Grief is one of those things where there’s really no one way to express it, and those expressions vary greatly from person to person. After losing her father Robert in 2017, singer-songwriter Rachael Kilgour was processing the loss and wrote a song about her late father. She then decided to write an entire album of songs as she reflected more deeply on his life. The result is My Father Loved Me, a collection of nine songs released in September 2023.

Rachael Kilgour visited The Current studio for a session hosted by Radio Heartland’s Mike Pengra. Kilgour plays songs from the album, and she talks to Mike about how the album came together — including her decisions to honor her father’s memory by recording the album in his home country of Canada, and to have Canadian musician Rose Cousins produce the album. And while the album is called My Father Loved Me, it’s clear Rachael loved her father right back. Watch and listen to the performances and interview, and read a transcript of the interview below.

Interview Transcript

Mike Pengra: One of the pleasures of my job is to listen to an album, and then get the person who made the album into the studio and talk to them. And I'm really happy that Rachael Kilgour is with me today. Hi, Rachael.

Rachael Kilgour: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Mike Pengra: I love your new record. It's called My Father Loved Me. And it comes out very soon. 

Rachael Kilgour: Oh, it actually is out.

Mike Pengra: It is out.

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: OK. Good. All right. 

Rachael Kilgour: I'm having an album release in Minneapolis that is much delayed. It actually came out in September. 

Mike Pengra: That's right. OK. Doing a whole album of songs about your father... I've heard of people doing a song about a parent or a loved one. But a whole album. There's something really deep about this that I want to talk to you about. I mean, there's a lot of facets of your father's life that you must have wanted to write about.

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mike Pengra: Tell me about your dad first.

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah. I mean, to be fair, it was a surprise to me, too, that I started writing about him, my dad. Well, as the songs say, my dad was a real hard worker. And he lived a pretty simple life. He really cared about doing his job well, and being reliable, taking care of his family. Not taking advantage of people. He did a lot of, he put in a lot of hours that he didn't charge for. Helped out a lot of people who lived alone and couldn't figure things out on their own, and I really admired that about him. But when I was young, that meant he wasn't home a lot, he was working a lot. So I spent a lot of time, we had, you know, it was a one-income family, my mom was home with us. So she really set the tone in a lot of ways and was like, more instrumental in my childhood, in the like, forming of me as a child. And so I did find it kind of surprising when my dad died, how unsettling it was, and how much I had, how many questions I had about who he was, and what he meant to me and how much I was like him and what I could learn from him now that he was gone, and yeah, I just kind of couldn't ... it came slowly. But I couldn't stop. Like, usually songs come to me, where there's just a, you know, a nagging idea or worldview that I'm trying to shift or make sense of, and so come one at a time. Little bits of him, you know, yet he also had dementia for the last decade of his life, which, so that means I was 35 or so when he died and — 34 — and he, that means I didn't really get the chance, you know, in your early 20s, you're like, busy rejecting your parents, like, "Oh, you guys are so annoying. Everything you do is dumb." So yeah, by the time I was curious about him, he was gone. He was either not himself, and then he was physically gone. And the songs felt like a good way to get to know him.

Mike Pengra: It's an evil disease. Was that the intent, then, when you got the idea to write a song or two and then an album? I mean, that was the whole idea of it?

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah, it's I think it's it has many facets: one, to get to know my dad; another to like, celebrate my dad in that he had lived this very humble life. And I don't care so much about legacy, but like, I think I just I feel like so many of us live lives like that, and why, who's to say that I get to get up on stage and people clap at me. But you know, living well and loving the people you love is meaningful. That's a good life, and it's worthy of celebration. That is one angle. And then I also realize in the performance of the songs, that there's something about proving something to myself and the ways that I am like my father, the ways I doubt myself, or the ways I carry around shame, specifically. There's this kind of through line of the shame that kind of held my dad back, or that he worried he wasn't good enough, that he wasn't doing his job well enough, or that he let his family down or whatever it was. I recognize that that lives in me as well and in the audience, and when I'm performing the songs that it feels like my dad spent his whole life hiding these things, and instead, I'm just going to tell you exactly what happened. And then I'm going to tell you that I loved him anyway.

Mike Pengra: I feel like I really got to know your dad by listening to this record. And it's it's a blessing. I mean, he sounds like a really cool guy. You had this idea when you were recording another album, right? And you just said, "I'm going to do a song about my dad" or "an album about my dad."

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah, I had actually, I had written dad worked hard first, but it was the only song I wrote when my dad was alive and I did not share it with him. But yeah, it was finished when I was recording the last EP. I was in the studio and the producer was like, "I'd really like to record that one." And I said, "I'd really like to not because I'm going to write more songs about my dad."

Mike Pengra: That was the intent all along.

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah, yeah, I think I could just, I didn't know, I didn't have a — I don't usually make plans when it comes to art — but I just like, I had a feeling that there was a lot more there. He was a big, he had suddenly become a very big character for me to figure out.

Mike Pengra: I'm in the studio with Rachael Kilgour. My Father Loved Me is the title of her new record — new as of last fall, I should say. And it's, it's a beautiful record. How does your mom like it?

Rachael Kilgour: Good question. My mom loves me. 

Mike Pengra: Perfect!

