“A TALE OF TWO NEWSLETTERS”
APRIL 2026
Lovelies,
A history of newsletters in two parts.
Part 1
For ten years I sent a newsletter with my music news.
It was boring, promotional, tedious for me and, I assume, for you.
Then four years ago I did the unexpected: I approached my computer and with a wildness reserved for art wrote exactly what I felt like writing. Thus was reborn my newsletter as a thing more worth reading: an ill-advised level of revealing narration of my creative life.
Part 2
Last year I created Muzi, a mobile app that helps you access greater creativity. Muzi needed a newsletter so I dutifully pulled one together. It was boring, promotional, tedious for me and, I assume, for you.
And I thought to myself, I know better! I promptly recalled my wildness and started writing the newsletter from the volatile, cringy, saucy small true things of my creative life.
Actually there's a Part 3
The better these two newsletters became, the more they side-eyed me with an obvious truth: THEY ARE THE SAME NEWSLETTER!
I consider this great psychological news! I'm cohesive!
And thank goodness. Because let's be honest. 1, No one needs to hear from me twice a month. 2, I have but one idea worth sharing per month. 3, I'm not over here trying to die of newsletters.
So!
Like freshwater rivers flowing into a salty, sparkly sea we arrive at MUZINGS, the new site of my creativity cogitations. You'll hear what's up in my creative life: music productions, songwriting, collaborations. You'll hear what's up in my Muzi life: creativity coaching, talks, app developments. Truly these things have never been separate – which reminds me of my most favorite creativity soapbox: EVERYTHING we do flows into the same creativity sea.
Incidentally, even as my newsletter looks a little different, I hope you'll keep doing what you've been doing... that is, writing me back.
I am so very happy to write to you all.
Don't get me started on how much I love working with David Hobbes. Oh, too late. I love working with David Hobbes!
Dave and I are both... precise... so when we work together it's EXTREME. Like, how many versions of a bridge can you send in one text chain? Ten? Twenty?
Twenty!
Anyway, here is a song with a lovely bridge not to mention verses, etc.
I produced Dave's debut album a couple years ago and this is the first single from his anticipated follow-up. I'm extra grateful to my team for supporting me in trying new percussive things: Jason Slota (drums), James DePrato (guitar), Daniel Fabricant (bass), Gabriel Shepard (engineering and attention to the live loop of it all), Reto Peter (mixing), and Ken Lee (mastering).
I co-wrote, produced, played piano, and sang background vocals.
I had so much fun talking creativity with Amy Lynn Durham on her podcast, Create Magic at Work. Amy is wonderful – so much capacity for creative projects, uplifting others, holding space for meaningful conversations. I am truly honored to share my creativity work on her platform.
We talked about what discipline means in the context of creativity, how to resource for creativity, and how on earth I came to write for Journey.
Being inspired by the creative work of others is serious business for artists.
It’s our job actually.
Whenever we create, whether we realize it or not, we are in dialogue with the creative work that came before us and the creative work happening all around us. But something alchemical happens when we lean into that process.
I tell writers, read every novel twice. The first time, for pleasure. The second time, to figure out how the author did what she did to you.
I tell songwriters, listen to every song fifteen times. The first ten to dance around your kitchen. The last five to chart song form, chord structure, melodic journey.
Every time you are moved by creative work, let yourself be in love. But don’t JUST be in love. Also study.
read the whole blog
“BIG POEM”
MARCH 2026
Lovelies,
Every once in a while, life demands you stop creating poems and start creating it.
I mean this:
You're writing a poem. You're in deep. It's vexing you. It's delighting you. You're dizzy but holding on, at the very least to a pencil.
It's all that's real, and in that realer-than-real poem way.
(What are poems but life experiences distilled to the hyper-real?)
And then you get a call.
LIFE calling. The normal-level-of-real version.
And LIFE would like to take its turn at vexing and delighting you. Life would like to make you dizzy with loss or love or failure or crossroads and no, a pencil won't help.
What a mess.
And yet.
I've come to understand creativity is uncertainty training. A creative project is 1,000 questions you don't yet know the answers to. Also a creative project 999 questions you don't yet know the QUESTIONS to, since the questions only get parceled one per creative step.
