Off the Shelf with Rachael Dadd

An Introduction by Alex Gallacher (Folk Radio Editor):

Our shelves are often a lot more than a helpful storage solution; what occupies them can be pretty revealing…we fill them with the books and music we love, photos of loved ones, and treasured objects that hold meaning and memory. As our first guest says below, they “tell a little story…”.

Off the Shelf is a new feature in which I ask an artist to present ‘a shelf or shelves’ from their home and talk about some of the objects that occupy it. There are no rules, it could be a selection of albums, their favourite music, or something more personal or a mixture of things. Kicking things off is Folk Radio favourite Rachael Dadd.

But before we dive in, Rachael has just shared a video for her new single, ‘Children of The Galaxy’. It’s taken from her forthcoming album ‘Kaleidoscope’ (14 October); the single was written on electric guitar with the hot spring sunshine beaming down from a deep blue sky.

Says Rachael, “We were locked down, I was living with my two children, solo parenting. Life needed a certain amount of escapism, and music and songwriting were providing this. A combination of listening to Sun Ra at the time, the hot sleepy sunshine, and finding this particular pattern of notes meant I could feel as if I were on the other side of the earth’s atmosphere, and imagine other civilisations and a different way of life compared to our own. “We are stardust, we are golden” from Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock, was probably a subconscious influence. From up in space, we might look down and understand how precious life is, all of it born of and connected to the universe.”

Pre-Order Kaleidoscope and see Tour Dates below.

Off the Shelf with Rachael Dadd

The kitchen is where I spend a large proportion of my time, endlessly cooking and tidying up, doing art projects with my two sons, catching up on admin, playing with the cat, and sometimes if I’m lucky, lying down for 10 minutes on the sofa, and then there are the late evenings when energy allows me to get out an instrument and play some/write some songs in that space.

My kitchen window sill gets pretty cluttered as all the art projects on the kitchen table tend to get moved to the window sill every mealtime. But over the summer holidays, my children went with their dad to Japan, so I cleared the clutter and organised the CDs. A rare chapter of zen!

What was left were the choice objects that tell a little story, make me think of loved ones, and the CDs similarly that tell a story of loved ones and cherished music of my teens.

A beautiful little Asian girl in an orange dress crafted out of Lego by Shuki my 10-year-old son. I love this so much because it is so tender, far from the lego airships and other modes of transport, and all the other lego kits you can buy from Asda.

A silver birch tree pencil drawing by a dear artist friend Suzanne Elson. We have shared motherhood together, sharing a love of nature and going for walks in the trees with our kids and getting to let off steam after all those cooped up days and tantrums.

The art of my lovely friend and booking agent Tucker. This is a piece he gave to my youngest son because they share a birthday. Its a funny pink faced man with red lips made from modelling clay stuck to a rock – like some sort of weird merman! I love it!

A button made of clay by a friend that I swapped art with about 15 years ago – her name was Stella but I cannot remember her surname. She was a lovely ceramicist and beautiful soul. I hope she is doing well now.

A dead moth with pearly cream wings that have an iridescent purple shimmer. Can’t really get more beautiful than nature.

A pot of fine liners and paint brushes (art projects starting to make their way back onto the window sill!)

A round wooden face sculpture made by my youngest son Oto at a festival with wrinkly bark for hair and nose, nails for eyes and a stick for mouth

A portrait series of Shuki by Oto made yesterday for Shuki’s 10th birthday

The top cds on the stack – 1) A Means Of Escape Through A Hedge by Wig Smith. This is the kora and guitar songs of Will Newsome my very close friend and other half of The Hand who passed away last year after an ongoing struggle with mental health issues and drug addiction. He was such a creative, beautiful, kind and humble person and I miss him every day.

2) SPRING by Red Deer Sleeping, an EP of songs for Spring by my friend Mog Fry who played recently at my house party. I love her music, she has a song about Will which makes me cry and grieve in that way that music can enable.

3) HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHAEL, a hand crafted compilation (complete with origami inlay – see below) by dear friend Chris Lucraft who got my music out there over 10 years ago on his label Broken Sound. This compilation is mainly jazz piano, mainly the great late Esbjorn Svenson and I love it!

4) Tori Amos, Under The Pink, signed copy, and ragged inlay from my teenage self pouring over and over the lyrics. Tori Amos was my biggest idol as a fired up teenage girl. I started to write songs on the piano aged 13 simultaneously to discovering her music. I met her when I was 14 when she mixed Boys For Pele at the recording studio up the road from my house. She was super lovely and let me play a song to her on her piano. And that’s when she signed this album for me