Raina Rose profile picture

Raina Rose

are you still in love with the world?

About Me


HELP RAINA GET A VEGGIE OIL or COMPRESSED NATURAL GAS TOURBUS!!
all donations, big and small are soo appreciated!
make my dream come true-touring in an environmentally & socially conscious tour vehicle!
want merch!?!?! CLICK HERE for t-shirts and thongs and whatnot!

I have 2 solo cd’s:
2007’s self-produced
The Prophet, The Panhandler and The Moon
out on Threepin records.
AND
2005’s
Despite the Crushing Weight of Gravity
produced by Jim Brunberg at Mississippi Studios.
this is me: i am an aquarius, aquarius rising with a gemini moon. I was born the day the music died (that’s february 3rd). i love the pacific ocean more than just about anything in the world, except for maybe music. maybe i love them the same. i try to be at home wherever i am, but i am still learning that trick. when i was a wee girl, i wanted to be a rock star, a hair stylist, and a truck driver, and i’ve gotten to do all of that, so now i’m trying to figure out why i do the things i do. i tend to make generalizations about myself, only to feel guilty when i break them. i am confidently insecure. i am a leaf borne upon the wind. i believe in love and i know we are all made of love. i don’t like myself when i am drunk. i love myself always, this is a new thing. i try not to be afraid of the immense creative power we all get to tap into when we want. I write songs because i have no other way of expressing my actual emotions. i am becoming more and more free and less and less encumbered. i think you’re so beautiful. the first guitar i bought myself is blue, and her name is Babe the Blue Axe. i really like tea. i used to smoke a lot of green. now i don’t. music has saved my life on many occasions. i only date musicians, and that is why my mother and sister think i am crazy. my father is a musician. i love you lots and lots and don’t ever doubt it. i dig change and crisis, because they open the world up to brave new adventures. i am so blessed. My favorite movie is The Dark Crystal. My favorite foods are watermelon and avocado, but not together. i am overwhelmed by the beauty in the world every single second of every day. i am prone to ramble in prose. my real name is raina rose klein mcclellan. small children call me Waina. i am learning how to stand up for myself. i fall in love way too easily. i fall out of love way too easily. i’m learning how to believe that i deserve what i want. i make a huge effort to communicate using correct grammer. i want to come back in my next life as a seabird so i can swim and fly. if you hurt my feelings, i will try my best not to hurt yours back. i love ethiopian food. i am making generalizations about myself right now...shit.
i recently made everybody hold up a peace sign at the last show of my 6 month tour at High Sierra Music Festival. What a party.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 6/17/2005
Band Website: www.rainarose.com" rainarose.com
Band Members: jus' me.
Influences: the way the rise of a hill looks like the hip of a woman, your temple-right above your beard, color-blindness, people on buses and trains airplanes and elevators-captives of those who'll start stranger conversations, cold toes, good food made by people who love you, trees that speak to you in soft poems if you listen with ear of a piano tuner, birds-anything with wings, love, deep and true love, shallow stones under water love, love like a fire, love like a hurricane, love like a soft warm breath...
The Beatles, Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Dar Williams, The Band, Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Janis Joplin, Chris Thile, all the amazing songwriters i get to play with at shows and round campfires, Woody Guthrie, my camp counselor Heather, Alex Grey's art, CSNY, Meredith Cushing, Frida Kahlo, The Lovin Spoonful, John Hartford, Rickie Lee Jones, Jeff Buckley, Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Shakespeare (Sir Francis Bacon), Dr. Suess, Jim Brunberg, Jim Henson, Rumi, Hafiz, e.e. cummings, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Michael Franti, my father and his un-ending musical knowledge and his brothers, my mother-her poems & her handwriting, my sister-her caring & fierce intelligence, Michael Hedges, the Burlingame open mic, camp Westwind, camp Nor'wester, the Kerrville Folk Festival!!, Jon Self, Kaki King, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, Fela Kuti, Deb Talan, the shadow & the light, & everyone out there doin it.

