Rachel Reinert began 2020 with expectations of a busy year. With her first solo project Into the Blue set for a March 15 release, she and husband Caleb Crosby took a quick trip to Florida, she says, “just to clear my head. But as soon as we got back to Nashville, the tornado hit—that night—and absolutely devastated our city. That was horrific. That was the start for me in realizing how small I am in the big scheme of things. So many things were out of my hands and out of my control.
“Then literally the moment I released the album,” Reinert says, “everything just stopped. People started quarantining and stopped going anywhere. It’s been a humbling experience on top of a humbling experience.”
Into the Blue is the fulfillment of Rachel Reinert’s original goal to be a solo performing artist. The Southern California native started singing at five. She got into a performing arts charter school in Orange Country after auditioning.
“I was studying musical theater there, and I thought that was going to be the music trajectory of my life that I was going to move to New York City and do Broadway,” says Reinert.
Around that time, she says she started writing poetry and picked up the guitar and, she adds, “then I started going to concerts and I thought, ‘Actually that’s what I really want to do.’” She made her first trip to Nashville at 15, signed a deal with an independent publisher, and made the move officially at 16, convincing her parents to let her finish high school through independent study. She’s been here ever since.
Despite her solo plans, she joined the band Gloriana at 18, singing lead vocals for about 8 years, before deciding to leave four years. During that time, the group won the American Music Award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and ACM Award for Top New Vocal Group.
When asked how she summoned the courage to walk away from the band after a successful run, she said, “I was getting back to that original dream. I never imagined myself in a band, but when the opportunity came up, it was too good to pass up. I put my own original dream aside, and I was fully committed while I was in the band.
“But as I got older, my desires changed and my heart started to change; I kept feeling this pull in the other direction. It was a big risk to take. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, but I felt it wasn’t fair to my band mates or myself or even the fans to stay in the band if my heart wasn’t in it any more. I just had to listen to my intuition, and when I left, I walked away from everything. I didn’t have a team or the comforts of a tour bus—or an income.”
“So much of my life over the last four years has been a lot of me spending time at home and just reflecting. So I feel like in some ways maybe I was preparing for this [pandemic]. “
Reinert took the next four years to discover her own sound and write her own songs that reflect herself as a person and an artist. She says her initial instinct was to rush a first solo recording, “to strike while the iron was hot and get out there while I still had some relevance. But,” she says, “the circumstances around me didn’t allow that to happen. I thought I was just going to turn around and sign a record deal. I’d already had a huge career with this band. But it had been awhile since we’d had a hit song, and I quickly realized that people just moved on. I was forced to turn inward. I think.
“I was leaving everything behind, including the team and the collaborators, and starting over from scratch, completely starting anew. I had to go through a long process of finding my team, of finding my collaborators, finding myself–and that took every bit of the last four years to get the music and my team together.”
During the period leading up to the new recording, she had time to write the kind of music she wanted to produce.
“That was a big reason I needed to leave [the band] as well,” says Reinert. “I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but in a band dynamic, it basically means having to compromise all the time. What I think is a great song maybe someone else in the band doesn’t think is a great song and vice versa. It was difficult for me too being in a dynamic where I felt like I wasn’t able to fight hard enough for my own songs. I needed to step away from that. “
She also wanted to get away from being defined by a certain sound. “Gloriana had a very specific sound, and I needed to figure out what I wanted to say and what I wanted to do. It was important for me to co-write every single song on this album. There were songs that were pitched to me, but I just never felt right about that. I’d done that already when I was in the band, and I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted it to come from me.” She says Davis Naish, who produced and played on Into the Blue, co-wrote every song but one, “Dark Star,” which she wrote with Joe Pisapia and K. S. Rhoads.” Josh Kranich produced her latest video “All We Have” and is also producing the upcoming video for “Here,” another cut from Into the Blue.
Once she had assembled the team, the process was different from her experience with Gloriana. They had taken the traditional route, going in to a big studio with all of the musicians there laying down everything down at once.
