Rachel Stacy can share stories about the road she’s travelled to get where she is today that would scare an outlaw straight or the stars right out of the eyes of the most optimistic young dreamer even contemplating a life in music. But believe her when she says that’s not her M-O. “My platform is not sobriety,” insists the hard-touring, Texas-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, who — just for the record — is in fact 11 years proudly sober. But at this exciting point in her life and career, she’s far more interested in looking to the future — and using her music and voice as a beacon of hope rather than dwelling on the past. “My goal now is to try to inspire other people — especially women — to continue in their endeavors with music and art. My mission is all about wanting to be a good example: not just for younger artists just starting, but for ones at that age — my age —where society might be telling them, ‘You’re too old for this, you need to quit.’ Because no, you don’t.” Stacy herself is living proof of this, but her own go-to example is none other than the living legend with whom she had the good fortune of working with during the writing and recording of her newest batch of songs: Texas/Americana icon Ray Wylie Hubbard. The wizened and widely revered “Wylie Lama,” who didn’t even begin to embark on the most rewarding phase of his career until finding sobriety at age 40 — 20 years after writing the immortal outlaw country anthem “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” — met Stacy early on in her own recovery and encouraged her to stay the course and to keep faith in her artistic purpose. That path eventually led to their rendezvous a decade later at the Zone Recording Studio, just outside of Dripping Springs, Texas, in the late summer of 2021 to track the best songs of Stacy’s career to date: “The Ghost of Lishe Jackson,” “Take a Little Time,” “Trouble,” and “The Night.” “Ray kind of mentored me early on when I got sober, but we didn’t really reconnect until last year,” she says. “In that time in between I was doing a lot of touring, and I had some other songs on the radio, including one called ‘Boomerang’ in ’17 that did really well. But then we crossed paths again and Ray said, ‘Let’s get in the studio and do that project we talked about doing together some day — I think it’s time people learned the songwriter you really are.’ “That was pretty cool just to hear from someone that I’ve looked up to and admired for so long,” Stacy enthuses. “It makes me feel like I’ve definitely matured and grown up a lot as artist, to get to this point where I now get to work with Ray. He inspires me to be a better musician and writer.” But make no mistake: Rachel Stacy has by no means gone soft. Just because she’s accepted the Wylie Lama’s challenge to step up and show the world the songwriter she really is, doesn’t mean she can’t still rock like hell in front of the wildest festival crowds imaginable — let alone write and sing with absolute conviction about life on the edge. Just listen to “Trouble,” her co-write with fellow survivor Guthrie Kennard that plays like a three-dimensional, scratch-and-sniff snapshot of the seediest old-school blues bar to ever rattle the Big Easy. Artist Website: https://www.rachelstacy.com/ Artist Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rachelstacymusic Artist Twitter: https://twitter.com/therachelstacy Artist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelstacymusic/ Artist Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2uOKzXafTZGHMbusT3Lbcy Artist Itunes: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/rachel-stacy/189019414 Label: Rachel Stacy Music TRT: 4:04 ISRC: QM6P42212387 Song IPI# BMI# 14567325 Songwriters: Rachel Stacy / Guthrie Kinnard Songwriters’ IPI#: ASCAP# 853718022 / BMI# 223646972 Publisher: Sidesaddle Publishing / GSK Publishing Publisher IPI#: ASCAP# 507029085 / BMI# 786526200