Songwriting from experience
Reeya Banerjee’s releases informed by personal loss, physical, emotional travels
For years, Reeya Banerjee lived in Beacon and Newburgh and got her musical fix performing classic rock covers. Singing the Stones, Pink Floyd and U2 was a lot of fun, but she had a longstanding dream of writing and recording her own album of original material.
A pandemic move to Cambridge in 2021 and some strengthened collaborative bonds later, Banerjee has achieved her ambition and then some. She released her debut album “The Way Up” in January 2022. In December she released the single “Mechanic of the Hudson” and put the finishing touches on her next single as well. And if that wasn’t enough, she’s currently in the planning stages of a follow-up LP.
This flurry of activity is impressive, especially considering that it wasn’t all that long ago that Banerjee felt like becoming a songwriter was an unattainable goal.
“I always wanted to do original material but didn’t know how,” she said. “I studied music theory and I’m a writer in my other (non-music) life — essays, movie reviews — so I had the foundation. Living in Beacon, I had a lot of singer-songwriter friends and when I’d tell them I didn’t know where to begin, they’d say, ‘you’ve just got to do it.’
“But I couldn’t get over this hump of intimidation and imposter syndrome,” Banerjee added.
To help Banerjee overcome that block, her friends put her in touch with Manhattan-based producer and multiinstrumentalist Luke Folger via email in early 2020. After feeling each other out and connecting over similar musical touchstones and tastes, the pair decided to work together on an album.
“It was a collaborative process,” Banerjee said. “We each went off on our own to come up with the foundations of eight songs. We knew what each song was going to be about. Luke encouraged me to write free verse, and not worry about rhyming or making it sound overly pretty and he’d help it fit structurally. The one thing I was least confident about at that time was musical composition. He’d record instrumental demos and we’d bounce it back and forth.”
Banerjee and Folger conducted all this remotely, as the COVID-19 pandemic began soon after their initial emails. The two didn’t even meet until February 2021, when she traveled to New York City for a pair of sessions to record the entire “The Way Up” album.
With COVID restrictions keeping venues closed during the time of recording, the two weren’t concerned with composing and arranging material so it could be played live. From a lyrical standpoint, Banerjee was focused on exploring her own mental and emotional wellness and outlining a way forward for herself.
Prior to the start of COVID shutdowns, Banerjee went through intensive treatment to manage complex PTSD tied to her losing her mother to cancer at the age of 12. When it came time to conceptualize her first album, Banerjee knew she wanted to use her songs to continue processing her emotions and traumas.
“We wrote it for ourselves; we didn’t think about whether it would be playable live,” she said. “Luke asked me, ‘What do you want this album to be about,’ and I knew I wanted to write about what my experience was like from beginning to end. I wanted to explore what grief does and how it makes you do things, feel certain ways.
“I hope it resonates. I’m not famous, but I hope if some person comes across it and is struggling, they can feel like life isn’t completely hopeless,” Banerjee continued. “There’s always been a stigma, it’s decreasing now, but it’s still hard for people to talk about these things. It was important to me to put this stuff out there. ‘The Way Up’ is my emotional roadmap.”
In June 2021, shortly after completing “The Way Up,” Banerjee and her boyfriend relocated from Beacon to Cambridge for work-related reasons. Despite the move, she’s maintained friendships with Folger and her Hudson Valley musician cohort.
Banerjee held an album release show for “The Way Up” last January at Argyle Brewing and several of those downstate pals came up to play as her band. One of them, guitarist James Rubino, had worked with her on a series of experimental cover songs during the pandemic. Now, the pair are writing new songs with the enchanting indie rock of “Mechanic of the Hudson” and the forthcoming “Shadows.”
Banerjee is also planning to reunite with Folger to record a follow-up LP to be released in the spring or summer, this one based on her experiences moving around the country a lot as a child, spending most of her adult life in the Hudson Valley and making her way to Cambridge. With two trusted creative partners and an earned self-confidence in her own abilities, Banerjee is feeling pretty good about her musical pursuits.
“Coming off the album release, I’ve had all this creative momentum; doing an original album basically unlocked a part of my brain,” she said. “With ‘Mechanic of the Hudson,’ I was more involved in the compositional aspect and took the lead in writing lyrics. I’ve felt more comfortable writing songs.
“When I listened to the finished project of ‘The Way Up,’ there was this moment where I stepped outside of myself and said, ‘Hey, this is pretty great,’” Banerjee continued. “I knew what I had gone through to get everything written, and tracked, and it turned out so well. It showed me that it’s never too late to try something new, once you get over that voice that says you can’t do it.”
“Coming off the album release, I’ve had all this creative momentum; doing an original album basically unlocked a part of my brain.”
— Reeya Banerjee