Album Notes

Once upon a time, in a land far away, lived Rachel Smith. The young girl was raised in a small village in the woods north of the big city. She would serenade the empty streets of her village after dark, singing alone in front of her little stone house.

Gradually, as word of her astonishing voice got around (which sounded like a mixture of honey and tequila), she upgraded her venues to Kiwanis festivals, school cabarets, local cable TV shows and church services (accompanied by her organist father). Rachel learned 3-chord guitar from her kind but very protective mother so that she could accompany her dreadful, morbid songs about death and the playground.

Out on the night-time street, far from her little stone house, Rachel learned to use her music to delve into realms that were banned by her mother, who carefully guarded Rachel from the dangers of adult music. When Simon and Garfunkel played on the turntable, the needle always skipped past "Cecilia" because they sang about "making love in the afternoon."

But it was making music in the evening that delighted the young girl with the golden voice, and she found a taste for rebellion in it. Rachel's music thumbed its nose at anything that tried to constrain her. She was classically trained in voice and piano, but took opera in order to sing like Sinead O'Connor.

One day, Rachel grew up and left her village and moved to Montreal. While studying English at McGill University, she played around with other musicians like Karl Mohr, Hawksley Workman, Andy Sheppard, Leon Kingstone (The Planet Smashers) and Lederhosen Lucil. When Rachel had read her fill, she took her guitar and moved to Washington D.C. to work at an AIDS hospice. There, Rachel sang in a local gospel choir and had the best musical experience of her life. Singing with day care workers, garbage truck drivers, people from all walks of life struggling to make ends meet in the torn-up inner city - it was a mind-blowing experience. They were the best musicians she had ever heard.

When Rachel came back to the dark Canadian forests twelve moons later, she brought with her these memories and a sack full of songs to plant in the ground. When the songs grew up, she cut them down and put them into an album. What was left was a clearing.

When you play The Clearing, you'll stand in some of the musical spaces that Rachel has been exploring lately: rolling Virginia pastures, dark German forests, salty Atlantic graves, cold moonscapes. You'll hear tangos, folk anthems, country croons, electronic treatments and aggressive pop. And if you listen closely enough, you'll hear something else: a musician who's not afraid to take chances, to walk in the woods where the wolves lie in wait. Just don't ask to see her teeth.

The End