The Michael Rault Interview
From Canada to LA, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and all-around songster Michael Rault has been creating music for nearly two decades. His most recent effort, 2022’s S/T, eagerly explores the musician’s incredible instrumentation and atmospheric ability to bring songs to life, which seems so effortless in the grand scheme of things. With influences ranging from the Beach Boys to the British and American psychedelic movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Rault has tastefully touched on all the unique qualities that make artists and musicians some of the most sought-after professions in human history. While carefully shedding light on works from the past, such as “Crash! Boom! Bang!” Tell me about this release, and some other earlier works like “Living Daylight” and “MA-ME-O,” the musician enlightens us on everything he does for others, such as his wife, the highly talented Pearl Charles. Together, the duo has bridged the gap between the conditions of creativity and the poetic partnership of being a universal unit in the wide world of sound.
Growing up in Canada, how did you initially connect with music? As a multi-instrumentalist whose range is from guitar to producer, bass, and percussion, I’m curious to know who were some of your biggest Influences were early on, and how quickly the gap from listening, to wanting to write, and record music yourself took place?
My family is all musicians. My mom, dad, and uncle were constantly playing around when I was a little kid, so that surrounded me. Most of the people in my neighborhood were fellow musicians from the same scene as my parents. We all lived in the same housing co-op, so I was exposed to different kinds of music by just hanging out within our community in Edmonton. There was always the inherent influence from my family. Getting into punk music and attending independent hall shows as a 12-year-old began providing me with a special kind of inspiration that proved that I could do this. There was a certain excitement from seeing other young bands play. A lot of them truly couldn’t even play a song together, but the ones that could mostly play the same chords at the same time, and did some stops and starts mostly together, and had a few cool vocal parts - that was exciting. You could hear the potential of new ideas coming out of the chaos of young, inexperienced people playing music for some of their first times in public. Eventually I started playing music and got some of my first bands together, and pretty quickly there after I started to get more and more drawn into folk, blues, country, rockabilly, r&b, soul and eventually the Beatles, the Stones, The Beach Boys and the classic psychedelic 60’s and 70’s sounds. Alongside my punk phase, I began to grow a much stronger interest in the music my parents and family had played around me as a kid. I started to appreciate the familiar spirit of rebellion and defiant attitudes within the music, which captivated me the most.
Photo: Alice Baxley
Your career is nearing its two-decade mark with the release of your 2008 debut “Crash! Boom! Bang!” Tell me about this release, and some other earlier works like “Living Daylight” and “MA-ME-O.” How did working with Womack Sisters come about, as well as the engineer Jared Hirshland, who worked with such notable acts as Stone Temple Pilots, and Christopher Owens?
I started releasing independent CDRs with my band in 2005, so it’s been exactly 20 years. I was in 10th grade when I started doing that, and I’m 36 now. “Crash! Boom! Bang!” was the first one I put out under just my name as a fully solo project, and also the last of those fully independent releases, because I managed to get signed for my next album “MA-ME-O” and then I didn’t have to go print up the CDRs and the artwork myself anymore. Now they were getting pressed on proper CDs and vinyl. “Living Daylight” was my next full length that my cousin Rene Wilson, and I co-produced together at Riverdale Recorders in Edmonton (which was also where “MA-ME-O” was recorded, but this time it was just Rene and I letting loose as he had taken the connection from our sessions on “MA-ME-O” to start interning and producing out of the studio while I had been off living in Toronto). That record eventually became my first international release, first signing in the States, which allowed me to have a visa to play down here, and largely set me on the path I’ve been on for the last decade or so. The Womack Sisters came into play after “Living Daylight.” While parlaying some of the momentum I had gained from the first recording, I was eventually signed to Daptone Records on their subsidiary WICK.
“You could hear the potential of new ideas coming out of the chaos of young, inexperienced people playing music for some of their first times in public.”
Wayne Gordon and I worked together on that record. Eventually, Gabe Roth became involved by providing string arrangements and overseeing/assisting with the mixing in his Riverside, CA, Penrose studio. At the time that we were mixing and doing final overdubs in Riverside, Gabe was also recording the Womack Sisters, and we managed to wrangle them in to do the backing vocals on “When The Sunshines,” which was the final song on “It’s a New Day Tonight”. The harmonies were arranged and sung by me, but it was a cool opportunity to have such amazing singers from a legendary lineage come in and sing the parts I had laid out. They asked me if I went to school for music, and I said, “No, my parents were musicians, so I just learned from them,” and they were like, “Oh, that’s so cool - that’s just like us”. But, of course, their musical family ties are just a little bit more legendary and prestigious than my own. As far as Jared Hirshland goes, he mastered my “Still Not Sad/Nothing Means Nothing” single that came out around “Living Daylight” as an accompanying but stand-alone single. I never met him (as far as I can remember). I produced that myself, along with Ben Cook, Max Turnbull, Tony Price, and Dave Plowman. One of them must have had a relationship with Jared, or it was possibly through the label. If you read this, Jared - nice job on the mastering!
Photo: Meg Remy
Jumping ahead to your most recent self-titled effort that was released back in 2022, what was most important for you to achieve both artistically as well as personally on this album, and how much has your general approach to nailing down songs, ear for production, and the overall observation of being a musician changed over the years? Is there anything else you would like to share further with the readers?
Photo: Pearl Charles
That self-titled record was an interesting album. I was going through several personal changes leading up to writing that album, and that inspired the record. The album was written about the transition into my new phase of life. Most of the defining people and relationships from my previous life came to a relatively abrupt ending, and while I was dealing with all of that, a ton of new things came in out of nowhere. I met my current partner, Pearl Charles, and eventually moved down to LA and then Joshua Tree, where I now live with her. By the time I was recording the record, I was already touring as a guitarist with a reformed lineup of the legendary 1970s Zambian Rock band WITCH, and also playing and collaborating with Pearl on her project and other things. So far, that album has stood as my last album. At some point, I may write again for my project, but I haven’t started yet, and since the album was finished in 2020, this has been the longest break from working on my solo material. Just check out Taurus Rising Records - you can follow us on Instagram. It’s mine, and Pearl’s independent record label and studio in Joshua Tree, CA. We’ve released Pearl’s “Desert Queen” album on that label for North America, and that’s a great album I was proud to have co-written, co-produced, and also did the mixing here at Taurus Rising. I’ve also recently produced and engineered an upcoming album for the Nude Party (the song “Look Who’s Back” has already been released as a single), as well as the debut album for a new Decca artist named James Emmanuel (the single “Brothers & Sisters” is out now), and also the Wandering Hearts interpretation of CSNY’s classic album “Deja Vu”, which is out on Chrysalis. We also just released the first single from the LA-based band Same Ol’ Smiles and their upcoming EP, which is awesome.
