The Abridged version:
- Terra Lopez of electronic, alternative R&B project Rituals of Mine dives into her relationship with music and books in a Q&A after recording the premiere of “The Stacks,” a concert and conversation series in partnership with Amatoria Fine Art Books.
- Lopez grew up in South Sacramento and found inspiration in her isolation, she told Amatoria owner Miranda Culp after the live performance at the bookstore.
- Her first major project was Sister Crayon, which signed to Warner Records. She moved on from that chapter after her father and best friend passed away. She then took the moniker Rituals of Mine based on a Korean song lyric.
Terra Lopez grew up in South Sacramento, singing to her teddy bear, pretending to be Otis Redding or Elvis. Now, she has traveled the world playing original music, melding electronic, alternative R&B and trip-hop.
The origins of her musical project began with Sister Crayon. The current iteration, Rituals of Mine, brought a riveting live show to “The Stacks,” a new local concert series and collaboration between Abridged by PBS KVIE and Amatoria Fine Art Books.
Joined by Sacramento jazz-fusion all-stars LabRats, Lopez performed a 30-minute set, then sat down with Amatoria owner Miranda Culp to talk music, books, art and the Sacramento creative scene.
Watch the video above or click here for the full interview.
Read an abbreviated version of the Q&A below. It’s been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Rituals of Mine | Q&A | The Stacks
For the full interview, click here or scroll up.
Culp: You grew up in Sacramento. Tell us what that was like and tell us about how you first discovered music.
Lopez: I’m from South Sacramento and if you’ve been there, if you’ve spent time there or have lived there, it’s very, or it was at least for me, very desolate — a lot of space. And so, as a kid, it made me feel so restless because I just wanted energy. I wanted life around me, but it also gave me so much time to hear my voice, to try to figure out what my voice was, what I wanted to sound like. So, there was such a loneliness living in South Sacramento that I didn’t really appreciate until I was an adult, because that loneliness gave me so much time to just spend in front of my mirror. I did the classic like, sing to my teddy bear. I was Elvis, I was Otis Redding — for hours. I would daydream at school of my radio. There was an AM station that only played ’50s music and I was obsessed with it. And so much so that my dad would have to tell me like, “Hey, you cannot bring your radio to the dinner table…” It was either reading or music and that was it.
Culp: I want to tell a little tiny story. The first time that I saw Terra perform was actually about 22 or 23 years ago in San Francisco. I was running in this big group of people that I only really put it together later were all from Sacramento. And this would have been like 2003 or 2004. This was a moment where like — now everybody can make beats on their phones — we can make a robot make us music if we really want to. But back then, it was like the tech was still quite new and getting the computer-generated sounds to integrate with instruments was a real challenge. It was a real technical challenge in a live space. And when we saw Kyoto Beat Orchestra, which was her group at the time, we were just like, they figured it out. They cracked the code. And there were only two of them, but it felt like a full band because they were scurrying all over the stage the entire time. And even then, I knew that Terra was a reader because she would preface songs by saying, “This song is about what happens to you when you read too much Karl Marx” or something like that. So even back then, I knew you were my people.
Tell us about the highlights of your various projects because you’ve been all over the map style wise … tell us about that and how you got to working with these guys (LabRats).
Lopez: I fell in love with trip-hop and I fell in love with jazz. And that was what that band was. It was a duo and we blended hip-hop, trip-hop and jazz, and that’s just kind of evolved over time. Sister Crayon started as an alter ego because I’m very shy. I’m a very shy person. That’s why I sing with my eyes closed or stare at the ceiling. I was drunk one night writing a letter to someone, and I signed it, Sister Crayon. And I was like, oh, that’s cool, so, that became my alter ego. And I was playing a house show actually on the kitchen floor and The Sacramento Bee wrote about it. That was the first time I had ever gotten any press. From there, I played a show in a garage and a label from L.A. signed me. And that started everything for me and then became an international thing … Then Sister Crayon became this bigger than life thing that I had no expectations for. We signed to Warner Brothers, and we did a whole lot of other stuff. Then I decided I didn’t want that alter ego anymore. It didn’t fit myself. It didn’t fit my life. And it really was after losing my dad and after losing my best friend in the course of six months, I realized they knew me as that. I can’t continue without them in that way. So, I changed it to Rituals of Mine. It was from a Korean song lyric.
