Rachel Simpson’s EP recording journey

Recording and releasing songs and albums may seem simple for established artists, but not for music students. Rachel Simpson, a junior Commercial Music and Songwriting major from Bozeman, Montana, has just started her journey as a published artist and is recording her first EP. EP stands for extended play, a type of musical recording with more tracks than a single song but fewer than a full-length album. For Rachel, it’s six songs, each telling a story meaningful to her. 

Rachel Simpson plays her song at the recording session

Simpson discovered her love for writing music in 2021 and has been writing ever since. Coming from a family of missionaries who resided in Venezuela for the first part of her childhood, she was looking for her identity and calling. “Songwriting really helped me through my journey of trying to reconnect with God and get some understanding about the world and my place in it,” said Simpson, “And ever since then, it’s been a really good processing tool for the things that are happening to me or the stories I hear.” 

The offer to produce the first song on the EP – “The Ballad of Eddie Moore” – came from Alex Fincher, who graduated from Lipscomb in 2023. He and his wife Gracie formed a folk-Americana duo called River & Rail and reside in Nashville, having performed over 100 shows. They are also recording their first full-length album, to be released in the spring of 2025. 

Alex Fincher edits the recording during the session

For Simpson, the recording process started with sharing the song’s demo with Fincher before coming to his studio. “The Ballad of Eddie Moore” is a story about her great-grandfather who, as a policeman in San Diego in the 1930s, was shot by a criminal he had caught. It’s told from the perspective of his daughter, who lost him at a young age. Simpson never knew him, but she recently found out his story through her aunt, after which she decided to put her great-grandfather’s memory into music.

Simpson expressed her expectations and preferences so the producer could begin working on the details. “This is one of the most story-driven songs I’ve produced,” said Fincher, “There are historical places, events, and artifacts throughout the narrative, and that’s something that I don’t want to distract from at any point.” Afterward, Simpson went to the studio, located in the basement of Fincher’s house. I followed along to see what the recording looked like.

The setup included several guitars, including an acoustic that Simpson brought, a couple of microphones and a computer equipped with a digital audio workstation. Since it was the first session of several that Simpson would spend at the studio, Fincher dedicated most of the time to ensuring he understood what she wanted to hear in the result. Together, they explored potential stylistic choices and the atmosphere and genre that fit the song best.

Fincher also played with different sounds and instruments to get the exact sound needed. “She’s a dynamic singer, exploring her whole register in this song and weaving a web to tell this devastating story,” he said. “So, I want the instrumentation and production to match that. If there was some bright and happy guitar part or something, it would take away from the desperate plea of the lyric ‘I need you here, though’ that the deceased man’s daughter is expressing.”

Fincher and Simpson discuss the best ways to produce the song

Finally, the recording started. Simpson put on headphones, through which she could hear the whole song, and played her guitar part. When she made a mistake, Fincher would simply punch in that part of the song. The atmosphere in the studio was the opposite of nervous or overwhelming, and both the producer and the aspiring published artist were engaged in the creative process, exchanging ideas and advice and learning from each other. “Rachel hasn’t released any music yet, so I do think that she is still deciding the exact sound she’s going for,” said Fincher. “But the fun thing about artistry is that the sound is allowed to develop over the course of projects. So I just want to work to make the production of this song consistent with the music that she loves right now and feels like it is true to her taste, even if in a few years or a few months that might change.”

Simpson will need several more sessions in the studio to record and release her first song. The process, however, would be different since Fincher would know her preferences for the sound better. The rest of the songs she will be working on with different producers, including those who are still students at Lipscomb. Throughout this time of creative work and anticipation, Simpson said she was excited to put her music out there. “It can be scary to do this, but I am mostly excited, and I feel like fear or just feeling unprepared held me back from doing it for a long time. But you’re never going to feel perfectly ready. You just have to start somewhere.”

Check out Rachel Simpson’s Instagram and TikTok to follow her journey.