Photo courtesy of Sean Raasch
For musicians that rely on live performances to pay their bills, the past few weeks have been full of anxiety and uncertainty as concert cancellations pile up due to the coronavirus. It’s hard to tell when things will get back to normal. It’s an even greater challenge for musicians with underlining conditions such as Sean Raasch, who has had a major depression disorder since he was young.
“It’s amazing how people who know still make fun of me,” Raasch wrote on Twitter earlier this year. “‘Go see your shrink,’ ‘small minded and insecure,’ ‘cry baby’—the whole nine. Some days are tough, but others are great.”
Writing songs has provided a special kind of clarity and therapy for Raasch, especially of late. After saying goodbye to his longtime project Twin Brother, Raasch has used his new moniker Reins Daily to process his emotions and discover and embrace who he is. On his second album as Reins Daily, a self-titled release and seventh album overall, the songwriter has created perhaps his most telling group of songs to date. Mostly acoustic with direct, raw and vulnerable lyrics, the album finds him getting back to his roots.
The collection will be offered as his first ever vinyl release, a limited edition 12-inch record. Says Raasch, “Today is a very frightening day and to not know how many more are coming makes it so. I’m depressed so I make music but the music industry as a whole eats you up and spits you out. It takes this music and many others music made with pain and emotion and treats it in a way that further inflames the anxiety and depression. Making original music is an extremely difficult thing to do emotionally."
Reins Daily refers to “taking control of your life's anxieties or fears or future on a daily basis.”
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“What it does is that it unearths parts of me or thoughts that I may have not known existed,” says Raasch. “When I'm singing and writing, it's almost like I'm letting that all out as one would talking to a therapist. I don't necessarily need to hear anything back. It's just important for me to get it out of me. Because a lot of times there are things going on in your life where your psyche or your mind or your soul that you don't really realize until you make the effort to tap in and find it. And through that, you find yourself.”
Raasch talked to the Shepherd Express about discovering himself on his new album:
You said goodbye to your longtime project Twin Brother last year. Why was it time to move on?
I feel like it's always just important to continue to grow in life and I found myself growing beyond that time. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing, it just served its purpose. And it was a time for me to move on and create under a new identity as it grew along with myself.
And it was more a band kind of thing. And as time moved on, life changes. I found myself in a different place. So, to me it was important to have what I'm doing musically now reflect that.
You released your first album as Reins Daily at the end of last year. Was it your plan to release another so soon after?
No. When I write, it just kind of takes its natural course. Sometimes I'll write a lot in a small amount of time and then I won't write for a while or the motivation and the inspiration has its own mind. And I don't want to stop that. I just let it do its thing and I'm happy to be a medium for it. Selfishly, it helps me as well.
How are the two albums different from each other?
The first album really is an example of me trying to figure out who I am in music again. Every part of it is me, and I’m trying things I’ve never tried before. Try and see what sticks and what felt good and what feels right. And in doing that, I found myself. As fun as it was, there was too much. I enjoyed it, but it's not really what I want to do or who I am. I feel like a lot of it was white noise, just put there to make something better or bigger.
But actually, it was just covering up what it was originally. It was somewhat of a distraction for myself. So, this album is more about looking at my own flaws and accepting them and afterwards seeing the beauty in myself, the good and the bad, and having commitment to working on what’s bad and reigning in the hurtful tendencies. Whether they’re being too self-conscious, caring about what other people think, to the point of being judgmental towards other people or myself, being too hard on myself, expecting perfection when it’s just not reality, embracing just who I am rather than trying to be someone I'm not.
What songs on the new album were most important in the album’s direction?
The first song that I wrote off the album was “I Can Hear It” and that is kind of what started the whole thing off. I was kind of going through a lot in my life where things were changing. I wasn’t at the job I was at anymore for five years, which had a huge deal. It was a big deal and I just felt like I didn't know what I was doing.
I was just lost. I didn't know what the future was going to be, what it looked like if I was going to be able to handle it and why I was even playing music. I started writing that song and… felt emotion through writing again. Getting that emotion out is why I did it to begin with and writing songs with an acoustic guitar is how I started almost 20 years ago. That song reminded me of why I picked it up to begin with and it kind of unleashed the rest of the songs and brought me back full circle. The who I am and why I do what I do.
Did you feel it was important to go this direction to get a much more raw and direct results?
Yeah. And not trying to cover myself up with makeup or production or all sorts of other things. And just, let the song be what it is and stand on its own. Like I want to do with my own life.
Everyone has their own different ways that they want to create and there is no right or wrong as long as it’s making you happy and you’re doing what you really want to do. For me personally, it's, this album is me. It’s kind of an unveiling of myself, putting myself out there with my mistakes or blemishes or whatever and being okay with what anyone sees and how they try to see it.
What songs surprised you most to write?
The song “Bones and Meat” really encompasses this whole idea really. We’re all just flesh and blood, bones and meat, and we’ve all been beaten and battered, and we’re all flawed and we’re all just trying to be content and happy with ourselves. And once we can be, we can treat other people with the same respect we should be giving ourselves. And “Bones and Meat” is just kind of like how we’re all so much more similar than we think. We all have our own trials and troubles, and we all make mistakes, and we all beat ourselves up. I think we need to remember that about people across the aisle, that we're all just doing the best we can here.
And then the other one is, “Bury Me Dear.” “Bury Me Dear” was not originally going to be a part of this group of songs. It’s a song that I used to play as with Twin Brother when we had a band, but it never got recorded. But it was always one of those songs that connected with me the most, felt the most me, as far as who I was and why I was doing it. I mean the emotional release this song brings me. And there’s two guys that play on the album with me and those two guys were a part of that version of Twin Brother while we were playing that song.
And the keyboard player, Nick [Berg], while we were recording one of his parts, he said, “Remember that song we used to play, and it never got recorded? I think there was like a video of it or something” and I couldn’t remember what he was talking about for the life of me. And then he brought it up on his phone and it was “Bury Me Dear” and I was like, “Oh yeah, I remember that song” and I played it then relearned it. Any other Twin Brother song wouldn’t have worked with these songs. But that one, just fit like a glove because it encompasses the path I’m on right now. And so I’m really glad he mentioned that song and that we recorded that song because I think it’s so beautiful and one of the more standout tracks on it and I just am really thankful that we did that because it deserves to be recorded.
Where did you record the album?
I self-recorded all of it at my home in Bay View. I brought Andrew [Eshbaugh] and Nick in. I knew I wanted it to be simple, but I also wanted to share it with somebody because the first album was very just me and I was very isolated during it. It was fun to do, but I feel like good things and moments like that are just better when you can share them with people that understand and those two guys are just very real and authentic and they really understand me and accept me for who I am. I thought they would be great additions more for the camaraderie than anything and, after they did their parts, I was even more happy that I asked them ‘cause they’re so good.
