SOAKT

Rikki on Steve on Rikki

In 2022, I helped Rikki make her album SOAKT. Here’s Rikki:

I was given sage advice to make my first record with a friend. The rapport, trust, fun, and talent was already there in Steve. We met regularly, devoted time to the project, and brought our ideas and open ears. I learned so much from Steve. Not only how to properly export stems, but also how to trust myself more as a singer and vocal engineer, and how to get lost in the process and experiment more freely. I shared almost all of my vocal takes with him, and he found nuanced qualities in ones I would have deleted and missed entirely if he hadn’t listened closely and brought his unique perspective to the work.

For many songs on the record, I had already written lyrics and had melodies in my head. We started there, and I sent Steve some reference tracks that I felt captured the vibe of what I was going for. Steve would make an instrumental track and we would build the song off that. We punched up lyrics, melodies, and tone.

We met in person twice in LA, and each time we spent a magical afternoon on my back porch, songwriting. Then we’d walk into town for tacos, before getting back to work until we found a natural stopping point. I cherish those afternoons; they stand out as dream days, the kind you wish you could have every day but are all the more special because you can’t. Being in flow, being an artist, and being a friend are true gifts to experience!

(I vividly remember those LA days. They were real highlights of the year. I think we more or less wrote three songs in one afternoon and I remember saying to Rikki, “It doesn’t get much better than this!” — Steve)

Fun facts about Soakt:

1. Ghosts was the first song I wrote, as a poem in 2016, and it was the first song we made together (it took the longest).

2. Final Song was the last song I wrote in 2022; Steve sent me his guitar instrumental and I wrote it in 30 minutes. (This was fun because Rikki wanted a dance number and I was soooo not in a dance headspace, so I sent her the guitar part and she wrote the song and sent it back the next day. We both agreed it was a perfect not-quite-final song. There’s a specific line in here which I thought was a bit much but Rikki told me “no, someone actually said that to me on a date,” so we left it in and it’s become a line that keeps on giving. If you know, you know. — Steve)

3. We wrote Unknown Superstar together, on the grass where the Silver Lake farmers market takes place. (This one was funnnnnn to write. We were just hanging out watching the various Silver Lake characters wander around and the song slowly emerged from their footsteps. — Steve)

4. I wrote Dancing With Fire on a work trip, in a hotel room in Huntington Beach in 2018. (I sent Rikki the basic chords to this and she sent back basically the entire melody worked out soon after and I remember being so excited by it. — Steve)

5. I wrote Wing Surfing on an airplane to Atlanta for work in 2016.

6. Girlfriends is both of our favorite track. (Not sure I can decide a favourite, but I do think it’s great. Some of the best drums I’ve done. — Steve)

Working on this album was so fun. It was really interesting seeing Rikki’s writing morph from being more poetry-oriented to song-oriented, and I’m continually impressed by her ability to be frank and vulnerable in her work. She’s never afraid to be direct in a way that some people might find a little unsettling but which I think is a characteristic strength. And ultimately just incredibly honest.

I tend to work in a fairly unstructured way, so working on this album presented a new challenge for me, as Rikki brought a sense of coherent vision and organization that I wasn’t used to. She had clear ideas for each song and for the overall message of the album, and it was my job to kind of facilitate that as best I could. Of course, I couldn’t help but suggest other possible avenues when they occurred to me and she always considered them seriously. Rikki is both open to the world and a wonderfully wilful and enthusiastic person, which turn out to be fantastic traits in a co-conspirator, because she’s happy to hear you out but also very happy to take responsibility and decide for herself. — Steve