Rachael Kilgour: That's, that's, I mean, we have different interests and different ways of listening to things. And one of her best skills as a mother is the ability to, like, release us and support us. I don't ever feel like she's tried to control what I say or how I express myself. She's never put me down. She's, yeah. She's also like, not as curious about the things that I, you know, she's not necessarily like thinking about language in the same way, or how my emotions were shaping, or like, she's just like, "Oh, OK, well, I'm really proud of you. Good job! Your dad would have been proud." You know, she says very nice things, and gives me permission, I think, to just uncover whatever I uncover, however it comes out, which doesn't always look great for our family, but that's the thing about families.

Mike Pengra: One of the songs in the album, the song "Ontario," is when there's describing in a car accident. When was that? How old were you when that happened?

Rachael Kilgour: I was a teenager; I think I was like, 18. And, yeah, that was a big moment of, I feel like I've learned more about the songs as I've been performing them. And that usually comes at the end of the show. And like I was describing, it's this memory of my dad trying to do everything right, but also like kind of wondering about his sense of belonging in his own family, in the world, and worrying... I guess, having a really hard time forgiving himself. And apologizing also; these these two things come and hand in hand. And like I said earlier, yeah, we did have this, it was a pretty bad car accident. And all of us, physically, we all survived. It was OK, and thank God, but our family was kind of forever changed by this big... 

Mike Pengra: Guilt?

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah! Yeah, this sense of guilt. And this kind of, he didn't know how to really say, "I'm really sorry, and I screwed up." And, yeah, it felt like this kind of cloud that hung over everything. And so then I decided, "Well, we should just put this out in the open. I'll write a song about it!"

Mike Pengra: You worked with one of my favorite songwriters, who produced this record, Rose Cousins, on this. How did she affect the songs? Any of the arrangements? Order? All that stuff? How was her effect on the album?

Rachael Kilgour: She was, yeah, integral to all of those things. I think I came with the songs, other than like, I had one song I finished the last few bits in in-studio, but the songs themselves were kind of there. And I've known Rose for a long while and have always admired yes, her songwriting. And her voice. I mean, obviously, her voice, but I mean, like her voice. She is herself.

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Rachael Kilgour: In all ways, and in how she represents herself in her own recordings. There's just something really, there's just something very steady about her. And we had had a conversation recently about production and my, how easily swayed I can be or like... And so it came, I had all these songs suddenly, and I thought, "Gosh, I really want to record these, and I want to do them well, and I want to like maintain my own agency, but also be enhanced by someone else's creativity and like comfort in the studio. And on top of all of it, I really wanted to get in Canada," because my dad was Canadian. And not only was he Canadian, I mean, like he was an immigrant Canadian. So I mean, he was living in the States and like, just like, was very patriotic, and it would have made a really big impression on him that it was recorded there. So it seemed like a natural, I don't know, I just woke up one morning and I was like, "I should obviously ask Rose to produce this," and I did, and she said yes. And the great thing about Rose is, yes, she's incredibly selective, but when she says that she wants to do something, she shows up like 500%. And yeah, I think that the record really was enhanced by her, both setting the scene — she's very good, she's very attentive to, like, let's have an environment that's comfortable for you where you can do all this. She's a songwriter who can like, listen, so well. That doesn't usually happen. I feel like my experiences in the studio, I haven't had someone across the table being like, "OK, I can instantly hear in this like, succession of words that you've made, that you're having this deep longing for your parents to love one another in order to prove that you're worthy of love," you know, like, there's just like, these kinds of like, complicated but very simple human ideas that are coming through in the songs that she paid attention to and affirmed. And then also, I think, you know, amplified with, with the use of production, and with the use of her friends she brought in the studio and the engineer, and all of the musicians who played on it. So it's like fully Canadian content, but also the very best Canadian content that only Rose would pick. She did the string arrangements. She did, like, yeah, a lot of it. And I think was so, yeah, I just was so happy that she was careful enough to like, to hear a song, to be able to let it stand on its own if it needed to. Or also, like, how to carve out like a sonic landscape that these things could live on and and still, like, stand out.

Mike Pengra: One more question. I think about writing a song about your father after he passes away. It's got to help you deal with the grief. But this is so deep. This record is so deep, and I feel like it must have done more than that. I mean, it feels like I got to know your family really well by listening this record. But how did it... Did anything change the way you think of your dad after you wrote these songs?

Rachael Kilgour: Yeah. Yeah, a lot. Yeah, I think losing him made me change how I thought of him. But the losing, if you've done the losing or if anyone has who's listening, I think it's just very disorienting. It doesn't really point you in a new direction. You're just blank, you know, like what is...? And I had to like kind of recreate my dad, maybe, through song. And make him not into a saint but into a human I could relate to, and be proud of being related to. And to be, you know, fallible, just like I am. So yes.

Mike Pengra: I'm sure he's proud of this, too.

Rachael Kilgour: I do. Yeah. I often will say that from the stage. "The best thing about a dead parent is..." Yeah, he gives me all the validation I need. He loves it!

Mike Pengra: Rachael, thanks so much. This is Rachael Kilgour. The album is called My Father Loved Me, and thanks for coming in today.

Rachael Kilgour: Thank you so much for having me.

Gallery: Rachael Kilgour in studio

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Songs Performed

00:00:00 Dad Worked Hard
00:03:47 Ontario 
00:09:26 Heart On Fire
All songs from Rachael Kilgour’s self-released 2023 album, My Father Loved Me.

Musician

Rachael Kilgour – vocals, guitar

Credits

Guest – Rachael Kilgour
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Video – Eric Xu Romani
Audio – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Rachael Kilgour – official site