high school talent show, a duet w/my boyfriend at the time and we won first place it was one of those moments I kind of knew I had something special.

I used to go in between my classes and stand in the empty auditorium and sing to the empty room. In my mind, I could imagine people in every seat, smiling, happy tears running down as I embellished every single note with such love and emotion. The way I felt, singing as a child, running through the corn fields in Utah, after moving to the US, and the way I felt on the balcony of my first apartment writing my first full songs on guitar around 19, I knew that music had my heart. I founded several bands and eventually stuck with one for a good while and we had a great run I’m thankful for all those experiences but I also took a break from it all somewhat after finding myself a bit in my early 20s and I went to back to college and finished my B.A. in English Literature with a focus on Creative Writing and minor in psychology and I finally got to take some art and photography classes I had always dreamed of and it really pushed me to be the writer I am today.

I also finally got a few poems published on campus and that was a big moment for me. Everyone tends to know me as a big music person and acting/theatre but also, down to my core I am really a poetry nerd, lol. I have written hundreds if not thousands of poems and plan to release a poetry book or book of collected works hopefully in the next few years when/if things ever slow down for a bit, haha. I plan to be in more films and TV and plan to also release a few novels I have been working on eventually as well. I have become a screenwriter recently also and hope to work more on that as well. It’s been a long road to get where I am now, but I had to take my chances in the big city and wouldn’t dare turn back now, I’m just getting started.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I have been diagnosed with Bipolar 1, I believe it is, the more severe kind, and with PTSD (PTSD is also the name of the first solo single that I have released on Spotify and everywhere else under my new artist name, cLear.h!) and have been a victim of domestic abuse in a previous relationship when I was younger and also a victim of sexual assault from my early college years and that really caused me to have a lot of built of pain and trauma. The upside or silver lining is that because I am this, RADICALLY OPEN and honest person, I have become somewhat of an unofficial mental health spokesperson because I have been speaking out about my journey to get stabilized for many years. And I can happily report, after many years of doctors, therapy, and every medication under the sun, I am finally mostly balanced out and mostly super happy these days!

I do take some prescriptions meds (at low dosages) and natural supplements, after years of working to achieve stability through mood and lifestyle management with meds & intensive therapy to get my symptoms under control & unfortunately, ppl who think they might find some crazy Kanye story out of me might be disappointed, lol, because I am actually super chill these days, haha. I used to suffer from suicidal thoughts, which co-occur with both diagnoses I have, often, but I have finally reached that point in my life where I can safely say I am on the other side where I want to live much more than I want to die. And as intense as it sounds to so openly say that, the reason I do is that I have a feeling at least one-third of the people who see/read/hear this interview will understand what I am talking about to some degree. Music for me has been, as I’ve said a hundred times before, my first love, and the one that never left me. Another big challenge that I and many other women in this industry have faced is the scrutiny that comes with being a female musician, and for some reason, especially a guitarist. So many men for so many years have given me this eye roll when I have said I played music or when I was just sitting and fiddling with my guitar for fun or writing a song out back at someone’s house (which is like a go-to, for me, writing/singing/playing outside on porches/balconies everywhere I go). I have heard so many digs on how I play or what I play or my skill level. And I would be lying if I said it hadn’t gotten to me.

There were times I almost couldn’t even pick my guitar up for months on end if I felt a man nearby was going to scrutinize me for it. It was crippling at times because I felt I couldn’t strum once without getting some sort of unsolicited advice or opinion and I heard several say things they thought I didn’t hear like: “She just plays a lot of chords” or “She doesn’t really play that correctly” and I remember thinking– interesting how much it bothers them that I’m simply doing something I love, and how many well-known bands or acts have rhythm players and so what if it took me a long time to feel comfortable to play any lead, maybe I could have gotten there sooner with more encouragement instead of every time I plucked a string the peanut gallery perked up to tell me how horrible I was and to just give up now, lol. Needless to say, I now enjoy the fact that not only did I not let their opinions stop me, but I have also grown as a player and I have written hundreds of songs and now have even professionally recorded a good bit and even co-written with some super amazing artists here in Nashville, such as Abigail Jerri! We worked on a song together with Míchia, the producer, and also he and I have a duet that is set to be released in probably late 2021 or early 2022 that is super amazing.

He and I also collaborated on a dozen other tracks we may get around to releasing eventually, we just made music constantly while we lived together for the past year and a half. The final obstacle I can think of sounds super simple, but there have been people around me believing in me my whole life, but there have been so many people telling me, “Get a real job,” even though I had worked whatever job I could to survive since actually quite a young age. People told me I was “too old” to break into the music scene, even back when I was like 26, which still baffles me to this day. I was also told I would need to lose a significant amount of weight constantly at every step of the way throughout my career and I have to be honest, even when I was a plus-sized model in my mid and late 20’s I felt so many people around me telling me I was “So close to perfect” or “So close to being acceptable” but not quite there: my size, my “look”, my voice, my guitar, my songwriting and I look back now and I don’t care what that famous drummer movie said, that hate did not fuel me, it depressed me and carried out in ripples in my life and self-esteem and made me feel inadequate at every turn.