I think at this point I've created so much it's altered my disposition: now when life presents me with uncertainty, I end up treating it like just another poem.
Life calls and I think, that's a Big Poem.
The difference, though, is that I cannot (for the life of me) sit down to work on it. The Big Poem is too bright. It's like the sun. Even as I feel its warmth on my skin, even as I sense it raising the seeds to sustain my next chapter, I cannot look directly at it.
And so I turn all the way away. I return to my little poems. I give myself permission to do this.
And I trust that between lines three and four of mussy villanelle, my mind slips upon something it direly needs.
With all my love,
Rachel
I'm so proud to share the new Adam Alviso EP, Dear Myself.
Adam and I recorded this album a year ago. And because then 2025 required my attentions toward other projects, I didn't listen for about a year. Imagine my joy when last week my freshest of ears discovered it's... GREAT!
I was also flooded with the joyful memories of working with Adam. He's so talented, so soulful, and the trust he showed me meant I did my best work.
I want you to hear every one of these pop-fabulous songs, but most especially the poignant Where We Left Off (mandolin!), the so-fun Man's Dream (bouquet of hooks!), and the epic Dear Myself (so poignant).
I trust you've missed my co-conspirators: Jason Slota (all the hits in all the pockets), James DePrato (place your bets of how many sounds can he get out of a single guitar), Daniel Fabricant (keeping it deeply real), Max Cowan (keyboard fascinations), Shaina Evoniuk (gorgeous string arrangement), Erik Jekabson (BRASS!), and Cory Wright (REEDS!).
I produced, co-wrote, arranged the horns, and did a little singing. Yes, that is me impersonating Stevie Nicks on Told Me.
I couldn't be happier to introduce phenomenal young artist, Frankie Rae. Frankie stole my heart the moment I met her... when she was but fourteen! We spent a couple years honing her love-drenched songs and now here they are, in the form of an extraordinary debut EP.
Come for her voice, stay for her depth. Check out especially the haunted Grieving, the slow-but-hot-burn Here's to Hoping, and the sweet as sugar unbreaking.
It was such a joy to work with Frankie from start (picking melodies on my upright piano RIP) to finish (pushing the limits of how many vocals you can layer on a single track).
I am for one so excited to hear whatever she's writing next.
Again, the usual suspects: Jason Slota (drums), James DePrato (guitar), Daniel Fabricant (bass), and Max Cowan (keyboards).
I produced, co-wrote, and played piano.
“(DIS)AGREEABLE”
FEBRUARY 2026
Lovelies,
Art requires a level of conviction I find unsettling.
In a Muzi meeting everyone shares an opposite opinion — and I have to somehow trust myself that I have a clear vision. On a call with a co-writer I'm told the song was finished two edits ago — and I have to somehow trust myself that until my nervous system settles, something isn't right.
I've been thinking about this ever since I had the gorgeous opportunity to interview Muzi Featured Artist, author and personality psychologist William Todd Shultz. Todd's book, The Mind of the Artist, is a how-could-you-know-that accurate exploration of "artist personality." I'd remembered the main point: artists are preturnaturally high in "openness." But I'd forgotten a searing sub-point: artists tend to score low in agreeableness.
As Todd put it to me, "To be creative you need to be a bit — or more than a bit — not nice."
Because art is inherently subversive. Because art reveals more than is willingly shown.
Because art requires conviction, even, often, in the face of dissension.
So of course I'm stressed. I'm agreeable! Not HOPELESSLY agreeable. I can stutter an occasional "no." But agreeable ENOUGH that it renders my artist life a bumper car match between wanting to please and wanting to do right by the work.
These days I 95% choose doing right by the work. And I'd say I suffer 20% less for it. Clear progress as an artist if not a liked human.
At this point I'm not sure I have less agreeable in me. I think we've arrived. But I am finding my new awareness helpful. I'm telling myself, conviction is some of the most uncomfortable and important work I do.
Seditiously if reluctantly yours,
Rachel
Speaking of my interview with William Todd Shultz, please enjoy it here! And while you're at it, subscribe to the new Muzi YouTube channel, where I'm posting creativity interviews and insights on the regular.