Fast forward to last year, I grabbed coffee with Jacob (Swedlow) from LabRats and within like 5 minutes I was like, “OK, you’re my people. Do you want to drum for me?” And we were like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And then he was like, “You know, I might know a bass player that might be interested.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, let’s do it.” And it was Miguel (Recendez.) He was like, “You know, I might know a keys player that might be interested.” And it was Joey (Archie). It just happened. So naturally we’ve been playing together for about a year now. … I feel like I learned so much from them. We come from such different worlds. I come from the more indie-electronic space, and and they come from different spaces. And I feel like we’re able to teach each other a lot. Playing with them has brought out such different aspects of my voice that I really wasn’t even aware of.
Culp: I was listening to “Endure” recently. … I noticed that in particular in that album the theme — that kind of comes up in a lot of your music that is really interesting to me — is this theme of struggling to live an authentic life. These sort of layers of our public and private and contending with the world. It seems like that is a really deep vein that you plumb in a lot of your lyrics. And then there’s this other aspect to your lyrics, too, which is that sort of classic R&B romantic. … So, it feels like there’s sort of two elements going on with your writing style. And that is the self-versus-world and that real struggle to live an authentic life. And then the other part is how that struggle comes up against another person — against your relationships.
Lopez: I think it’s no small thing for us to get up every day and to live and be human and to understand ourselves and understand each other and communicate. It’s so wild to be a human, but then loving another human. … It’s so wild to even like, be a friend with someone. I mean, just like the different moods and whatnot. I just think we endure a lot as people and really need to give ourselves some grace and be more kind to ourselves. And I’m saying this really for myself, first and foremost, I’m not preaching it. I need to do that as well. … I got into music because it’s the cheapest form of therapy for me at that time. … Luckily, I have more tools now, but music is still the way that I navigate the world and try to process and understand how to be myself in a world that really, really tells you not to be.
Culp: I wanted to ask you about this book, Fernando Pessoa, the “Book of Disquiet” … This book was published some 40 years after he died, and it was found in a trunk, and it wasn’t complete or in any kind of order. So, you don’t read it really beginning to end, right? It’s kind of a book that you just open and close a little bit. But tell me about what this book did for you, and did it inform your songwriting at all?
Lopez: I always say books find you. That book found me in 2006 and I just remember reading the first word, the first sentence and being floored to the point where I could only read a page at a time. It was too sacred for me to try to read through. … I have not allowed myself to finish that book. I have five pages left and I refuse. Maybe on my deathbed, I’ll be like, “Give me the ‘Book of Disquiet,’ please.” I became sick with obsession with that book — so much so I have a Pessoa tattoo. I have an Ophelia tattoo. He was incredible because he fell in love with this woman named Ophelia and never told her because she was a coworker. And so, he started writing all these pages and pages. There were 40,000 pages in this trunk when he died that they found, and they were all to Ophelia. And they were about life, love, just his thoughts and whatnot. And like, no one knew him while he was alive. And I just find that to be so tragic, but also really powerful that it is now a book and there are statues of him in Lisbon. … I love existentialism. I love thinking about life. I love thinking about what’s the meaning of it all. … There’s such a romance that I hope I never lose. And he reaffirms it for me.
Culp: Tell us about an artist in Sacramento. It doesn’t have to be a musician necessarily, but just an artist that you’re paying attention to.
Lopez: I have to shout out LabRats. Of course. They’re just crushing it. They’re incredible musicians … but they’re even better humans. And that’s what I really care about, like, who am I spending my time with? They’re amazing. They very much move me. I really love Rudy Kalma. He’s an incredible rapper and producer. He is working on an album that I think is really, really beautiful. And there’s this artist. Jupiter. We have a Jupiter piece in our bedroom, and I fall asleep every single night looking at that piece. I just think Jupiter’s work is incredible. Jupiter’s personality is just really inspiring.
Catch up on ‘The Stacks’
- Rituals of Mine | Full Performance | The Stacks
- Rituals of Mine | To Show You Violence | The Stacks
- Upcoming: The Stacks Presents Anton Barbeau | Tickets | Wednesday, Aug. 12
