Rachael Yamagata: So far so good! We’re in Nashville and we’re just about to jump in the van and go to Columbus today. It’s the third date of the tour; we had our third show last night and it was awesome, so we’re very excited! We did about four weeks of Japan and Europe just before this, so it feels like we’ve been out for a little bit just in other countries.

What are some of your favorite songs to perform on tour?

Rachael: From the new record: “Faster”, “Sunday Afternoon” and “Duet” are my favorites just because they have different energies and the crowd gets involved. “Sunday Afternoon” is this epic, transit journey song that we play for 9 minutes. It has great guitar soloing.

Speaking of guitar solos, how’s the electric guitar going for you?

Rachael: It’s coming along…It’s tough just because I’m more of a rough player and I like to hit the strings hard – so I’m learning to revamp my strength.

I love how you had a sort of play on audio and guitar in the beginning of “Faster”, how did you get that sound? Is it hard to recreate that every night on stage?

Rachael: What we did with our record was we ran a Dobro guitar through a harmonica mic, which gives it that real clanky sound. But, harmonica mics on stage are pretty chesty -- my guitarist Michael Chavez is a master of sound and vibe and all that stuff so he just plugs into one of his 25 pedals that he’s got and that distorts the whole things and makes it really crunchy.

We used a strong clapping as well, so recording was really physical – I think we had like seven people standing around with microphones just stomping on the ground and clapping to give it that weight. Our drummer has figured out this rhythm that’s just a really aggressive pounding of the drums. Every now and then, we don’t have anyone now - but when we have extra hands, we pull out some freestanding drums and everyone chimes in. So if we had more hands it would be perfect [laughs]! It’s a lot of experimenting.

How do you prepare for a show? Do you do anything in particular to get yourself in the groove?

Rachael: I have to be at the “show space” at least an hour before and stay around. I’m not good at leaving and then having to come back right before I to jump on stage…I have to kind of be around and write out a set-list so that the order really gets in my brain. We have a few cocktails, we do a little thing where we throw our hands in the middle and pick a phrase every night and then we say “1, 2, 3” and we scream whatever the phrase is for that evening and then we’re off!

What kinds of changes do you recognize in your music since the production of Happenstance?

Rachael: The sound has kind of taken another step I think, just in terms of the orchestration becoming very, very lush on the new record. There’s a kind of scruffiness to it. We kept a lot of the in-the-moment sounds of the studio – whether it was people talking in the room or singing little noises or the weather. You can hear some wind; there were a couple storms; you can hear tree branches falling; there’s birds chirping. We kept all of that stuff in to give it a real in-the-moment, gritty quality and I think that touches mostly on the Elephants side. The Teeth Sinking into Heart side is very different just because I’ve never done really guitar-driven songs before. We really worked to get this really Pulp Fiction, surf guitar thing going and making the rock songs our own and that’s a big change for me as well.

How about personal changes?

Rachael: I think it all just sort of seeps into the music. I feel like I certainly have more experience and my God I feel older! …A bit more weathered yet still very optimistic. I think there’s a very enriched quality that comes with running through the mill of life a little bit more. There’s a new depth that you can find – I think personally, for me it’s coming out through this new kind of gritty vulnerability that’s coming through the lyrics. The lyrics are another thing that has changed. Just through trying, I’ve been able to open up and become a little bit more poetic and use imagery and really just expand myself as a songwriter.

Is performing really therapeutic for you? A lot of your songs are so deep and so, so personal…does it feel like your constantly re-opening old wounds or does it help you heal?

Rachael: The songwriting part is really therapeutic for me. The performing part probably does a lot of damage [laughs], not because I’m opening old wounds, just because I have a love-hate relationship with getting up there on stage…half of me is terrified of it and the other half is really intoxicated by it. It’s more about always connecting with the audience and connecting with whatever I’m feeling and somehow singing it out through the lyrics of these songs. I don’t have to go back to the particular place that I was when I wrote them but I try and gage the emotions I’m having now with the songs’ base emotions and kind of play them that way. In that way it helps, but it is a process trying to really connect over and over again and make it real for myself.

It’s probably a lot harder on tour, but where do you like to go for inspiration?

