Cartinglee’s Folk Rock is a Message From the Forest

April 22, 2022

OOLTEWAH, TN–The roots of Cartinglee’s music go beyond her educational and generational background, but dig into the environment she surrounds herself with to create, and the deep connection with that space.

On her sophomore album, A Little Fog, the singer, also known as Rachelle Barr, opens with “Lauderback Lullaby.” There’s an ethereal and daunting echo to the song as she sings about a ridge, actually describing her home outside of Ooltewah, TN, and named after its foggy, mystical energy.

“Lauderback Lullaby” is about my ridge, Lauderback Ridge, and there's a road down at the bottom. There's a train right beside the road and we can hear it at night when it goes by,” says Barr. “The song was inspired by sounds that we recorded on our phones, and we even layered some together and included them throughout the album. You can hear a siren when they test it at the nuclear power plant across the river. It just gives me this feeling of where I am. The potential for trauma, the past trauma that everything around me has experienced, but also all of the growth and the life that is connected to it as well.”

A Little Fog is an organic, sensory experience that drops listeners into the world where Cartingleee sings, using those aforementioned environmental samples—nuclear sirens, echoing birds, rivers running, conversations, and trains halting. Her upbringing wasn’t on that mountain, but in Durham, NC where she was raised around her great grandmother's house piano and her grandmother’s experience as the music minister for a baptist church. She then learned guitar on her own and minored in music at Lee University in Chattanooga, TN.

Cartiglee works alongside her friends in music collective and label Sha Sha Collective, through which she released her debut album “I Need You, I Don’t Need You” in 2020, just after a divorce and after years without making music. Many of the songs on “A Little Fog '' were written when Barr and other members of the collective committed to growing their songwriting craft from a hobby into a consistent ritual. As a part of that process, Barr participated in a songwriter workshop with folk group Over the Rhine, where she met musician Andrew Crowe who recorded her debut record at his home studio. Through these relationships, Barr began to establish herself as a songwriter and indie recording artist.

“A lot of times, with the collective, we decide we're going to write songs for a whole month. We'll write a song a day. It’s a challenging but wonderful exercise in creativity and vulnerability and letting the song just flow, or letting it come, or putting something on the page even if you don't want to, or letting yourself be ridiculous sometimes,” she explains. ““That group of writer friends and I have been working together to create this label and to just really start music under something cohesive. In the beginning, we were thinking of it more as a loose artistic collective than a label, but it's grown into a label now, and we are finally releasing albums, which is really cool. So it grew from just being an artistic community to something a little bit more than that.”

A Little Fog continues to sound like a folk rock album, with layers of electric guitar and drums appearing throughout, but the lyrics and melodies are Cartinglee’s personal strength. The feelings she expresses are universal, speaking about trauma metaphorically and emphasizing loss, love, and growth. Barr is a mother of two and works as a high school French teacher. She shows her students that you can balance multiple aspirations at once. But what’s also important for Cartinglee and for A Little Fog is the simultaneous healing process Barr and her home are experiencing. Emulating that sound is important to her, and with the auditory elements of A Little Fog to tie it all together, Cartinglee is weaving a spiritually intimate experience that takes you both into her mind and her home.

“I don't have these acres. They could have me just as much as I have them. But the land is healing in a lot of ways and it's something that I've learned from being there. You know, all of this area was logged in the 19th century, and the mountain was stripped completely bare so there are no trees older than a couple of hundred years. I think you can feel that the land is healing which sounds bizarre, but when you're really paying attention, you can tell. There are things I've started to learn now that I am on this land. So many things need healing here, and I get to be a part of that. I’m thinking of these species that are invasive and I can participate in the healing of this place by eradicating these invasive species. Like the Japanese honeysuckle doesn't need to be on my land anymore, it's choking out the native wildflowers and trees so the land can’t heal, you know? So just like this place is healing me, I feel a responsibility to connect and nurture the land as well. And a lot of my music, whether it’s about community with other musicians or with this land, is all about healing in communion with all of life.”

You can listen to A Little Fog, and more of Cartinglee’s music, below.