MacD on Music: The Ghost of You

Two weeks ago was International Woman’s Day, an event that was marked by a number of celebrations around the city. Two Fridays ago, Sandino’s held it’s own celebration of the event, with Femme Sesh, a concert featuring some of the finest female artists this city has to offer.

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this event, but the afternoon of the gig I met up with one of the artists that would be playing, the brilliant Rachel Craig. This Wednesday (22nd March) Rachel is releasing her debut single, ‘The Ghost of You’, and I met with her in the Pickled Duck to discuss the song and her musical journey so far.

Talking about the writing of the song, Rachel told me “It was written about two years ago as part of a collection of songs. I just had a creative spurt and wrote a load of songs at the same time, which was great, but it was during one of the lockdowns so I had a lot of time to myself.

“But I’m not good at telling if things are good or not, so I was reaching out to other musicians and trying to navigate the scene a wee bit, just because it was during Covid and there was no live music or anything.

“I was doing a bit of networking and sending around demos I made of those songs. I made some really good connections and some really good friends doing that, like Joel Harkin really helped me because he encouraged me a lot, and then he put me in touch with George Slone, who I ended up recording an EP with.

“This is one of the tracks. George produced it. He’s a great producer of folk and indie folk music. The single is coming out under the Scratch My Progress program, which the Oh Yeah centre run, so it’s going to be part of an EP they put out, with four different acts.”

Rachel then went on to tell me what the song is about: “The storyline is basically my relationship with my dad.

“It’s kind of inspired by the Lucy Dacus song ‘Thumbs’, because that talks about her friend’s relationship with her dad being a bit funny and I think it’s really nice that people are talking about traumatic things without the worry of making people uncomfortable, but it’s good for people who relate to it because they can take comfort in that being there.”

Next, we moved on to Rachel’s musical background: “I taught myself to play the guitar when I was fifteen, which is sort of a late start to music, I suppose, then I ended up studying music in university. It became sort of a passion after learning the guitar.

“I went to Magee and then Covid happened straight away after I graduated, so it kind of got in the way, but it gave me the time to sit and write the songs and record demos and gave me the nudge to start networking and try and get some contacts. I recorded the EP with George and the past year has been pretty good.

“Last year I made my debut of those songs at Imbolc. After that I was supporting a load of different people. I supported Roe, Susie Blue, Joel Harkin, and a load of different people. It’s been a really great year, being able to share my music and perform. Then, this is sort of a dream come true, but I will be supporting Joshua Burnside in the Nerve Centre on the 7th April.

“That’s the biggest one I’ve done yet. It’s actually really funny. I put out a tweet about a year ago saying ‘I really want to support Joshua Burnside at some point in the future’ and then he asked me. I kind of met him when I was opening for Joel Harkin in the Duncarin and Josh was there.

“He sort of curates the Creative Collective of songwriters and musicians in the Duncarin, so then I became part of the Creative Collective and went to their weekend where I was writing songs with Sammy Copley, Ferna and a girl called Sinead McKenna, so we wrote a song together and Josh asked me to support him after that. It might not be a big deal to people, but he’s one of my favourite artists of all time, so it’s really nice to get to support him.”

Rachel Craig’s single, ‘The Ghost Of You’ is out this Wednesday, 22nd March. It’s being launched that night in Black Box in Belfast and again the following night in Sandino’s. She’s supporting Joshua Burnside in the Nerve Centre on the 7th April and George Hutton in Whelan’s in Dublin on the 8th April.

Rachel can be found on Facebook, Twitter @rachel_96x and Instagram @rachelcraig_music.