Rachael: Woodstock has been a great haven for me – that’s where I wrote a lot of the songs for this record and I still have a little loft up there. It’s just woods and mountains in a really small town. It’s animals and it’s really just amazing out there. I have this place with a little brook on the outside of it and you’re just kind of secluded. For me, it’s a real relief spot.

I like to travel when I can. I took a trip to the Dominican Republic a couple years ago and rented an apartment for a month. It was amazing and just the coolest vacation/getaway. I like going where the culture is new, where the languages are new, where I haven’t seen the scenery – where everything about it is something that I have to discover. That makes me feel grounded in a way so I like to do that kind of thing.

What does Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart, in its entirety, represent to you?

Rachael: Oh boy [laughs]…Hell…wait that wouldn’t be the right word [laughs]. Elephants was like a mountain that I had to climb really. It is kind of a beast to me, the subject matter, what I had to go through to write these songs. That journey was just a beast. Getting this record out was a two-year beastly process. It really was this mountain I had to climb on every level – the writing part, the emotional part, the business aspects. It was a feat.

I could definitely see that. Speaking of, I’ve heard that you had a lot of trouble with changing record labels from Sony BMG to Warner Brothers…

Rachael: I did and I didn’t. It’s not a very unusual story with labels. Essentially, I just got dropped. My label guy that I had been working with for six years left the company to start his own record label and that was a big deal for me. They were still very supportive even after he left.

I split with some management and that was another thing. Then, I was working with the heads of the label but the president changed and went to the international department and he had been a big supporter of me.

When they all left it was just a re-shifting that took several months. It wasn’t a terrible split by any means; it was really more like this record did not suit that company anymore. They went through a ton of changes; they let go of half their roster of artists and since then it merged and split artists into new departments. Since then, it’s been kind of a mess over there. I think they foresaw that and they knew that I would get swallowed up immediately if I stayed in that system – so it was kind of a blessing in disguise. I never had any drawn out blow-ups with anybody and their still big supporters – they’re e-mailing me saying their so happy for my success and asking how I’m doing at Warner’s. Every time I play shows in New York I’ve got ten people from RCA that still come to the shows so it was really a very peaceful blessing in disguise split and it all worked out okay.

How do you feel about having so many of your songs featured on TV and in film?

Rachael: It’s really flattering! It’s funny because I’ve been so lucky with placements that I almost didn’t know that it was unusual to get that many. I have so many friends that get one or two per record and it’s amazing. I think on Happenstance 9 out of 13 songs were placed in various things sometime multiple times and I guess I thought that was normal [laughs], because it just happened that way. I’m very grateful for it, it’s a real cool thing to see the music match up with a storyline and shifting and changing and supporting a theme. It’s really cool, it’s like merging different art forms, it’s great.

What kinds of movies and books are you into right now?

Rachael: I’m a big word-of-mouth person – people are always handing me books and telling me about movies, so I pay attention to that stuff. I have a writer friend who gave me Revolutionary Road probably five years ago and that quickly became one of my favorite books.

I read everything from classics to do-it-yourself books, which I’m really into. I’ll read things like “How to Start Your Own Business” or Jack Welch books on running companies. Occasionally I’ll get into the, well not quite feminine, but interesting books on what the female take is on certain things. I’ll also read things like psychic perception books – books about astrology, numerology and all of that metaphysical stuff. I read this great book on remote viewing – which is some sort of system they were testing for the government where you essentially eject yourself into other places and have a third eye I suppose – a couple of years ago and that was pretty cool. Things like that really interest me.

As for movies, I don’t really have super amounts of time to go and see anything so I’ve been doing the whole ‘watch off my iPod’ thing. I saw Rachel Getting Married…The Reader I fell asleep during because I was so tired so I have to figure out what happened in the end [laughs]. I saw this great movie called Bella, which I fell in love with – it’s an Indie flick and has the most beautiful storyline. I’m also a super huge DVD series girl! 30 Rock, The Sopranos and Lost…those are my favorites! So, I’ll usually watch those while we’re travelling and catch up on everything.

For more information about Rachael, her music and her environmental work, head on over to her official website and then check out her MySpace and Facebook pages! Thanks so much for reading!

Check out this great video for Rachael's song "Sunday Afternoon" and then go check out her music!