![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Rachael-Sage-Q-and-A-May-2012.jpg\" "\\"Rachael-Sage-Q-and-A-May-2012\\"")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nRomance, record deals and the reality of making it\u00a0 on your own terms \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Singer, songwriter and pianist Rachael Sage\u2019s 10th and latest album, Haunted by You<\/em>, is a song cycle about love, loss and immediate entanglement. Its tale parallels Sage\u2019s own recent personal trajectory, which began with the dissolution of a longtime relationship, followed by a torrid overseas affair\u2014one she soon realized was doomed to fail. But don\u2019t go assuming that the \u201cI\u201d in her songs is always Sage herself. \u201cI take licenses with the first-person perspective,\u201d she says. \u201cI adopted that voice to convey the widest range of emotions while exploring the ups and downs of love over a relatively brief period\u2014from romances that were really amazing to some I thought were really\u00a0going to wreck me.\u201d<\/p>\n If anyone can manage ups and downs with aplomb, it\u2019s Sage. The Port Chester, N.Y., native juggles successful careers as a recording artist and director of her own record company, MPress, as well as taking regular side trips into visual art, acting, dancing and comedy. Sage has always been an overachiever, from teaching herself piano at age 3 and garnering an\u00a0ASCAP Pop Songwriting Award at 16 right up to marking MPress\u2019 first Grammy nod\u00a0(for Seth Glier\u2019s The Next Right Thing<\/em>) and launching the new album by MPress artist Melissa Ferrick in the last year.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always had one foot in business,\u201d says the Stanford University grad. \u201cEven as a little kid and then later as a teenager, I had several small businesses where I\u2019d make things and sell them. That always came naturally to me. I was always hustling and putting my strengths forward. But there are things I haven\u2019t mastered by any stretch, and that\u2019s stuff I\u2019m always struggling with. It helps to enjoy hard work and survive on very little sleep. I don\u2019t know what screw is loose in my head, but that\u2019s what I like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n If a loose screw led Sage to run a successful independent label, she might not want to tighten it anytime soon. The MPress imprint originated with Sage\u2019s own first album, 1996\u2019s Morbidly Romantic<\/em>, and was a fully functioning record company by 2001. \u201cI kept learning and observing and going to conferences where I connected with a ton of people,\u201d she recalls. \u201cUltimately I went from my apartment to a small office, and now we\u2019ve been in the same\u00a0space for close to a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n Although MPress has remained the home for all her albums, Sage did find\u00a0herself courted by a major label in the late \u201990s. \u201cI entertained it quite seriously,\u201d she concedes. \u201cThen at the last minute I read an article in The New York Times<\/em> that revealed what an artist contract looks like, and it made me seriously wonder what the benefits of being a signed artist are. There were sushi dinners and meetings in fancy offices with the label president where they\u2019d compare me to other successful artists. But it frightened me, because I didn\u2019t want to be like anyone else. By then I\u2019d already had some wonderful doors open for me. They weren\u2019t the be-all and end-all, but they were stepping stones and affirmations that what I was doing was connecting to people.\u201d<\/p>\n Sage has thrived as an indie act ever since, an accomplishment that must bring her great satisfaction. Or does it? \u201cI think I\u2019m allergic to the word \u2018satisfied,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m capable of being satisfied. I don\u2019t even know what that means. But I am extremely grateful for the life this dream has granted me, and the people who have inspired me and continue to inspire me constantly. I feel this is just the tip of the iceberg.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/strong><\/p>\n RACHAEL SAGE Romance, record deals and the reality of making it\u00a0 on your own terms \u00a0 Singer, songwriter and pianist Rachael Sage\u2019s 10th and latest album, Haunted by You, is a song cycle about love, loss and immediate entanglement. Its tale parallels Sage\u2019s own recent personal trajectory, which began with the dissolution of a longtime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[3754,3937,483,3938,3939],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6656,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654\/revisions\/6656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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