Rae Fitzgerald

 Hi! I'm Rae Fitzgerald, and I'm a singer/songwriter spawned in the great Midwest and incubated in the American South. The spillage below is my story to date.  When I was a child growing up in the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area, I begged my parents to help me cut a country album. None of us even knew how to begin that process, and even if we did, there was no money for that sort of venture, so I cried some more and got over it. My ears were only privy to Christian music and select and pre-approved country tunes. At fourteen, my parents divorced, and the strict listening policies lightened. We left Christian school and enrolled in public, a transition that I credit as being paramount in my musical development. At the urging of my friends, I downloaded Cat Power, Elliott Smith and Bright Eyes on Limewire. Damien Rice, Gillian Welch and Iron and Wine followed. I devoured music, committing much of it to memory.  I always knew I had a story to tell, be it about the depression of the South, my own family mythology or purely anecdotal tales. I wanted to be a poet, but no one my age read poetry. I wanted to be a musician, but didn't know how. At seventeen, I pulled out a dusty guitar my dad had given me and wrote a small story to the scratchy strum of one chord. The gratification was unbelievable. I never really bothered with covers, but chased that feeling.  I played open mics and small shows through the end of highschool. When I begrudgingly began college, I only had a hunger to play more music. I joined a band, and we smoked a bunch of weed and took a bunch of speed. Our mania and wild blindness for the expectations and parameters of "the industry" led us to some unbelievable places, from touring with John Nolan to opening for bands like Dear and the Headlights, An Horse, Viva Voce, Pink Mountaintops and Telekinesis.  In 2010, I met Lucas Oswald, whose accomplishments stretch farther than I can type. At first glance, he was a slight man with thick rimmed glasses, stepping out of a cavalier; he became the most influential musician and friend my music has seen. He encouraged me to start a solo career, and with his help, I recorded my first two length albums and made sounds I never knew simple songs could inspire.  I've been based in Columbia, MO, since 2010, and it's been an extraordinarily kind city to me. I've released two full lengths: "Of War & Water" in 2011, and "Quitting the Machine" in 2013, and played in festivals such as Citizen Jane, True/False and the Elderberry Festival.  My trusty compadre Josh Chittum plays melodica and keys, and he's been with me ever since our first band; he's stuck by me and my music through thick and thin. Ian Vardell is my guitarist, though he plays most everything with strings, and we've hit the road hard this year. Their dedication to enhancing these songs and travelling with me is a gift I hope I can someday repay.  I am a fantastical historian holding a megaphone, a multi-instrumentalist hiding beneath my obsession with lyric. I have story upon story, layered in the folds of my brain. I shake 'em out. I sing 'em out. I've never thought of doing anything else.

• https://www.facebook.com/raefitzgeraldmusic/timeline