Daily Inspiration: Meet Rachael Williams

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachael Williams.

Hi Rachael, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story? 
Hello! Where to begin! I suppose most things start with a name. So, I’ll start there. My given name is Rachael Chloe Williams, and my artist’s name, HOLYSEA, came as a vision in someone else’s dream. Robert Edwards was my vocal coach, dear friend, and spiritual mentor for many years. He called me one morning in ~2017 and said (I’m paraphrasing), “Rachael, I’ve had a vision. Your stage name… Chloe Holysea! Because you’re the savior of our oceans.” I ended up shortening it to Holysea. My friend has since passed, and I feel so grateful to feel his guiding hand from afar as people start to call me this.

As for my journey, while the path meanders, hindsight makes sense of all.

I’ve always loved music and medicine. In all their various expressions. I come from a family of musicians and scientists/healers/holy people. I’m incredibly curious, and also highly sensitive to the ebbs and flows that pull on my path. Many of the best things I’ve experienced have happened because of following an inner knowing and feeling of yes. Without too much concern for practicality and reason.

I truly happened upon my first career as a Marine Ecologist, and for many years, my research focused on climate change and ocean acidification. I completed surveys in some of the most remote and beautiful places on the West Coast of the US. I’d sing to the tidepools while collecting data. Writing the first songs I didn’t yet know were songs in my tent during summer field trips in Oregon. One time on Santa Barbara Island, I made friends with an elephant seal I nicknamed “Bubbles.”…I’d vibrate my lips, making the motorboat sound singers often do as a vocal warm-up, and then Bubbles would, yup, blow bubbles in the water next to me. We did this over and over for close to 10 minutes before I realized I should probably get back to work :). While working this job, I was a member of 4-5 different bands, singing harmonies mostly. To me, creating harmonies and memorizing tonal patterns are as easy as speaking. It’s just there; I didn’t know that was unique. In my mid-twenties, there were many parts of myself that were incomplete and unrealized.

The wind quite literally changed around that time…the fall of 2015. This was the time I wrote the first song I ever completed–“Ready or Not (Change is coming)“—which closes out my first album (coming soon). One day I had the realization knock me over the head that I had neglected to become a doctor and my soul was craving to study medicine and also to stay put in one spot for a bit and start performing more. By that point, I had realized I would never be able to work in a Western hospital-style environment like my parents, so when I found out that healing can look like singing bowls, herbs, and acupuncture, I knew I had to do it. And there happened to be a nationally accredited school down the street. I followed my excitement. At this same pivotal moment, I had an epiphany that I couldn’t stay in my domestic partnership and be happy, so we divorced. Soon after, I started dating men for the first time in my life. My first male partner was a world-class trad jazz pianist, and with him, I began to perform regularly as a solo singer while in school full-time studying…well, magic.

People have often asked how someone can be a marine ecologist and then go into Traditional Chinese Medicine. I’m a pattern person, and I think this connection is a no-brainer. It’s all relational. Ecology looks at one element in its environment…within context of the whole. For no one thing is isolated from another. Ever. And as in nature, so in the body, because…big surprise…we’re part of nature! When there’s too much water in one part of the body, often another part is too dry. So, we dig a trench to direct the water to where it’s needed. Creating harmony. Balance. Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis often sounds like poetry…and every day in school, I was inspired. I’ve written plenty of songs referencing my deep dives into this fantastically profound medicine. And music (aka vibrational medicine) is one of the most profound ways to move energy around the body and help change someone’s vibrational state! It’s all healing. It all relates. It’s all part of the path. I think it makes a lot of sense :).

The biggest turning point for me musically happened the week after I turned 30. I attended a singer/songwriter retreat with Judy Stakee and found my mentor and my people. I realized a big part of WHO I was. A songwriter. I still can’t pick only one word to describe my vocation, but songwriter is one of my top 3.

After that knowing hit, I began writing. A lot. I probably have close to 3-4 albums worth of material that I’m sitting on…but I’m focusing now :). I first worked with my producer of this album coming out soon when he was producing for my friend Eliza Spear (I met at that fortuitous Judy retreat and won an ASCAP award with), and we vibed. He understood my language. And I understood his! It just worked. I started going over tracks with him in 2022, picking out the ones that would make for the richest collab. I believe at first, I said we would do 3 songs! Hah. Famous last words. I finished tracking vocals for my 10-track album in Fall 2022 at Stephen’s pastoral abode in Durango, CO. 2023. I collected all sorts of sonic goodies from my immensely talented friends/peers, and Stephen finished up the production. We had the album mastered by Johannes.

The album named itself “ELYSIUM…” This song just came out in my morning pages one day. I’m a big fan of The Artist Way (Julia Cameron…do it, change your life). I’ve always been a very principled person, and I don’t like wrongs. And it’s sometimes hard to watch people get so tangled in the black and white. Like I said before, everything is connected. There’s always an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to stop the drama, you have to stop dishing it! People thinking they’re right and superior…and putting others down for being inferior and wrong…it’s a different side of the same hateful coin. This song is about walking away from that war. Walking away from the broken dynamic. Stopping giving it your energy and choosing something else. Walking TOWARDS something else. Something full of light and love. Peace. Elysium is another word for the afterlife. We have to die to what was in order to be born into what can be. We have to forgive. We have to accept and move forward. Denial and repression only serve to continue to create those aspects which perpetuate the need for denial and repression. What are we running from? We have to stop running, say hello to the monster shadow, tell it I love you, and set it free. And then move on!  Or “follow the light out of this night,” as the song says.

