Musician Elaine Rojas Talks Love, God, and ‘Writing to Home’
by Marisa Torrieri Bloom
Musician Elaine Rojas’ single “Writing to Home” — a stripped-down piano-and-vocals ballad written for her father — feels like a cathartic sendoff to another lifetime.
And for Elaine, a jazz-schooled vocalist who lives in Norwalk, Connecticut, with her husband and puppy, it pretty much was. The song that’s closest to the singer-songwriter’s heart — which is, fittingly, also the title track of her forthcoming EP — took seven years to get just right, before finally emerging from its cocooned state in August.
“I was hitting an emotional bottom,” says Elaine of the time when she started writing the song. “We all have those moments in life where we’re just not living the way that we think that God or our parents would want us to live … So I started writing this song to my father.”
But her airy, whisper-kissed vocals — which, at times, remind the listener of both R&B siren Lauryn Hill and jazz singer-songwriter Norah Jones — also lend themselves to sultrier tunes. In “I Want Your Hands,” a second single off the forthcoming EP, Elaine’s voice swings playfully between two electric guitar chords as she breathes into the lyrics, “I’ll play fair… whatever you like,” before the pre-chorus kicks up the tempo, saturating our ears with layered vocal harmonies that leave the listener wanting more.
We recently caught up with Elaine to talk about her journey to now, and what the future holds:
Rockmommy: Your song “Writing To Home” comes at the end of a years-long journey. Can you give us a little bit of your backstory?
Elaine Rojas: I’ve been sort of underground for the past seven years, pursuing jazz before finding my voice in R&B. So, I’m very excited to have released the first two singles from my EP on August 4, which I started writing seven years ago.
Rockmommy: Who were some of your musical influences when you got into this career in your early 20s?
Elaine Rojas: I think because I was going the jazz route for such a long time, Amy Winehouse was a bridge for me – and I think for a lot of songwriters from jazz into R&B and into more of the singer-songwriter route. Some of my other influences growing up were people like John Mayer …. Norah Jones is probably the first female pianist and singer that I fell in love with. Her record, Come Away with Me was a bridge from some of that jazz world to more soulful, lyrical music.
Rockmommy: When did you start playing music?
Elaine Rojas: I come from a family of musicians. My grandfather was a jazz musician, and a music teacher and a composer. My aunt is a classical pianist, so I started studying with her when I was very little. Like most people I completely quit — I didn’t practice my scales or reading music — but then I came back to it in my teen years, just for the love of it. I wasn’t taking lessons … I just had this fascination with composing at the piano.
I got into singing — like a lot of my vocal students – when I was 12 years old and was like, ‘I’m a singer’ but was absolutely terrified of anyone hearing my voice. But then one of my aunts convinced me to get voice lessons. I took classical voice for a long time, and when I got to be about 15, I discovered jazz music. I fell in love with artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Louie Armstrong. From there, it was, ‘how do I study with the best jazz vocalists I can find in the area?’
Rockmommy: How did you build on that in college?
Elaine Rojas: I ended up going to the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in New York, studying as a vocalist in the jazz program there. Along the way, I’ve worked with some really talented vocalists who helped me foster my tone but there was a certain point where I felt like I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
It was a long process of realizing I just want to sound like me. I really want to figure out what my tone is. And that also made its way into songwriting. As much as I love singing all of these songs had been written many years ago, there was a part of me that felt like, ‘I want to write something new.’ I want to create and sing something that I’ve written for myself.
Rockmommy: “Writing To Home” is an absolutely gripping song. Would you call that like the anchor of the record?
Elaine Rojas: I do think it is the anchor of the record. And that’s why I felt called to naming the project ‘Writing to Home.’ And it’s exemplified in the album art, which is a picture of my adult self, looking into myself as a little kid, which is a metaphor for my inner child. We’re both at the piano which reflects that music has always been the place where I feel like I can be the most honest with myself and gain perspective on life.
So ‘Writing to Home’ for me [is like] writing to God while creating my music. And I think it’s also a way for the divine to work through me and whatever messages I feel need to be written for others.
The song itself was a song that I started writing about seven years ago. I was hitting an emotional bottom, I was just not taking good care of myself. We all have those moments in life where we’re just not living the way that we think that God or our parents would want us to live … So I started writing this song to my father. Diving into that, like, ‘these are the things that I’ve done. I’m not proud of what I’ve done and where I am. I’m still writing to you. I’m still thinking of you.’
I think my dad has always held that place in my heart … this holy place, this place of safety, if you can remove any connotation of religion … we all crave to have this person of authority and guidance in our life. I started writing the song in that space in my life.
When I say, ‘father, the time has gone,” that was me finishing the song about three years after I started writing it. I was in a better place, I had healed from the things I needed to heal from. That was me talking to my higher power. The song came full circle from my biological father to a higher power, when I say, “I know you forgive me” but “I’m still nothing but a child without a home.”
Rockmommy: That lyric really was really powerful. When you become an adult, it’s not this clean transition. It’s a messy, weird process where you are seeking autonomy right?
Elaine Rojas: Thank you for reflecting that, that’s so true! I do feel like the front half of the song was me as a child, I was only 19 when I started writing that song. I was very much a baby, reaching out her hands to her parents. And then the second half of the song, I was an adult, I had gone through my healing journey. And yet, I’m still a child that needs this relationship with a higher power because at the end of the day, we are all powerless. We all have no control over this thing called life. You know? Like, so, either way you have it, there is this yearning to feel like there’s a place to call home.
Rockmommy: Let’s talk about ‘I Want Your Hands.’ That’s a really sexy song. It’s slow and I love that the music sets the mood before the vocals sort of come in. You said that that’s kind of the one that’s a little different.
Elaine Rojas: Yeah. It’s funny because, I would say that most of my songwriting process is a cathartic experience, but this song was like a melody that had come to me that I really fell in love with over a couple chords. And I just didn’t want to give it up.
So it was like, ‘how do I write something that feels like this melody?’ I think that when I was writing the melody, I had been sort of mumbling “I want your hands.” But it began to turn into the theme of the song being, you know, when you’re ready for your partner, and life gets in the way and your partner may not be there.
Rockmommy: How did you end up recording your record at Factory Underground?
Elaine Rojas: I actually recorded all of the tracks one weekend [years ago] with a band, a couple years ago…and then I was sitting on these tracks. When I started working at Factory Underground, I met with Kenny Cash, who not only had a reputation of making beats, but also liked R&B and neo-soul. ‘I Want Your Hands’ was the first song of mine that he vibed with. He took what was like a black-and-white sketch and just totally filled out the song with color. It feels so alive now! I’m so grateful to continue that relationship working with him because I feel like he really did hear me as an artist.
With ‘Writing to Home, ‘I had not tracked anything at all, and Kenny and I had a conversation about how we should go about producing this. My gut was saying that because it was a letter to my father and such an intimate thing that it just be piano and vocal.
And when I walked into the studio and sat down I was like, ‘Where are my headphones?’ because normally when you’re tracking you have headphones on to hear your voice, but Kenny was like, ‘No, we’re not doing headphones …. you’re just gonna play and sing into these microphones and hear yourself live in this big room and experience the song.’ I was intimidated by that, but we just did take after take after take until I felt like I got it — and what needed to be said came through the music.
Rockmommy: You recently became a dog mom. Talk about the work life balance and how that’s been going for you.
Elaine Rojas: (laughs) Having a dog is a responsibility, you know, but animals have always been a part of my therapy and self-care, having that relationship is just so important in my life.
Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.
One Comment