I first saw Rita Hosking perform back in 2010 at the Live Oak Music Festival and I was impressed by her songwriting and the musicianship of her backing band, Cousin Jack. In 2008, Rita won the Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest. A year later she was a finalist in the Telluride Music Festival Troubadour Contest, and she’s even received honors from the West Coast Songwriters Association and the International Songwriting Contest.
Interview Highlights
On her song "Our Land"
This song's called "Our Land," and it is the sixth step or something in the journey. The hero's already crossed a threshold. They've decided to commit to this journey, to this challenge — whatever it is. I was drawing one day. I like to do that as a hobby sometimes. And I drew a picture of these figures — sort of animal-like figures — going around in a circle and connected by a wavy black line. And I said, 'Wow,' to myself, 'That looks kind of like a hero's journey, like the cycle of a hero's journey, if you're familiar with Joseph Campbell and Hero With a Thousand Faces or the mono myth that all these stories share many of the same steps or chapters that they move through. You know, some people narrow down the hero's journey to twelve steps, and that's the perfect number of songs for an album.
On the album, "Frankie and the No-Go Road"
Dr. Jack Forbes was one of my professors of the Native American Studies Department and he wrote a book called "Columbus and Other Cannibals," and he talks a lot about this Wetiko disease that is sort of a soul sickness that people have and it's just this idea that society is self-consuming. We're sort of cannibalizing ourselves. And I was fascinated by that, so I worked in all sorts of things that I learned about into this record. But I don't think it sounds academic or heavy. It sounds like a soundtrack to a story or something. It's exciting to do something different in that way — it's a concept album.
Rita Hosking will release Frankie and the No-Go Road and perform at the Chico Women’s Club this Friday night at 7pm.