Since its inception in 2016, the weekly video series Sunday Mornings with Reina del Cid has amassed a devoted following. An engaged and diverse audience check in each week to see what Reina and co have been working on. With the help of a revolving cast of collaborators (most notably guitarist extraordinaire Toni Lindgren), the Reina del Cid project has clocked up a whopping 102 million views at the time of writing. Sometimes it’s an old folk cover; sometimes it’s blistering bluegrass. Though for many, it’s the original songs that really impress.
There’s a moment halfway through Burn Out, one of many highlights on her superb new album Candy Apple Red, that seems to perfectly capture what makes Reina Del Cid’s music so absorbing. The song deals with a heartbreaking acceptance. Detailing a love that was never meant to last. As the second verse comes to an end, the storyteller takes a step back, as if to let the listener reflect on what has been sung so far. An exquisite lead guitar break follows, beautifully hinting at the vocal melody. The solo is never too much, never not enough. It serves the song perfectly, somehow making the lyrics that came before feel even weightier. It is this combination of tasteful musicianship and intelligent, subtle lyricism that make a new Reina del Cid record a must-listen.
Armed with perhaps her strongest set of songs to date, Reina hits the road again this autumn in support of Candy Apple Red. Eager to find out more, we caught up with her ahead of the European leg of the tour.
Hello Reina! Tell us a little bit about recording the new album and what it’s like to be back out on the road again.
It’s really nice to have new music out to tour on, to be able to get out there and share some new tunes with people. This was a pandemic album, so we recorded it all remotely. Everybody was in different cities. Nate, the drummer, was in Minneapolis. Andrew was in Portland. Toni and I are here in Los Angeles, and then it was mixed back in Minnesota. So it was a collaborative effort from all over the US, mostly because we couldn’t be in the same room together when we were tracking it.
It was an interesting process that provided some opportunities to work on our parts individually, which is something we’ve never really done before. We’ve usually just gone into the studio and recorded all at once. So this way of recording definitely allowed for more time with the parts, more reflection, but also, it took a little bit longer than it normally would.
It feels more intricate, especially the lead guitar parts. Did Toni Lindgren have more influence on this album?
She definitely did yeah, this is the first album where she co-wrote two of the songs with me: Candy Apple Red and Brandy & Wine. Toni has always had an enormous influence on my music, but this is the first album where she really came forward as a truly creative and collaborative force. She really brought her own taste and flavour to the music.
Yes, it definitely feels collaborative and fun too! The live video for Candy Apple Red, in particular where you’re both playing electric guitar, it’s clear how much fun you’re having.
I had to get that seafoam green Strat! Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun playing electric guitar at the moment.
Anyone following you on social media will have seen your song Roswell and the adventure that came along with it. But our readers might not know the full story…
That was such a bizarre sequence of events! We really only intended to stop through Roswell on our way back to Los Angeles from Minnesota after the CD release party. But we got stuck there when the computer module of our van mysteriously fried just as we were trying to leave…it sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, right? So, the Ford dealership was working on the van, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and it took them ten days to fix it!
So in the meantime, we went to the UFO museum and talked to a bunch of locals about the 1947 UFO incident. We thought, how do we pass the time if not to write a song about this whole thing?!
We wrote the song in probably three days or so and then recorded it in front of the Roswell water tower. I really wanted something from the town to be in the background of the video, and that seemed like such a perfect shot. Hopefully, we didn’t piss anybody off by recording there. We weren’t able to find anybody to get permission. Whatever, it’s done now!
We kind of put that whole thing together last minute and posted it. It went a little bit viral on Facebook, especially within the town of Roswell. Then it somehow got into the hands of the people who run the UFO festival every year; they reached out to us at the last minute and added us to the festival! Kind of a crazy turn of events.
That’s so cool! What a place to get stuck!
I highly recommend it. If you’ve never been, it’s such an interesting town. Everything’s alien-themed. The street lamps are alien heads!
I could happily spend the whole interview talking about aliens but let’s talk more about the album. Although… still sticking with the space theme, I guess, the song Cassiopeia is a real highlight.
“Now that’s not to say I’m alone out here
There are hunters and archers and charioteers
They’re flung through the night
Like I’m flung through the years
I hear them all calling my name
I’m still looking for old Ursa Minor
I’ve been tracking her prints in the sky
Through my telescope I hope find hee
If only to wish her goodnight.”
Those lyrics are just fantastic. I like how they’re not just thrown-together couplets that happen to sound good. You can tell that they’ve really been agonised over.
Also, as with a lot of your songs, the listener can tell that you’re actually interested in the subject. Do your everyday interests creep into the songwriting process?
