For Jackie Marchal, music has always been an essential part of life. At home, and elsewhere. Early on, she began finding in it not only a means to express herself but also to process whatever she encounters in life. “When I was about 8 years old, I wrote a song called What Happens When You Die,” she recalls with a chuckle, over video chat, at the age of 22.
Today, the New York-based musician still sings about things that matter to her (her family, mostly) or that she’s figuring out. Honest, poetic, Marchal’s words take on a life of their own, set to a sound infused with a variety of influences—from Beach House to Alabama Shakes, with what remains of years of classical violin and choir singing.
Juniper is the first body of work the singer-songwriter (and computer science student) puts out into the world. Although it feels too short, it leaves us with a sweet aftertaste, longing for more. Its last track, Rhubarb Fields, is our Song of the Week. We met virtually with Jackie Marchal to talk about the story behind it, and ended up chatting about grief, family matters and personal growth.
Check out the official video for Rhubarb Fields, followed down below with the interview:
Rhubarb Fields isn’t actually about rhubarb, but is a tribute to your grandfather. What exactly sparked this song into existence?
Jackie Marchal — It’s really because of Covid. I’m a student at Columbia, and in March, obviously we all got sent home. So I was living in this apartment with my whole family in New York City, and it was just getting really cramped. I asked my mom—I was complaining to her one day—: “Where can I go?” I just wanted to see, like, one person who wasn’t from my family! (laughs) And she reminded me that her childhood home was vacant because my grandmother was selling it in August. So there was just this stretch of time where I could go live there by myself.
I ended up moving there last summer and taking over my grandfather’s old garden. He had died the summer before, so it was the first summer that this plot of land was just going to be left empty, but then I was actually able to be there, and grow and maintain this vegetable garden. It was delicious and very fun, and, of course, it was all with this expiration date since the house was being sold in the fall.
But I got to have this very brief but magical summer, and it really stuck with me. I hadn’t had as much contact with this whole side of my family. I learned so much about them, about my grandfather, and I interacted with the land so much that I wanted to make a tribute to both—the time that I spent there, and what I learned about my family in general. That’s what I hoped to accomplish and, at least from my perspective, it feels very full circle.
The song itself sounds like it’s a memory or dream-sequence. Was that done on purpose? Was it the point?
Yeah, I think. The choruses are very dreamy, and the lyrics there are just—it’s like a reverie. Like “sun-kissed speckled from the vine” and “a warm wind”, it just sort of places you in the garden, remarking on the joy and the beauty. And then, the second verse goes into my depiction, or retelling, of my grandfather’s funeral. It’s more sparse and a bit grittier.
I think that it’s that contrast, sort of like the cycle all plants go through, between the coming up in the spring and then dying out. I was reflecting on how that happens to my family members. Generations come and go, but the ones that sprout up are sometimes very much like the ones in the past. That’s how I felt living there and working on that land. So yeah, the beautiful, honoring dream side of the song is intentionally sounding that way.
And having this back-in-forth lyrically, did it just naturally happen as you started writing? How did you piece it together?
I actually co-wrote this song with the guy who produced it (John Velasquez), and then the guy who played guitar on it (Spencer Askin). I think we started it together, which is kind of unusual, but I had done a lot of writing about my grandfather. I sort of had the second verse already written, and it just came together piece by piece.
All the music that I was making at that time was centered around loss, and the producer who co-wrote the song was also coming at it from that perspective. And it’s such an amorphous thing, loss and grief. We tried looking at all the different sides of the story, and it came together quite naturally. I think it’s just… the duality of the nature of the topic: you have these beautiful memories that you cherish, and then you have the pain of what happened and what you’ve lost.
Did writing the song help you cope?
I think having it helps me, maybe more than having written it. Knowing that I have a little piece of my brain that I can always go back to and hold is special for me.
It doesn’t make you sad—or sadder?
No, I don’t think so. There are many ways to “hang out” with one of your own songs. I could just sing it and not think about it that much. Then if I want to delve in—sometimes, the song demands that you think about it, but this one… feels a little bit more relaxed.
What’s your favorite lyric that you wrote or co-wrote for it?
Well… I really love the first lyrics, actually. “Through the doorway / Grows a garden / On land you’ve carried all these years”, and then there’s the “your hands will never touch what’s here”. Here I was really thinking about—I mean, I guess I don’t need to explain it, but… the idea of carrying land with you throughout your life resonates with me a lot.
If you don’t mind sharing this, did your grandmother end up selling the house?
She did, yep. We moved out last August. She actually sold it to the neighbors’ family member so I was able to film the music video for Rhubarb there. I went back, and I knocked on her door (laughs): “Hey, can I film in your backyard?” It’s a rural area of Rhode Island. They were like… (frowns). I said: “I have an art project that I’m working on.” (laughs) Which is true! They were so gracious, and I’m very thankful that the space is still accessible to me and that I was able to honor it fully by being there again.
For all your releases so far, the nature imagery is very present in the visuals. Was that done on purpose? Or was it more something like… “I wrote a song relating to nature, let’s keep the theme going”?
I think it reflects sort of a change that happened with me. I’m always with my greens these days! (chuckles) I grew up in New York City, but around the time I was 18, I started branching out and I spent some time working and living on farms. I’ve just become much more in touch with nature. I spend as much time as I can outdoors, even just in parks in the city. So… it just sort of happens because I’m the one making the music and that’s what’s usually on my mind. It’s… It’s just a reflection of me.
