RACHAEL YAMAGATA | A profile 'Happenstance' runs the gamut of singer's talent

To prepare for her current tour, she performed in a cabaret setting for a month.
By MATT PEIKEN
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Rachael Yamagata doesn't cast herself as the next Fiona Apple. She needs more control over her budding career to stake that claim. On the plus side, "Happenstance" (RCA Victor Records) shows off more sides of the 26-year-old Yamagata than she'd ever known she had.
"I got signed really early, and I was surrounded by people who had the best of intentions, but they'd start taking me in a certain direction and I knew something was wrong," she says. "There were things I was feeling in my heart but wasn't courageous about putting them across."
As a result, "Happenstance" is all over the map musically, from dreamy, distressed, piano-driven ballads that show off Yamagata's dark, dusky, Fiona-like throat to the bluesy, honky-tonk romps that marked Yamagata's entry into music.
"When we were choosing songs for the album, I didn't want to be seen as just the love-struck ballad girl," she says. "I wanted to show other sides of me, but there were definitely compromises in terms of song selection. As a new solo artist, it takes a while to be able to look objectively at the material and have the confidence to trust your own instincts."
Started with Bumpus
Growing up in and around the nation's capital, Yamagata was a mostly self-taught pianist, but she didn't pursue music until the Chicago funk-soul band Bumpus caught her ear. She joined the band as a sort of backing vocalist/tambourine player and worked her way to piano and a more prominent role, all the while holing herself up in her room to work on her own, more subdued and personal songs.
On the rare occasions she played her songs for people she knew, she felt ridiculed and vulnerable -- "whipped back into my shell" for a few years until gaining the confidence to find an open mike and perform them.
"Whether I want to or not, I end up writing about relationships and how people treat each other and how you always maintain hope for the best while going through these emotional roller coaster rides," she says. "A lot of the songs I write are cathartic outlets -- I don't usually sit down to write about one thing -- but it's like I'm just dying to tell these things to somebody."
The people who had suddenly entered the business end of her musical life paired her up with established songwriters.
"I'd probably never write a happy song on my own, and I thought the music we came up with were more exercises and that they'd never end up on the album," she says. "What gets dangerous is people start liking the co-writes better than your own songs, which may not be really finished yet. But it can help you, too, because you meet great musicians who become your friends and mentors, so I don't regret any of it."