Well, thank you, first of all, for the kind words. The lyrics are the most important ingredient of a song to me. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I was an English major in college. I spend a lot of time reading poetry, fiction, anything. Words are the most powerful medium to my mind to express emotions, thoughts or questions. With regard to my everyday interests, obviously, I’m a huge sci-fi nerd. I watch Star Trek and Star Wars. I’ve seen every X-Files episode. I take a lot of inspiration from science fiction, as well as literature and poetry. I think for me, it all combines into a deep investment in words and the English language. So I’m really glad to hear that translates, at least in some way.
Would you typically start with the lyrics, or is it usually a chord progression first?
It depends on the song. Sometimes it’ll be almost like a poem; it’ll just be lyrics. Then I’ll create a melody based on the vibe of the lyrics. A lot of times, it’s actually the other way around, where I’ll come across a chord progression when I’m just playing my guitar, and that’ll put a story or a thought into my mind.
In the case of Bernadette, a song on the last album about a ghost haunting my house, I was just playing around with a chord progression, and it felt a little bit spooky to me; there was some tension. I was like, “I’m seeing a ghost”. So then I just kind of carved out the words from there.
You have a knack for creating really interesting characters. The song Shot ‘em Dead from the new album, tells a light-hearted story from the POV of a serial killer! That one hopefully isn’t you!?
Yeah, I really enjoy creating characters. Whether it’s this serial killer character or the one in Cassiopeia. Who knows how this person is living on the moon and surviving somehow? That’s clearly not me either. It’s a really fun way to keep things interesting. Sometimes I just don’t want to think about myself, or I’d rather explore different topics.
Although it can be a good way to get to know yourself through the characters that you create, in the case of Cassiopeia, that’s a way of exploring depression or feelings of isolation. Even though it’s not technically me in the song, it does have elements of me.
I’m not sure there are any elements of me in the serial killer song though! I think that was mostly just a fun exercise in character-building.
On your Patreon, for the song Einstein, 1905, there’s a little preview video of you writing the song or at least starting to write it. How do you find showing the songwriting process like that affects the final song?
That was a really rewarding interaction with the patrons. I don’t typically do that. For me, the writing of a song is a very personal space, so I don’t typically share that as I’m writing.
In that case, though, I was kind of struggling with the song, struggling to get over roadblocks. So I thought maybe if I shared it with the patrons, they’d say something to spark another idea, or even just the act of sharing would make me kind of come back to the project, and that’s exactly what happened. After sharing it, I started to get really excited about it again, just based on the feedback.
Then when you go ahead and post the song after it’s finished, I think people who were part of the process all along feel more invested in it. So it’s kind of a two-way street.
I guess that’s kind of a unique thing for this generation of musicians, that it can happen in real-time almost.
It is. We’re living in such an interesting time with technology and the ability to reach our fan base directly without a third party. It’s incredible.
Do you have a favourite video from the Sunday Morning series?
Oh man, there’s hundreds of them now, so it’s hard to narrow down. Probably something more recent, as I feel like we’ve gotten better at making them. Throughout the years, I’ve learned a lot more about audio recording and mixing. Actually, I would probably say Einstein, 1905 is one of my favourites just because Tony and I were really proud of that mix. I spent all night on it, literally from the early evening when we first recorded it until the sun was coming up the next morning; I hadn’t gone to sleep. Up all night just mixing and dialling in the tones. I poured a lot of myself into that mix and the song itself, from the writing to the recording, everything. So the video is just us in the studio space. Maybe one day, we’ll do a real music video for it. But that’s a moment in time that’s captured, you know? Just a creative night fueled by coffee.
I’m not sure people realise just how much work goes into producing a weekly video. Especially when they are original songs, or even learning the covers for that matter. The rehearsal, the mixing, the video side of things. That’s a lot of work!
Yeah, actually, every time we shoot at someone’s place, for example, just now on tour, we were staying with our drummer Nate’s family. They’re fans of our series; they watch all the time. So they saw the whole process, where we learned a cover, rehearsed it a bunch, set everything up, shot the video, mixed it all, then did all the posting. I think they were just shocked at how long it takes because it looks like we’re just sitting down and playing a three-minute song, but so many hours go into it.
Sometimes we don’t have time to do it on the road. We’ve missed the occasional Sunday, and I think people get a little bit upset about that. Again, it’s because it just seems like such an easy thing to do, but it definitely is time-consuming!
You did a video, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, which I thought was very powerful. Amongst the praise, I believe there was also some backlash to it online. Would you like to talk about that song, the reaction you received and maybe the power of protest songs in general?
I think it was the morning after or maybe two days after the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. I was so deeply affected by that decision in ways that I was conscious of and even not conscious of. I thought about all the people I know that it has directly affected and will affect in the future. I was just so angry, I thought I have to post something about this.