Sounds Like: listen...

god bless with Green Mountain Grass

Me and John Elliott (a.k.a. The Hereafter)!

this is me with the Everyone Orchestra at High Sierra Music Festival 2007

this is part two where i get kinda wild...

john elliott, anthony da costa, and me!

press quotes:

"Portland native Raina Rose is everything a young female folksinger should be. If occasionally a touch too naive or overreaching in her eagerness to express a surfeit of emotion, she's always so sincere, sweet and disarmingly goofy and such a heckuva singer that one instantly forgives such transgressions with a grin. From her late duo the Gypsy Moths to her latest and best-yet CD, The Prophet, the Panhandler, and the Moon, her vocal, guitar and songwriting chops continue to flourish. Next week, she heads to Texas' Kerrville Folk Festival as a finalist in their renowned New Folk contest."
-JEFF ROSENBERG, Willamette Week, May '07

"If a bottle of champagne could sing, it would sound a lot like Raina Rose: positively effervescent, sparkling with youthful exuberance -- she's a joy."
-Tracy Grammer

" "Gravity" won't reshape anyone's thinking about the possibilities of singer-songwriter folk/pop, but it could confirm your feelings about the simple pleasures of the form. ...Suffice to say, this moth has taken wing."
-Marty Hughley, Entertainment Editor, the Oregonian

"The fact of the matter is that, like Paul Simon after Simon and Garfunkle, Raina Rose has the strength to stand alone, performing music she's written, and her audiences will sit up and take notice."
-Linsel Greene, NW music scene blogger

"There goes the Courtney Love of folk music!"
-Multi-instrumentalist Joel Tepp, after meeting me for the first time while i was riding on a luggage cart drinking whiskey out of a flask i had in my boot at a Folk Alliance conference.

"There has to be space for hope somewhere in there. And Raina Rose, her tongue not-so-firmly in cheek, is a mischievous tease who enlightens you without insulting your intelligence. Her music is joyful, buoyant, exhilarating, and radically silly. It's smart, grin-inducing artistry that's thankfully grounded in the real world."
-Dr. Scott's Pulp Culture blog
Record Label: Threepin Records
Type of Label: None

My Blog

O like the summer it was gone

apparently the French trappers named the Coeur d'Alene Indians that because they were shrewd traders and weren't so easy to manipulate into bad deals. It means "Heart like an Awl" which is of course a...
Posted by Raina Rose on Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:32:00 PST

its a bright bright day...

it is a bright hot central texas day. a delicious breeze floats through when she pleases. there are dusty happy people laughing thick drunk laughs. more than 5 guitars are playin, all with open hearts...
Posted by Raina Rose on Sat, 31 May 2008 01:27:00 PST

your daddys rich and your mamma is pretty

almost summertime, oh boy it does fly by quickly.sitting in a good friend's living room on south padre island, we've been feasting and playing and watching fat greasy thunder storms come in over the g...
Posted by Raina Rose on Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:48:00 PST

cant see your hand in front of your face

dylan was the only thing that got me through 4 hours and 100 miles of deeepthick utah mid-winter blizzard. After playing a little show in Alta, a ski town straight out of some swiss dream, we left uta...
Posted by Raina Rose on Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:54:00 PST

gateway to prosperity lotus flower tea

i had dim sum in oakland on christmas eve eve with my cousin and our boyfriends. We were the only white people in the room, had a laugh while we tried to communicate "vegetables!" to the women running...
Posted by Raina Rose on Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:02:00 PST

they’re playing the Decemberists in a coffee shop in Somerville, MASS

I have to say...and please don't hate me...i really don't dig the Decemberists. I have nothing against them, i am glad that Portland bands get huge, but we're allowed to not enjoy things sometimes, ri...
Posted by Raina Rose on Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:57:00 PST

New York Sitcom...

it has been a little less than a week on the road in John Elliott's honda civic. A trusty little green thing, the honda is impossible to keep clean, but way easier to fill with gas. We drove up throug...
Posted by Raina Rose on Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:36:00 PST

wood releases all the energy it absorbed from the sun when you set it on fire.

san francisco appears out of a dream of fog through the burnt orange of the golden gate bridge. the city looms, clean and white, like what i imagine spain must look like. she is like a low-lided strip...
Posted by Raina Rose on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:51:00 PST

2am...

my little rez dog Hopi has been playing all day. i took her to a dog park on the puget sound, 20 minutes north of seattle. She ate seaweed, she wrestled with a german shepard/pitbull, she got soaking ...
Posted by Raina Rose on Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:33:00 PST

george washington bridge at midnight in the pounding rain

i thought i was lost. the rain was hurling itself towards the windshield faster than the wipers on my sister's early 90's subaru could kick it off. highway 87 (although it has been my favorite number ...
Posted by Raina Rose on Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:11:00 PST