I am thrilled to once again be catching up with Alt Pop Singer, Songwriter & founder of MPress Records, Rachael Sage.

I always love interviewing Rachael because she gives such insightful answers into her creative process, giving fans a true behind the curtain experience!

As Rachael gets ready to release her newest album, Under My Canopy, Rachael took time out of her busy touring schedule to answer my questions below! 

Under My Canopy drops this Friday, October 9, 2026. Pre-save/order it here!

In this NEW interview, Rachael once again answered my call, but this time around she shares:

• How Under My Canopy reimagines the songs of Canopy through a more intimate acoustic lens
• How she looks for light, purpose & joy from dark places
• Weaving the themes of inclusiveness, equality & non-violence through her music
• How she has led MPress Records for 30 years with independence and intention
• How her visual art & stage wear become part of the storytelling
• So much more

Connect with Rachael: Website, Facebook, Instagram

Under My Canopy, reinvents the diverse collection of songs that feel like a refuge, woven from resilience, longing, and the irrepressible determination to find light in the darkest places from their previously lauded studio album, Canopy. 

Featuring fresh acoustic instrumentation and imaginative new arrangements, Rachael and her band continue their ongoing journey of storytelling and emotional connection. Confidently spanning the genres of Americana, pop and neo-folk, the record offers listeners a beautifully crafted, deeply heartfelt assortment of songs that find common ground in themes of living a purposeful and joyful life rooted in inclusiveness, equality and non-violence.

Reflective, mournful yet optimistic, Under My Canopy is one of her most soulful and thought-provoking works yet. 

1. Your newest album, Under My Canopy, will be released on October 9, which features acoustic & reimagined arrangements of the songs featured on your 2025 album, Canopy. How did you first realize you wanted to reimagine this album? Being on the road so much this past year and playing the songs live always gives me a new perspective on their meaning and also the very different kind of connection to the material that evolves when there’s an audience as the “other band member."

I’m often asked which album on my merch table sounds the most like what they’ve just heard, and I think this is a fun compromise between stripped down and acoustic and just more…focused on the storytelling versus too much heavy production.

2. You did a similar release with Another Side in 2024, which was a reimagined version of your 2023 album The Other Side. What did you learn from that process that made the creation of Under My Canopy easier? I wouldn’t necessarily say that the creation of this album was any “easier,” honestly - but then again, ease is rarely my goal. However, I am certainly always learning and I imagine that’s what keeps me so engaged in this work!

If anything, I would say it’s always an increasing challenge not to tread old creative ground, to continually make creative, if not surprising choices regarding special guests and instrumentation - and so I just try to summon increasing confidence inviting my very talented peers to be part of the project!

Seth Glier, Cassandra Kubinski and Kristen Ford, for instance, are all wildly busy touring artists, but I was passionate and enthusiastic in recruiting them because I felt they could each bring something beautiful and powerful to songs. But yeah - “easier” isn’t necessarily the goal, and the whole “work smarter not harder” ethos has been somewhat lost on me personally - ha!

3. What was the first song you knew had to be reimagined for Under My Canopy? The ones I was doing the most each night with my string players and harmonica on tour—"Canopy," "Belong To You," "Just Enough," and "Live It Up" - were definitely the ones that started to take shape soonest.

4. Why did you want to reimagine that song right away? I’ve been on an endless tour pretty much for the last couple years and my original album Canopy captured the first impression, so to speak, of these songs in my production imagination.

When I’m in the studio it's generally a “kitchen sink" - I want to try every idea, endless layers, ambient texture - and it’s more like movie making really.

These versions sound more like how we’d play in your living room if you invited us over for a house concert - plus a bit more excitement, but never at the expense of the lyrical and vocal performances.

5. Under My Canopy reinforces the album's message that you can find light in the darkest places. How do you find the light when life gets dark? I craft! Seriously - when all else fails I find that doing things that require quiet introspection and the full engagement of my hands if not my whole body opens up channels that can only be described as oneness with The Light aka Hope. I think creativity is inherently hopeful.

No one picks up a paintbrush or sits down at a piano with the goal of maintaining the exact status quo. Creativity summons change, and with art and music - more often than not - that change seems to be positive and yields greater understanding or at least greater curiosity.

Rachael Sage, Photo Credit: Anna Azarov

6. Another theme on Under My Canopy is that of living a purposeful and joyful life. How do you feel you are living a purposeful & joyful life? I have amazing friends and a lot of love in my life, but I also can feel isolated or misunderstood at times. For me the key has long been to turn those reactions and emotions into currency that can help bring people together. I do that through music, art and laughter.