This album is about facing shadows, looking for and acknowledging our truths, learning to love ourselves for exactly who we are without the need for labels/external approval or permanence, and taking power back from all the places we put it. This, to me, is heaven. And when everyone does this, continually, our world will transform.

So far, I’ve released 3 singles (Even Edges, Empty Now, and Milky Way) and am looking towards dropping the album this May alongside an epic music video I filmed with the support and expertise of more of my amazing artist community for “Even Edges.” This record contains my full heart and I’m very excited to be to the point where I feel ready to share with the world. My prayer is that it meets the people it’s meant to at the correct time and helps others find peace with themselves.

There’s so much more I could say; it’s dangerous to give a writer an open-ended word count!

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to share.

~Holysea

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I had stage fright for most of my life. I’ve learned that my grandmother on my dad’s side had a beautiful soprano voice, but she never sang for people because she had agoraphobic levels of fear around performing for people. I believe in ancestral patterns, and every time I sing, I feel like I’m clearing that past block away! That said, if I had had it my way, I would never have sung in front of anyone, ever. Starting at a young age, life kept offering me opportunities that I had not given it concrete proof that I could succeed at. For example, being cast as Sandy in Grease when I know for a fact that in my audition, my voice was quietly shaking from nerves. Yet, each time I got an opportunity, I grew out of my comfort zone and said yes. One performance at a time, I learned that I would probably not die if I sang in front of people! It took a lot of doing it and not dying (or, at the minimum, freezing, choking on saliva, forgetting lyrics/chords, etc.) to realize that it would most likely be fine! And maybe even fun. Now, I still get nervous when I do new things (especially when there’s a lot of gear involved), but I’ve realized that my voice and my words are my gift, and it’s selfish to not share. And all I can really do is get out of the way. If I forget a word, who cares! Maybe it’ll give someone watching/listening permission to do something they love and NOT be perfect! FREEDOM. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a big reason why I’m able to do what I’m doing now. We all have imposter syndrome, and nobody is immune to the voice of resistance…it’s a battle that sometimes has to get fought daily! But it’s a battle that can be won and it’s sure worth it to stand down the fear!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a singer/songwriter of the alt-pop persuasion, and one aspect of my project that I’m proud of is that my sound is my own. I have never tried to emulate anyone with my voice (though I’ve had several people try and make me do this), and my musical pallet is eclectic. I’ve played my unreleased songs for music supervisors/critics, etc. They say that my compositions feel relatable, without being derivative and unique, and without feeling foreign. My music is mostly channeled–it’s not from a heady space of analyzing the rhyme scheme and trying to force this feeling into a box…it flows out sometimes as whole songs, sometimes as discrete parts that later become friends. I feel like I’m here now because this project is something that has been called out of me versus something I willed into existence. I’m driven on a personal level by being of service. So, I hope that I can keep doing this through music! Because nothing makes me more happy than singing. And also, my apothecary :). I still make my products (each product is like its own little music production…just instead of drums, it’s jojoba, and instead of vocals, it’s jasmine oil), and I will be launching that venture around the time of my album launch. Flower Fairy Apothecary is that business’ name.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Oh my! Yes. Well, as far as the album is concerned, Stephen Rivera is my co-parent. He gets me and is able to paint with the pallets that I would use if I were anywhere near as skilled as he is with production! I also want to thank my husband and co-writer, Melaku Mendell, who wrote “Empty Now” (my second album single, out now) with me and was the reason I found Judy Stakee! He is the first person who saw me as an artist in my own right, when even I couldn’t see it. And for that, I’ll always be so grateful! Next, Judy Stakee…in my experiences with her (both in the first retreat and the follow-up alumni retreat and in my one-on-ones with her), my confidence and identity as an artist and human have blossomed. I’m so grateful for her support and encouragement! Next, Eliza Spear…while being a decade younger, she has been so generous with me in her sharing of the vast amount of experience she has collected during her career! I’d also love to thank my longtime friend, Marissa Merrill. We cheerlead each other every day and have both played active roles in each other’s successes and in helping us up level. She wrote and directed my first music video and the new one for “Even Edges,” which will be out soon! Lastly, my parents! My mom, Sarah, and dad, Jesse (and my stepdad Gunnar, who is no longer with us), always told me that I could do it. Can’t was the only word that was forbidden in my house. All I have known is support from them, and for this I will always be deeply grateful. Also, without their musical genes and penchant for wordplay, songwriting would be much much harder haha. I feel incredibly blessed.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.holysea.love
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holysea.love/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGrYzvIhqvZHrIv2IulgsfQ
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/chloe-holysea
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5So47e8lJlgMdy4PezoQDi

Image Credits
Marissa L Merrill
Rachael Williams
Sarah Gadoin
Aaron Boggs
Dani Cumberland