RS: The video shoot must have been a lot of fun..
Screamin’ Rachael: Oh, it was great fun, everything about it was great. Did you know that part of the footage in the video was shot by me?
RS: No. How did you swing that?
Screamin’ Rachael: Do you remember there’s a beautiful scene where you're seeing mountains and really blue water? That’s actually as I’m on a train going to Italy. There are also a few close-ups that I did of myself, one is where I’m sitting on the train. At the time that I did Don’t Make Me Lonely, I was in Europe right after I recorded it and I was already thinking about the video. I was thinking about what the song meant to me. That song means a lot to me because I was so separated from a lot of my friends. For a long time I hadn’t seen DJ Keoki and so many people that I knew were lost. I had gone through a lot and Don’t Make Me Lonely is a reflection of that. As I was traveling through Europe, a lot of it I was done by myself, and I was capturing some really beautiful scenery, like I shot the little girl by the fountain, that’s in Italy. I also worked with the crew from Wicked Entertainment who helped me shoot the video with their underground TV show, We shot a lot of it right around the Trax warehouse by the train tracks and on the rooftop, so you see a lot of Chicago.
I remember last year right before the Billboard conference, the record had just been released and I was hoping to see Keoki to give it to him. He didn’t show up unfortunately, he was on a panel and just didn’t show.
RS: We call that pulling a Junior.
Screamin’ Rachael: Well, I had written this long kind of poetic type thing saying “Keoki, let’s not lose touch, don’t make me lonely.” The song was something that was going out to so many people in my life, because I have really had a lot of loss. But it’s been the music that’s kept me sane and kept me strong.
RS: Sort of that way in making you strong, and the whole robot thing, was that their idea also?
Screamin’ Rachael: The robot idea was from some people in Italy. So it’s kind of interesting because the whole thing came about with a lot of different sources and different creativity. I guess there's a part of me that’s robotic, strong, almost indestructible, almost like superhuman. But then, I’m probably the wrong person to be a business person, for instance, because I do it for the love and that’s for real.
RS: Talking about doing it for love, I keep hearing a lot about a house music revival in Chicago right now.
Screamin’ Rachael: Yes, there's a lot going on in Chicago. The city has embraced house music for the first time. We had one of the first big anti-rave laws here in Chicago, I think before anybody else. They passed it in the city and everything for kids under 21 to do was abolished which almost stamped-out house music in a way.
Then this year, for the first time, the city really brought house music into the park district and had all these huge live concerts. You could see little kids who were eight, moms and dads, grandmothers, and everybody enjoying the music. The music still sounds fresh, and I think that’s really important.
What I try to do, including what I try to do with my own album, is stay true to my heart and the way I like to make music, and not worry about who’s the hottest remixer of the moment or what new sound I’ve got to use because if I don’t use that sound I’m not going to sound like everybody else. Everything that is on the album, I did with friends like Farley and Gene Hunt, and that was really a great thing.
I also worked with Billy the Kid and he is brand new, the youngest person on the radio out here on B96. He came to me because he really loved like Trax and my music and wanted to do something for my album. Since he’s the one here in Chicago doing the great mixes on the air, I told him to take some of my classics and do it your way, and that’s what he did for that megamix. I think he did a great job and it was nice to bring somebody really new into the circle.