Sometimes my intuition will put me somewhere. Like the Open Wide music video, we filmed that mostly outdoors. I think nature is just too beautiful to not include when I’m trying to make something beautiful. So I think it happens intentionally.
What was the idea behind the Rhubarb Fields music video?
My friend from Columbia Fergus Campbell directed and filmed it. My friend Will (William Ingalls), who did the Open Wide video, is coloring this one so it’s fun to still get him involved. I guess I’ll let people see it, but the video follows the story of a few objects that have… strange, folkloric, mythical stories from the area where the house is. It’s about finding things there and incorporating them back into my life wherever I go.
Why objects? Is that perhaps because that’s how you got acquainted with that side of your family more?
Yeah. The song Rhubarb Fields is so focused on the actual land and the history of the place that, when I spoke to Fergus about what I was thinking, it was just inevitable that we would have to go there and incorporate that in.
One of the featured items is a piece of quartz—like, you know, crystal. They actually grow on this road where we filmed. It’s my mother’s side of the family, and when I was a kid, we would always have these giant quartz in our living room, and it’s just from this road, a super mineral-rich area of land. And I’m digging one up in a scene, in the actual place where my mom found it.
So it’s things like that, things that have always just sort of been echoing around me in life and making me go “oh, I know, that’s from Rhode Island!”
On social media, you mentioned writing lyrics based on lines that your mom herself wrote about the ocean. You also have songs about stressful things in life, like being afraid of the dark. Of course, there isn’t one process of songwriting, but do you find yourself in certain patterns more than others?
Family has been the biggest thing for me, and it’s just… I think I’m growing up in a new way. I’m 22 years old and, you know, you go through many stages of growing up in life. I’ve been living not at home for a long time so now, when I do come home, it feels different, it looks different and I am different. A lot of what’s been going on in my life has been reconciling the person that I am with how everyone knows me. So… it’s been about evaluating everything through that lens.
Afraid of the Dark is a song about anxiety, but it’s very much about family as well—it’s like I literally write every song about my mom (laughs). There’s just a lot there, and I think everyone probably has a lot to unpack with their parents or guardians, or, you know, whoever they learned most of their life how to do things from. There’s a lot, once you become your own adult, that you question or you align with—either way, it’s notable. Those are the things that I’ve been thinking about.
And it’s just been: “What am I going through?” “Okay, that’s the theme.” Then, “how am I gonna tell this story?” And I think it really started with Rhubarb Fields because I wrote that song… not a year ago, but about something that happened a year ago. Like I said, being there taught me so much about that whole side of my family, and it just tugged the thread that unraveled everything over the past few years or months.
Was that a starting moment for you as a songwriter?
I’ve been writing songs for a very, very long time. I started writing songs when I was around 8 years old, on GarageBand (chuckles). In high school, I wrote about all of the people in my love life who wronged me, and I was very focused on that. Because, you know, you listen to music and 95% of it is about relationships. So that’s what I started writing music about, and everyone was just encouraging me to do that.
Then I got some distance. I spent a year not really writing that much when I first got to college, and then it started to crystallize. “Okay, what do I want to write about? What’s going to be rewarding for me to sit down and spend time writing about?” And it was, of course, the things that affected me the most.
When did this new perspective as a songwriter happen?
I feel like every year of my life is defined by some new period of growth, but the songwriting that led up to this EP definitely started in the fall of—sorry, I’m very confused about my years!
Yeah, it’s difficult to keep track. With everything that’s happened since 2020…
Yeah! (laughs) Okay, it’s 2021 right now, and it was last fall. So, fall of 2020. I started writing—not songs, but just writing. Every single day. That’s all the material that came to fruition with these songs.
And did the pandemic and the lockdowns have an impact on your growth?
Wow, yeah… (pauses) I think the biggest blow was not being able to perform live because that was really picking up for me right before Covid. But it has taught me so much about myself. Living in different places, having the chance to live in a rural home by myself. It was very out of the ordinary, and it totally upended whatever else was supposed to happen. But then, I took some time off school and I got to code—I actually learned front-end and back-end web development, so I built a website for my friend.
And I think I’ve just… had time, in a way, to grow. As a person, as a coder, as a musician. I started taking guitar much more seriously. And yeah… I’m—I’m very critical and quick to be like “oh, I didn’t actually get anything done.” Then, recently, I’ve been preparing for these shows, which I’m playing guitar in, and before Covid, I basically didn’t know how to play guitar. I had had a guitar for about a year and knew a very small number of things, and now, I’m just in a totally different place from there. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve definitely grown. So I think there’s something to be said about spending a lot of time at home (chuckles).
It’s so great when you actually notice your own growth.
Right? Life is so gradual, you usually don’t really notice that type of change in yourself because you live with yourself every day, but I think, having this framing of Covid, allows you to see yourself from a different perspective. Like “me pre-Covid” and “me after Covid”, they’re definitely different (laughs).
Does it make you wonder what you would be like if it hadn’t been for that year?
Totally. I would be somewhere totally different. I wouldn’t have these songs, this music, for sure, because I wouldn’t have ever lived in that house, and the memory would have just… drifted away.
Leave a Reply