STEPPING UP TO THE MIC

Military spouse set to perform tonight, release her first EP


U.S. Air Force spouse Rachel Harvey Hill with her guitar Tuesday afternoon at her Bryer Avenue home. She will make her Rhode Island debut tonight at the Narragansett Cafe.

U.S. Air Force spouse Rachel Harvey Hill with her guitar Tuesday afternoon at her Bryer Avenue home. She will make her Rhode Island debut tonight at the Narragansett Cafe.

A singer-songwriter whose lyrics reflect her life as a military spouse will make her Jamestown debut tonight.

Rachel Harvey Hill takes the stage at 7 p.m. at the Narragansett Cafe. The concert will double as the release party for her five-song EP, “Straight Toward Love.” Hill and her family have been living in Jamestown while her husband, Ryan, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, studies at the Naval War College in Newport.

“I’m really excited to get to share my songs and tell the stories behind them,” she said. “The Ganny is such a cool place; so many people have performed there. It’s an awesome opportunity, and I’m looking forward to a fun time.”

The concert is being promoted by Operation Encore, a nonprofit organization that sponsors aspiring musicians who are connected to the military. The organization, co-founded by Bryer Avenue’s Erik Brine, finances recording sessions and books concerts for musicians on its roster.

“We look for opportunities to help give them a more professional music experience,” said Brine, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves. “For some of them, that means trying to help them get out on tour. With others, it’s giving them an opportunity to create their one or two great songs that they have in them.”

 

Brine co-founded the organization in 2014 with fellow airmen Rob Raymond and Chris Kurek. Along with releasing music from military personnel and their family members, the men want Operation Encore to link service members and civilians.

“We’re trying to use music as a medium to deliver the military experiences of these people and to help bridge the civil military divide,” Brine said. “It’s not as much of an issue here, where we’re so connected to the Navy, but there are a lot of populations that you’ll meet people who don’t even know a veteran. They’re pretty disconnected and have a total misunderstanding of what that means, to be a military member.”

Encore’s first lady

Hill, who joined Operation Encore shortly after its inception, was the first military spouse on the roster. She was encouraged by a friend to contribute one of her songs to the nascent organization’s inaugural compilation album.

The song was “Another Trip Around the Sun,” which was inspired by her life as a military spouse. Brine was impressed by Hill’s autobiographical writing, calling the song “the perfect way for me to share the family’s experience of what a military career is like.”

“It tells you all of the challenges, and a lot of those challenges are things that everyone else deals with, too,” he said. “Lots of people move because of their job, lots of people have trouble selling a house and lots of people lose family members. She talks about all those things in that one song.”

The compilation was released in September 2014 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Hill performed at the CD release party that Veterans Day in Phoenix. Since then, Hill has continued to sing with Operation Encore, including a multi-artist showcase in October at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, Calif. According to Brine, she is one of his organization’s most successful artists.

“She’s been all around the country,” he said.

Hill, who hails from Kentucky, always has loved music. She took piano lessons as a child, switched to guitar in college, then began writing her own lyrics. She wants her music to be more than just a melody.

“I hope when I play in front of people that they’re inspired to tap into their own creative gift,” she said.

The lyrics for most of Hill’s songs are rooted in her own experiences, from motherhood to mortality. Along with her secular material, she has a repertoire of Christian worship songs, although Hill does not associate her music with any genre. The EP she will release tonight is “more of an acoustic pop sound.”

‘Straight Towards Love’

Operation Encore has produced and subsidized Hill’s recording sessions, including those for her EP, which is a collection with more songs than a single but fewer than a fulllength album. Hill recorded most of the songs with producer Adam Rossi at his AR Audio studio in San Francisco. One of the songs was recorded in Cunningham, Ky., while most of the vocals were done at Hill’s home in Jamestown.

Among these songs are “Headed Straight Towards Love” and “Could You Be Mine,” which illustrate the early years of her relationship with her husband. The latter song is about the first time Hill told him that she loved him.

“I had feelings that I didn’t quite know how to tell him,” she said. “That whole song is about me thinking, ‘Should I call him and tell him?’ I did, and he said, ‘Thank you.’ But we worked it out and we’ve been married for 17 years.”

Two other songs, “Like Lightning” and “Finish Line,” detail the grief Hill felt following two tragic events in her family history. The couple lost two sons during infancy.

“That’s kind of like my definition of heartbreak,” she said. “Other people interpret that song different ways depending on what their experiences with heartbreak are.”

“The Beating of Your Heart,” the final song on the EP, was inspired by “how overwhelming life can be, and how it’s nice to find comfort in the arms of the one you love,” Hill said.

Hill said Operation Encore has been “fuel” for her career as a songwriter while she moves around the world with her family. She has participated in virtual open mics, which the organization sponsors on the internet among the musicians on its roster. These sessions, Hill said, have been an opportunity for her to debut new songs and receive feedback from fellow songwriters. Tonight’s concert, however, is an opportunity for Hill to expand that audience.

“The most important thing is that they get exposed to her music,” Brine said. “We want to get her music out there because we think it’s great.”