I get to do it largely onstage for a living - how lucky am I? - but I also do quite a bit of it offstage via mentoring other younger artists coming up or helping amplify my artists’ work on MPress Records and working collaboratively with a very thoughtful and passionate team.

There is a shared ethos of giving back and community-mindedness among both my friend-circle and my work-circle (which largely overlaps) and it keeps me centered and striving to grow and learn more about being a better human, every day!

7. We are living in such a divided world right now, more so than with previous administrations. Your music & messaging is deeply rooted in inclusiveness, equality and non-violence. When you set out to write a song or album, how do you always make sure to include these themes into your music? I don’t necessarily set out to write collections of songs, but it’s more of a continual practice and then eventually part of my job as an artist and also a producer is to curate some of them onto a specific project that feels cohesive and interwoven in some meaningful way.

On occasion I’ve concertedly written a collection of 10-13 songs for a themed song cycle, but in this case it was more about choosing songs that fit the themes you’ve mentioned, because that’s the music and message I felt was needed most at this time.

Sometimes a song feels timely and sometimes I can recognize it’s just not going to “fit” and that perspective is part of the discipline of crafting any album.

Rachael Sage, Photo Credit: Anna Azarov

8. Let's find out more about you through some of the songs on Under My Canopy:

• "Just Enough" - What 'fills up your cup just enough' these days? Long chats with friends over matcha at my favorite coffee houses in The Hudson Valley!
•  "God Bless America" - If you could say a prayer for America today, what would be included in that prayer? “Please G-d, grant our younger generations the wisdom, insight and discipline to grow into communities comprising a nation that understands better than their predecessors: we all bleed the same blood, we are all worthy of human dignity and respect, and the only way forward is together in unity, sprung from empathy, resilience and a desire for peace.”
• "Belong To You" - How do you feel you belong to the music industry in a way you didn't feel like you did when you first started your career? That’s a very interesting question! I’m not sure I feel I belong more to the “music industry” now than earlier in my career actually. I go to fewer music business events, seminars, mixers and panels…and I probably also read fewer trade mags. I pay less and less attention to “trends” and just kind of assume whatever I’m doing is either in or out of fashion, but it doesn’t derail or encourage me either way! I guess being an indie label and longtime indie artist with my own direct connection to my listeners affords me a bit of latitude to not “belong” to the larger industry in an obvious way, but then again I’ve always believed it was all about personal relationships, and that has only become more and more the case. I have the same lawyer, the same music distributor and the same music manufacturer as I did a decade ago and my label team at MPress is celebrating 30 years in music! I suppose that makes us irrepressible…

Rachael Sage
Holding her new album, Under My Canopy
Photo Courtesy of Rachael Sage's Social Media

9. One thing I would love to touch on in this interview as I try to do in all our interviews is remind my fans & followers that you have owned & run your own record label, MPress Records for 30 Years. Everyone should know that the record label is completely run by women. Why was it important to you that MPress Records was made up of all women? I didn’t set out to have an all-female/non-binary run label - that has not always been the case and our staff history is richly diverse - but for a while now that’s been the case and it has created a particularly empowering dynamic among our existing team.

It feels appropriate, in some ways, because we often center feminist perspectives in the music we release, and champion women’s health as well as LGBTQ+ causes that all of us believe merit our time and attention, amidst promoting folk-pop music!

10. What is something we didn't get to talk about that you'd like my audience to know about you? I am also an avid painter and love combining visual art with my music. I paint my stage wear and am about to wear a bunch of it along my upcoming “Under My Canopy Tour”!
 

More Rachael Sage Interviews:

October 2025 (Watch Here): Live Interview Replay - Canopy Album
March 2025 (Read Here): Finding Safety & Peace Under Her Canopy 
June 2024 (Watch Here or Listen Here): Finding Another Side
May 2024 (Read Here): Another Side
2020 (Listen Here): My Bravery's On Fire
2012 (Read Here): Haunted By You

Rachael Sage, Photo Credit: Anna Azarov

More on Rachael Sage:

Sharing stages with seminal musicians such as Rufus Wainwright, Ani DiFranco, and Judy Collins – with whom she also recorded a critically-acclaimed duet – Rachael's career has been defined by a passion for storytelling and an innovative sense of creativity. 

In addition to being a six-time Independent Music Award-winning musician and producer, Rachael Sage is also a John Lennon Contest Grand Prize winner who has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, SXSW, and toured globally from Japan to Berlin with her band, The Sequins.

Rachael is also a visual artist and former ballet dancer who performed with the New York City Ballet.

A self-described "cancer thriver", she is additionally a philanthropic advocate who has raised money for a wide range of causes, including Foundation For Women's Cancer, WHY Hunger, American Refugee Committee, and National Network For Youth (NN4Y), Rainbow Mind, and The Trevor Project. 

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