For Into the Blue, says Reinert, “We recorded everything piece by piece. Davis and I would get a demo that was pretty much sussed out and then go into the studio and use that as the bones of the song. Then we brought in my husband, who played drums on everything, and a wonderful bass player Rich Brinsfield. We had them lay down all the rhythm section; then I would go in after and get my vocals down. Next Davis would go add anything else that he felt we needed. Then we added electric guitar; Rob McNelley played on almost every song on this album.”
In addition to playing drums on the CD project, Reinert’s husband Caleb Crosby, who studied music at Belmont University, has collaborated with her in a number of ways. She points out his versatility.
“I trust him; I trust his ear, and all those parts you’re hearing on that record—that’s all him. He heard all the songs from their infancy, so when we went into the studio, he already knew what he was going to do. It’s fun to have him to be a part of the recording in that way,” says Rachel.
The one aspect in her solo project she held onto from her early career in the band, she said, was “a lot of harmonies and background vocals. I’m a big harmony person. I’m a big fan of Fleetwood Mac, so that was the one thing that I held onto from my past, but everything else is new and different.
“Gloriana was very pop country. I would say that what I’m doing leans more toward Americana Pop Country,” Reinert added. She describes the sound of Into the Blue as “organic and fresh, but still a kind of tip of the hat to a very ‘70s California Laurel Canyon sound, a California Country sound.”
Living in Nashville and married to a rock and roll drummer, Rachel Reinert is influenced by all genres of music. Rachel and Caleb met in 2014 when he was hired to play drums for her in Gloriana. “We just hit it off right away. We got married last year, and I can’t imagine being quarantined with anybody else,” she joked. “I’m happy to report that it’s going great.”
The two married last fall in Putnam County, the area that was hit hardest by the March tornado. They held the wedding in a “luxury tree house” there. Recently, the people who own the tree house reached out and offered to let them come and stay there awhile during this unsettling time.
“It’s very secluded out in the woods, and it’s beautiful. So we went and stayed this past week and as we drove . . . we saw all of the damage and destruction. It really set in to see it and realize what happened. My heart is broken for all of those people—especially those who dealt with all of that and are now dealing with this [pandemic],” says Reinert.
In response to the disaster, Reinert played a full-album live stream acoustic show on March 28 to benefit people affected locally and was able to present a check to the United Way.
“I’m so happy to do whatever I can to help. I’m happy that people were willing to help out as well. It’s cool to do whatever I can, whatever small impact I can have. That’s what matters to me right now.”
During her run with Gloriana, Rachel Reinert had the opportunity to tour with a number of huge stars in the industry—Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts, and Sheryl Crow. When asked whose music had influenced her, especially her move to solo act, she said, “Taylor Swift, definitely, is up there on the list for me. She’s really smart. I admire her songwriting, getting to do her own thing. When Gloriana played with her on the Fearless Tour in 2009, she was already very famous, and since then her superstardom has gone to a whole other level. Seeing her maintain her sanity has been awesome, and I’m happy to listen to the growth in her songwriting.”
She says her main hero is Stevie Nicks, whom she called “a big source of inspiration for me when I decided to leave. She’s somebody who’s been in a band and done the solo thing. I love her songwriting. I love her attitude. I love what she stands for. You look at her, and she’s joy.”
Rachel Reinert is on the same trajectory of growth. From Into the Blue, she has also released three videos with another one, “Here,” due out soon.
She is grateful to be able to sit down with her team and say, “This is my vision,” and have then help her bring it to life. “All these videos were collaborative experiences, and everybody was open to what I had to say and what I was visualizing,” she says, “but obviously that’s what they do for a living; they take it to another level and bring it to life.”
In addition to the videos, she is working with the team at her label who are constantly creating new strategies through social media. She says they work to refresh people’s minds to draw people back to checking out the music. She says it’s probably one of the most important tools right now.
“This has been like unchartered territory for me. I was supposed to do a press trip out in LA, and we had a listening party planned. We had some shows on the horizon, so it’s definitely been difficult. I’ve been doing live stream but trying not to overdo it.” For now Reinert is using Zoom and Google Meet to promote the CD, to get content out on social media, and to introduce people to her music.
As her bio notes on her website, “Taking the spotlight as a solo act and forging your own path takes patience, courage and grace.” Reinert says that she has a tattoo reading “Patience,” just the trait to help her navigated these uncharted waters with courage and with grace.