I don’t want it to be like a one-off word post that people can just kind of scroll by. I really want to say something and make people feel something about it. I was thinking about all the songs I could cover. There’s a song called Bread and Roses, an old women’s rights song. It didn’t seem to totally fit the moment because it’s a little antiquated now. I just wanted to be more inclusive; I wanted to be able to say all genders, not just cis women. I thought about all the avenues, and then it just occurred to me; what if I just take a traditionally patriotic song and make it about this?
My Country ‘Tis of Thee is a revered song, and I knew it would probably raise some hackles with people, that it would probably offend some people to change the lyrics and make it about this, but that’s exactly why I did it. I wanted people to stop and watch it, not just scroll by but to really think about it and to feel the anger and the sadness that I was feeling and that so many women and people with uteruses around the country were feeling at that time.
It definitely offended some people. There was a lot of vitriol on Facebook and certainly on YouTube. I think I lost about 5000 subscribers just overnight, but it’s a tiny price to pay to be able to share how I really felt about that decision.
All of the people that unsubscribed were replaced by new people who found me through that song, so I mean, really, it was just kind of a shuffling of viewers. I don’t even remotely regret it. I would sing it again tomorrow.
I’ve been asked to sing it live at various protests. I couldn’t make it because we’re on tour, but people have been using it at protests, people have been marching to it. I just think it’s really important to be able to take a stand and to express how you feel when something like this happens.
Absolutely. Those 5000 people that left, it’s probably for the best.
I would think so, but I want to be able to reach people across the aisle too. I don’t want to just be in an echo chamber. Props to anyone who doesn’t agree with me on everything politically but still listens to the music. It’s important to be able to communicate with people with differing views.
The music of the 60s is often associated with protest music and its effect on the anti-war and civil rights movement. Do you think there’s still a space for protest music in 2022? Or does it perhaps have the potential to be even more powerful due to new platforms and technologies?
I think protest music is always important. We should always be listening to artists who are expressing views that are not always well received by everyone. Those are probably the important messages, you know?
So all of the people that showed up on that post and were saying things like “stick to the music”, I want to remind them that you’re probably a fan of Bob Dylan, you’re probably a fan of The Beatles. All of your favourite artists, at some point, likely have done something that you politically don’t agree with or that people at the time didn’t.
There’s always been a place in music for protests, and I think it’s really important, now more than ever.
Well said.
It’s clear to anyone who follows your videos or listens to your records, that you decide your own direction. It’s inspiring to see how you’ve used YouTube and other platforms to really forge your own path as an independent artist.
Going forward, young musicians will undoubtedly have more and more access to technology, and hopefully, more people will be able to be creative on their own terms. Do you have any advice that you’ve picked up along the way or that you’d wished you’d known starting out that you’d like to share?
Just start! Like yesterday. Start writing, start sharing, start creating, because if you don’t just pick up the mantle and start posting, then no one will ever find your work.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be out there. I started probably before I was ready. I was posting my early stuff, building a small fan base early on from the beginnings of YouTube, and I don’t regret those early posts.
I think a lot of people feel like they have to have this perfect, polished product with the most expensive gear, or it’s not worth doing. It’s just not true. We’re living in a time when so many people have access now to the tools to share their music. Just go for it.
It’s not about writing the one perfect thing and getting discovered anymore. It’s about shots on goal. Just get going!
Reina Del Cid embarks on a European tour from September 2022.
Reina Del Cid European Tour Dates
Thu, SEP 8 – John Dee Live Club & pub, Oslo, Norway
Fri, SEP 9 – Valand, Gothenburg, Sweden
Sun, SEP 11 – Bar Brooklyn, Stockholm, Sweden
Wed, SEP 14 – Hotel Cecil, København K, Denmark
Thu, SEP 15 – Nochtspeicher, Hamburg, Germany
Fri, SEP 16 – Musikbrauerei, Berlin, Germany
Sat, SEP 17 – Rock Café, Prague, Czech Republic
Sun, SEP 18 – Metro Music Bar, Brno-město, Czechia
Tue, SEP 20 – Lorely-Saal, Wien, Austria
Wed, SEP 21 – Strom, Munich, Germany
Thu, SEP 22 – Mahogany Hall, Bern, Switzerland
Sat, SEP 24 – Zaal Nova, Machelen, Belgium
Sun, SEP 25 – Die Kantine, Cologne, Germany
Mon, SEP 26 – Melkweg, Amsterdam, Netherlands
UK & Ireland
Tue, SEP 27 – The Garage, London, United Kingdom
Wed, SEP 28 – The Garage, London, United Kingdom
Thu, SEP 29 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, United Kingdom
Fri, SEP 30 – Oh Yeah Music Centre, Belfast, United Kingdom
Sun, OCT 2 – The Button Factory, Dublin, Ireland