10 minutes With R. Fells Foster
Looking for some upbeat, catchy Christmas music to serve as the soundtrack to your holiday party? Cue up R. Fells Foster’s new album, Rock the House with Love, and let the good times roll. A seasoned songwriter and longtime resident of the Berkshires, Foster has spent the past several decades crafting original Christmas songs that capture the spirit of the holiday season in fun and funky new ways. In the days leading up to the holiday season, Foster sat down to talk about the inspiration behind his album and the importance of artistic perseverance.
Your new album, Rock the House with Love, is a musical tour-de-force that incorporates many different genres and musical traditions. What inspired you to write that first Christmas song?
When I was 14, I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, which changed my life. I started learning Beatles songs on the guitar, and I began writing songs almost immediately. Over the years, I studied all of the great songwriters—including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley—jazz and Broadway songwriters, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein and Irving Berlin, and soul songwriters and performers like The Reverend Al Green, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin. I wrote my first Christmas song in the 1980s, and it ended up serving as the inspiration for the song that eventually became “It’s Christmas” on Rock the House with Love. At the time, I was living with a girl in Central California. Her parents lived in Southern California, and they threw amazing Christmas parties that were better than anything I had experienced at Christmastime in my childhood. They would have their whole family sitting around the table, and they would serve three or four courses with everyone partying, laughing, and enjoying conversation.
One year, my girlfriend and I had a big argument right before Christmas, and I remember saying, “I’m not going down to see your parents for Christmas!” She immediately got on the phone with her mother and told her that I wasn’t coming down to see them. Her mother said, “No one ought to be alone for the holidays.” That line is what started me on the process of creating the songs for this album.
What ended up happening that Christmas? I ended up going, because even though we were in a fight, there was no way that I was going to miss one of those Christmases. I never dreamed of writing a Christmas song, let alone making a Christmas album, but when someone hands me a good idea for a song, I run with it.
You’ve lived in Lenox for much of the time that you spent working on this album. What are your favorite things about living here? I’ve been coming to the Berkshires for over half a century. My father built a home on his uncle’s property in Richmond. It was an old apple orchard, and we came there every summer when I was growing up. I loved climbing the mountains around Richmond and Lenox and picking blueberries. My parents were also Audubon Society members, and I grew up to be a huge birdwatcher myself. The Berkshires has amazing sanctuaries and natural sites that are great for birdwatching. I also like going to Tanglewood to see live performances. I spent a good amount of time living in California, Northern New Jersey, and New York, and I grew up in Boston. It’s nice to live in a place with a slower pace of life.
A lot of time passed between when you wrote that first Christmas song and when you started recording, workshopping, and producing Rock the House with Love. What happened next in your musical career after that fateful exchange? I wrote a lot of songs that weren’t Christmas songs over the next few decades, and I went down to Nashville in the early 2000s to give the music industry a shot. I’d bought some studio equipment and attempted to make it work at home by myself, but I wasn’t good enough on the drum machine and bass. I’d only made one attempt to ever have a band, and I saw how tenuous that could be. It wasn’t for me, because I’m a loner. I went down to Nashville, because I understood that if I wanted to make it as a songwriter, it would be a good idea to start there.
Did anything else happen in Nashville that shaped your artistic trajectory? I went to a famous open mic event at a place called The Bluebird Café. The lady who ran the open mic events knew everyone in town. If she liked your music, she had the ability to connect you with influential people in the music industry. A lot of famous country singers and songwriters, including Garth Brooks, started at The Bluebird. If you play there and someone notices, it can have a very positive impact on your career. One night, she got up and talked about how she gave songwriting lessons. I thought, “Why don’t I just go straight to the source and book her for a lesson?” After she heard my songs, she said, “I really like what you do.” I said, “Good! You can help me.” She said, “No, I don’t think I can.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “I don’t know who to give these songs to.
Here’s what you need to do: You need to go listen to the radio and write songs like the ones on the radio that are in line with the Nashville sound.” After she told me that, I realized that my songs were not concretely tied to what Nashville was doing at the time. She told me that I didn’t need help writing songs, and that I just needed to write the songs that Nashville wanted. After that, I rented a car and drove home, thinking, “What am I going to do?” I didn’t want to go to New York or Los Angeles to try my luck again. On the way home, I realized, “Well, I have that Christmas song. Why don’t I write Christmas songs?” I started thinking of different ways of looking at Christmas and ended up writing 24 Christmas songs over the next several decades. I picked the best Christmas songs out of the pile and re-fined them for Rock the House with Love.
What made you decide to focus entirely on writing Christmas songs? I wanted to get my foot in the door of the music industry, and I figured that when you’re writing a Christmas album, nobody cares how old you are, where you’re from, or what you look like. Bing Crosby recorded the most famous Christmas song of all time, “White Christmas,” but I think that any unknown could have put that song out and it would have been a hit. Good Christmas songs speak for themselves.
What would your advice be to other creative people who want to follow their dreams, and what would you say are some of the most important takeaways that you’ve learned from the process of making this project? When it comes to the music, the material is everything, and I think that the material that went into Rock the House with Love is great. I wouldn’t have put in all the work that I did and made this bet on myself if I didn’t believe in the material. It was an incredible thrill when I heard the final versions of the songs that I had heard in my head for so many years come out of the speakers at the recording studio. I knew the musicians had nailed it, and it was a feeling unlike anything else I had ever experienced. It made all of the hard work worth it.