But those people and they know who they are said – “Ef those people and their opinions and their close-mindedness, you are a STAR and you’re gonna KILL IT!!!” Those people helped me see my worth and value and then self-reflection, hard work, dedication, practice, therapy, mindfulness, and meditation helped me keep going and now I cannot believe people used to say that to me! How toxic and rude! If you want encouragement and people around you are saying that kind of crap— email me– DM me, and I will lift you up right now. Because THAT is what I BELIEVE this world needs. Love, kindness, and support of each other dreams, voices, stories, and ambitions- not harsh and cruel jokes and judgment. My only true mantra in life is basically to be nice and be supportive/encouraging or BYE. I do not have TIME or space for anyone in my life anymore that wants to try to put me down because they are feeling crappy about their own lives and prospects.

We MAKE our own opportunities in life, I feel, you have to get out there and try or how else is someone going to find you/discover you/partner with you? And I mean real people in my life, BTW, as far as “online hate” that only makes me giggle, lol. The digital world is not real. People get brave behind screens and project their own insecurities. If people don’t really know you, they don’t really have a valid opinion, and even people that do know you, if they are willing to discredit you based on something they disapprove of or simply disagree with, then they missed the point. Life is not about us all being these perfect little clones of one another, walking around eating, and saying the exact same thing. Our differences are our badges of honor, in my opinion. Our uniqueness makes us who we are and we are all, inherently going to have a different set of experiences that is distinct to just us because no one has seen our life through our own eyes. Do what makes YOU happy, do what makes YOU proud and if that bothers someone else, it is them with the issue, not you.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Around 19 I really started to become the artist I am today. I wrote hundreds of songs throughout my 20’s & I would play anywhere and for anyone that would listen, basically, lol. I founded/started a handful of awesome, in their own right, bands, and then finally, one stuck, which was, my old, full kit prog rock band, THE EMPRESS, which basically changed all of our lives in our honesty. When you pay hundreds of dollars a month in rent to have a practice space, and you spend hours and hours together in a sweaty little room and literally find the words on the lips of your soul together, under the mood lights, at 10 am on a Sunday morning and every feeling you ever tried to make sense of just magically forms into this indulgent, ethereal mix of co-created brilliance, you want to laugh, you want to cry, you want to shout from the rooftops!! You fall in love.

We fell in love with our music, our vibes, our bond, and I remember thinking, there was nowhere else in the whole world I would rather be than sweating my ass off in my cut slipknot t-shirts in that tiny room with those other brilliant humans. Imagine how mind-blowing it is when you and another person find out the feelings are mutual, that you both like each other. Imagine that a whole group of ppl feeling that way for each other musically/spiritually/emotionally– pretty incredible. So, the band played wherever we could, across TN, lasting, in total maybe 7/8 years & then we split up (for various reasons). Whitney & I got brave and made the move to Nashville and for us, it was actually only the beginning, not the end.

We made ourselves a little demo in her house in East Nashville in the fall of 2019, and within a few months, my life changed forever. Dani Felt aka Dani Abundance & was brought together by a stroke of fate and she connected me to several producers that would completely transform my life. I first recorded P.T.S.D. with Justine Blazer who Dani paired me with and although it’s taken a while for me to learn the ropes with distribution and promotion, it’s finally getting out there and reaching ppl. I then began working on a solo EP project with Mìchia (songs from that will begin to be released most likely this fall!), it is a super cool Island Vibes CD that is going to be a much-needed dose of calm after all the pandemic hysteria and general “world is ending” anxiety that most of us have been staving off since last spring. I also have other, more mental health-related tracks coming on my second EP (or possible full-length? hasn’t yet been decided!) that will likely be released in 2022 is my guess and then I already have other tracks in the works, so solo-wise I will be doing a lot of releasing, in the next 24-ish months.

The band also ended up teaming up with Míchia during the Pandemic and recording our first EP as a new duo, EMPERATRIX (which is the Spanish version of the old name as an homage to not only my birthplace, but also Míchia’s contribution since he is half Colombian/half-german & grew up in Colombia with Spanish as his native language (he is also a super talented artist in his own right if you want to check him out on Spotify, he has some tracks up under that same name) but the spelling of the name was changed from Emperatriz (Empress in Spanish) to Emperatrix with an “X” to be kind of like our own unique version and we felt it represented the electronic and dance elements that added to the new sound of the band– which now is more in the indie, electro-pop genre, but will always have the alt/prog roots/elements– but the name also sounds kind of like The Matrix, which I actually finally watched with Míchia, during quarantine.

Spoiler alert, yes we fell in love and dated/lived tougher for a year & a half, lol, but we have amicably split in a romantic sense, even though we have a lot more collaborative music to release upcoming, some features and duets as well as my EP upcoming that we did together and we will probably work on several more projects in future because our musical chemistry kind of out-weighed everything else, even when the dating relationship itself could not be sustained. But we are those boring, non-dramatic exes (can’t say the same for our love affair, haha! We were a fiery pair for sure! But it made for great music, haha!), that actually regularly check on each other, give each other advice and 1000% wish each other well in life and are truly thankful for the incredible memories! We grew so much during the 21 months we were basically inseparable, lol, and we lived through a global crisis, I mean, come on, we are forever bonded after quarantining together, lol.

