Renee Wahl discovered her love for music when she was about six years old and she even attended one semester of college as a music/theatre major. However, Wahl didn’t see the need to pay for an education to do something you could do without a college degree. Instead, she went back to school and graduated with a physics degree.
She enjoyed a 12-year career in the Air Force and even spent some time teaching math and physics to aspiring audio engineers. While it may seem like music and science are completely unrelated, Wahl doesn’t see it that way at all. In fact, it was her love for the music of The Beatles that helped her discover her interest in physics. “Since music is physics, I see things from another perspective—from songwriting, composition and even how my instruments and equipment works,” she said.
Wahl puts a lot of work and emotion in her songs. She rarely takes a song into the studio to record before she performs it live, saying that she needs to “flesh out” the ideas and see them take shape before recording the songs. That’s how she wrote the songs on her new album, Cut To The Bone.
There’s one song one the new album that Wahl said was particularly difficult for her to share with the world. “‘Meds’ took me a while to want to perform live, because it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I’m telling all these people what medications I’ve been on, and now they’re going to think I’m completely crazy,’” she said. “But that’s okay. Nobody gets help, nobody gets better unless you’re open about it.”
Wahl recorded the new project with Stuart Mathis, who has previously worked with artists such as The Wallflowers and Lucinda Williams. Together, they were able to create the album that Wahl wanted to record. They brought in some great musicians to play on the record: Ron Eoff on bass, Billy Livsey on keys, and Wahl’s longtime friend and bandmate David Strayer on drums. There was a lot of mutual respect and honest feedback during the recording process and that helped create an album of which Wahl is extremely proud.
“This is the first record I’ve made that I find myself listening, too,” she said. “And it’s not that I’m listening to me, it’s the entire sound of it—the sonics, the playing, the way it makes you feel. I really like listening to it, which is surprising to me.”
Rick Amburgey is an experienced journalist and country music fan. He can be contacted on Twitter at @ViewsCountry.