With lyrically driven songs, Rachel McIntyre Smith’s comforting twang music reminds listeners of the classics while also adding a relevant and fresh perspective. The Boot writes that she is “part Musgraves, part Phoebe Bridgers, all sincere storytelling and heartstring pulling.”
Rachel began working with producer Dran Michael in the fall of 2020. Since the beginning of their partnership, Rachel has released multiple singles and her debut EP, Glory Daze, which was featured on BBC Radio, Grady Smith’s YouTube Channel, Holler, and Spotify’s Fresh Finds Country Best of 2022. The second single from her debut EP, “The Woulds,” rose into the top 100 of US Americana radio. Glory Daze explored the uncertainty, nostalgia, and regret that comes along with becoming an adult and letting go of your childhood.
She is set to release her sophomore EP, Honeysuckle Friend, this Friday, August 23rd. Rachel refers to this project as her sunset record, meaning that it’s a scenic close to her quarter-life crisis, sung about in her debut, and a hopeful look forward to her next chapter. The music features banjo, mandolin, steel guitar, and carefully crafted lyrics written solely by Rachel.
Today Glide is premiering the EP in its entirety. Reminiscent of acts the Dixie Chicks and Kacey Musgraves, this collection of songs finds Rachel bringing her brightly colored style, smooth vocals, and small-town charm to smart lyrics that carry an infectious, poppy sensibility. There is both an intimacy to her music as well as the potential for a bigger sound that could grab the attention of large audiences with lyrics that are simple yet deceptively smart and will surely resonate. It helps that there is the underlying theme of the power of friendship on the album, which feels unifying and like something we could all use more of.
Listen to the album and read our conversation with Rachel below…
This collection of songs really works very well together. How did you decide what songs to include?
Thank you! I wrote all of these songs during the same time frame and in the same headspace, so it just made sense to me to include them all in this EP. I was very intentional during the production process to have cohesive instrumentation between songs to make sure that they would flow together well.
Deciding which songs to include was actually pretty difficult. I recorded seven songs for this EP and had to cut two off. It came down to the storyline that I wanted to tell with this project. The five that I chose – and the order that I chose to put them in – tell a story of accepting where I’m at, making peace with the past, and finding hope in the future. I really like the two songs that didn’t exactly fit within that, so maybe I will release those down the road.
What was the writing process like for this collection?
I wrote these songs all in about a seven-month period where I was going through a lot of change. I was moving from Oliver Springs, Tennessee, to Nashville and settling into a new city. During that time, I really leaned on my friends and family to help me adjust to my new life, and I wrote these songs from that perspective.
I don’t have a strict writing process like I know a lot of successful songwriters do. I haven’t dipped my toe into the co-writing world in Nashville yet, so all of these songs were written solo. Each song idea came to me one at a time several weeks or sometimes months apart. “Hold The Ladder,” “Memories in The Middle,” and “Stoke The Coals” were all very quick to write from the beginning to end. I think each of those took about an hour to write. “Grow Up Slow” took me about a month of adding and tweaking a line or two at a time. “Parentheses” took me over two months to write. I thought I was finished writing it until I was staying at my friend Sara’s house. She responded to the song way better than anyone else had at that point. Prior to playing it for her, I wasn’t sure if the song had potential. Once she said that she loved it, I spent the next few days brainstorming a new bridge for the song and finally finished it.
How did you come up with the EP title and what does it mean to you?
I was sitting on the swing on my parents’ front porch in July last year. It was late at night and no lights were on. I could hear everything chirping and see the fireflies blinking in the yard. I was reflecting on all the folks I had spent time with on late summer nights. Most of them were people that I hadn’t talked to in years. I started writing my song “Memories in The Middle,” and the phrase “honeysuckle friend” just sort of fell out of my mouth before I knew what it meant.
A honeysuckle friend is a friend who takes the bid. Someone who takes time to make small moments into memories and doesn’t dismiss something because it’s not important. Life can be a long and weary road, and I want to spend it with folks who will stop and eat the honeysuckle with me. I feel very fortunate to have several people past and present who I consider to be honeysuckle friends.
You are a very talented lyricist and storyteller. Are there any lyrics that you really love in any of these songs? What sorts of things inspired you to tell the stories you tell in these songs?
Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. My favorite lyrics change regularly, but right now here are my favorite lyrics from the EP.
From “Grow Up Slow”:
“I aint’ crushin it but I ain’t rushin it and I think I’ll be better off because of it.”
I like this lyric because it sums up the whole song in a single line. This line gets stuck in my head a bunch. I love when something can be simple and also carry a deep meaning to it. It took me a long time to realize that going at my own pace would serve me better in the long run.
From “Parentheses”:
“I watched our love shrink into memories that I can’t frame above the fireplace so they clutter every corner of my brain.”
There is a huge family photo that hangs over my parents’ fireplace so my whole life I have wondered – what will hang over my fireplace? It’s sad to see a fireplace picture love turn into 4x6s you have to stuff into a shoe box underneath your bed.
All my songs are based on life experiences or the delusional scenarios that I create in my head.
If listeners can take away one thing from having heard this EP, what do you hope that is? What do you feel are the key themes for the EP overall?
Although not every song is about friendship, all these songs were written while I have the best group of friends in my entire life. My debut EP, Glory Daze, was written during the pandemic from a place of solitude and loneliness, and I think it was very evident. This EP deals with most of the same themes as Glory Daze but shows a dramatically different perspective because I wrote the songs at a time of feeling so supported by my friends and family. Take “Grow Up Slow” and the title track “Glory Daze.” Both have very similar themes – everyone is moving on and I’m not – but “Glory Daze” was written alone in my old one-bedroom apartment, and “Grow Up Slow” is a song that I sing with my friends in the car on the way to Sonic.
It’s crazy the impact that a good community can have. It turns on a lamp in a dark corner and transforms it. It takes away the bitterness and the sting from past loves and failed friendships and lets me remember the good moments. It helps me take my eyes out of the rearview and look at what’s ahead.
That’s all to say I hope that this EP makes folks think about their honeysuckle friends and the impact that they’ve had on their life.