He has actually moved abroad for the time being but you can still reach out to him via email if you want to work with him on a project at [email protected] his forte is going to be mainly pop and Latin stuff I would say but he can do just about anything, really. He is most definitely a genius and I am not going to be shocked at all when he is famous AF one day. He is defiantly ahead of the curse in terms of production but also an amazing writer and the voice of an angel, so I am super excited for him & the opportunities he’ll come across abroad either him or Justine I highly recommend to anyone looking for a producer, and she is right here, locally and works an amazing team of people.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
So, present moment, I am learning production myself and working towards being able to produce my own tracks and I am in the process of setting myself up to offer a wide range of musical and artistic services locally. Currently, my services are available as a co-writer, top liner, lyricist, demo, or studio vocalist for backup, lead, harmonies, or if people need a backup on stage. I also do songwriting lessons and will soon be offering beginner voice and beginner guitar as well.

It’s kind of crazy to think about the fact that it’s literally only the beginning but I know I ended up a part of the Nashville music scene for a reason. I find myself feeling often like a cheerleader almost, for other artists. I am kind of like Post Malone (who I met and played guitar for, once, here in Nashville, funny story for another day, haha), but I don’t really see other’s as “competition;” I feel there is plenty of success to be had and I feel that everyone has their own niche, their own unique place in the arts and entertainment fields. Every artist matters and their stories are all beautiful and inspiring I have found that having an open-minded outlook with other artists has been extremely beneficial because I have tons of artists I can call up at any time and be like, “Hey man, can you come to play some metal guitar on this track,” or “Hey, one of you guys wanna help my new friend co-write this pop track?” To me, we are family, and choosing to see it any other way, in my opinion, is just toxic. Some people like the “healthy competition” type of mindset and I get it, I have been in “Battle of the bands” type of stuff and it keeps you on your toes but for me, intention and mindset are everything.

I have learned that what you put out into the ether kind of tends to make its way back to you, so if you intend to be a chill, kind, and caring person that tends to get mirrored back. If you show up to Nashville with a giant ego, that’s what will get mirrored back to you. Everyone gets their ego bruises here eventually and we all get turned down for stuff all the time. It doesn’t mean you suck, lol, it means you’re not the right fit. Learning your niche in the field is what it’s all about, to me, but also finding out how you can give back. I never wanted to be one that teaches music back in the day and for me, it’s still only secondary to creating, as I write constantly, it’s like breathing in and out for me, but helping and encouraging others really puts that warm feeling in your belly because you never know who the next biggest stars could be! It could be you, you’re son or daughter, your neighbor’s niece or nephew, or your co-worker’s uncle. It’s not about age or genre or experience, if you come here hungry to create and just start meeting people and playing where you can, the city just begins to open its arms to you before you know it and things start to happen just as they are meant. To me, it’s more about destiny than chance, but sometimes you gotta give destiny a hand by at least showing up. So, if you’re out there reading this and debating it, go seek out some local places to play, introduce yourself, and seek out lessons if you need them, there is no set path, there is a “right way;” you kind of just start, and the rest comes from there.

Also, I kind of debated whether or not I would be including this in my interview, but I do also offer a form of coaching; it is spirituality & psychology -based, intended to help people remove blockers & take steps towards finding their higher purpose in this life. It’s quite similar to a Life Coach, but I am very selective with my clients for this because it’s very in-depth, one-on-one sessions that are going to go very deep into the person’s emotions, fears and behaviors so it’s best suited for those who actually feel ready to make radical changes. If anyone would be interested in this, they can contact me by email for a phone consult to see if they are a good candidate. But as far as anyone who wants to collaborate or have my work on a track with them, I am taking features/co-writes and top-liner gigs as top priority right now because that is an area I really to expound upon. I feel that the more people I collaborate with, the more I tend to grow as an artist and I want to keep challenging myself in new ways as an artist.

Top-lining wise I would be best fit for things like rock, indie, Americana, EDM, electronic, and the singing portion of a hip-hop/rap, and I have a high interest in doing more reggaeton, emo, and trap style stuff but I am open to anything and obviously, pop & R&B of all kinds are welcomed as well.

Pricing:

• Top-liner/Songwriter/Cowriter services- Negotiated per job
• Songwriting lessons- 65$ per hr
• Studio voice work/voice acting gigs- Negotiated per job
• Gigs for performing or appearances- Negotiated per job
• Spiritualist counseling- 50$ for your first time, 75$ per hr after that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.clearhmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearhmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cLearH-646236092669815
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cLearH10
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rrsleepyjean
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/rachel-anne-rosson
• Other: https://clearhmusic.wordpress.com/2021/04/22/listen-within/ 

Image Credits
April Crabtree & Whitney M. Henson