With the heart of a gypsy

And a sword that can bleed

All I need is a sturdy vessel

with dragons for my company…

In a previous chapter of her life, Rachel McCartney’s sturdy vessel was her boxy 1988 Volvo and steadfast company was provided by Miro (“peaceful warrior” in Bulgarian), the pitbull-lab mix ever by her side, as she drove through New England on her regular tour rounds. She was a road warrior, a self-proclaimed workhorse, and when she wasn’t on tour you could find her in the subway stations of Boston, surrounded by a crowd, CDs flying off the proverbial shelves, for hours at a time. In fact, if you were in the Boston area in the early 2000s, it’s likely you did hear the echoes of McCartney’s leathery alto through the T station, even if you didn’t stop to listen. McCartney’s first manager in the music industry, Michelle Conceison, came across her this way. During a visit home from college Conceison came across a busker and bought a CD, which she proceeded to play in heavy rotation. Having fallen in love with her music, she wanted to reach out to McCartney to book her for a show at her college, but had no way to get in touch. Five years later, back in Boston, Conceison heard a familiar voice from across Davis Square and was thrown back into McCartney’s orbit. 

McCartney is the type of artist who has always been driven by the music and the need to share it. Growing up emulating the vocals of artists like Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Nicks, McCartney was sneaking out of the house at age 16 to sing with a local rock band. In her twenties, McCartney built deep ties in the Pittsburgh music scene and began traveling around the surrounding areas to play shows. She befriended rock bands who, enamoured by her spirit and folk-rock aesthetic, would essentially “adopt” her, learning her songs and having her sit in with them. She was growing an audience and growing musical momentum, never with much of a care for what was coming next or what her “plan” was. Her agenda was simple: Write songs. Sing them. 

Rachel McCartney’s new album, Taming Dragons, marks her first full-length release in seventeen years. Her credo of writing songs and singing them never went away, but in these last years, McCartney had other work to do. Steady in the background of her music career was always her work in service to the community–McCartney has held jobs in healthcare going all the way back to her days in Pittsburgh when she was performing at night and working at halfway houses during the day. At a turning point moment in her life, after years of touring and building a loyal fanbase, McCartney found herself staring down the barrel of a life spent on the road, dog at her side, guitar in the backseat, and felt a stirring for something different. Instead of the inevitable hustle and the “snack or famine” lifestyle of a touring musician, she made the bold choice to go to nursing school and throw herself full-throttle into a new career. Within a few years, she had found love, bought a house, started a family, all while building a career, first in intensive care and later as a labor and delivery nurse.

McCartney lived her life, and in doing so, naturally only gained more fuel for the fire of writing songs. In the early pandemic days, McCartney re-connected with her long-time collaborator and friend Teddy Goldstein. Through conversations and sharing bits of songs with one another, the two rekindled their co-writing relationship. All Souls, Blue and By the Day, are products of this fruitful time. McCartney realized that she didn’t just have a pile of songs collected, she had an album. 

Through mutual connections, McCartney crossed paths with producer and multi-instrumentalist Zachariah Hickman (Josh Ritter, Ray LaMontagne, Rose Cousins, Mark Erelli). While the two of them were working out a song together for an 80’s covers project, she felt a musical spark that got her wheels turning. Zach was brought on to produce and play on Taming Dragons and he swiftly assembled his A-team of session musicians to fill out the rest of the seats: Rich Hinman, Dave Brophy, and James Rohr, along with harmony vocal contributions by Rose Polenzani, Vivian Sessoms, and naturally, Teddy Goldstein. “I was filled with gratitude the whole time…I just wanted to make sure I was doing my best. I was pretty internal and focused, and I had practiced like crazy up until that time.” McCartney had been preparing for this day and was ready to be back in the vocal booth after far too long. Her depth of life-experience is felt in the lyrics and performance of each song. 

Taming Dragons is a record that reflects the varied musical flavors and colors of an artist, playful while never straying from the true north of her voice and perspective. It runs the gamut from the scrappy Lucinda Williams-esque swagger of “All Souls” to the reflective “Precious Girl” that feels like a classic Carol King ballad, to the 70’s lounge Bossa Nova-infused groove of “Fully”, and miles of ground covered in between. Rachel McCartney may have chosen the path that led her away from performing night after night, but her writing and ability to deliver a song have not suffered. On the contrary, perhaps these songs needed the space to quietly incubate until the moment was right to step back out onto the stage.