Rita Hosking

Pop Music: Rita Hosking: Down from the mountains
Davis singer-songwriter's sound mines a rich, generations-old vein

By Dixie Reid
dreid@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Jan. 2, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 34TICKET

The roots of Davis folk singer-songwriter Rita Hosking's music go deep into a California gold mine.

Her great-grandfather, W. Tom Hosking, was a voice in the Cornish Carol Choir that in the early 1940s sang to a national radio audience from 2,000 feet underground in Grass Valley's Idaho- Maryland Mine.

She remembers her dad, Tom's grandson, bringing out a recording of the Cornish miners' choir to play for his family every Christmas, and only at Christmastime.

"It always made him cry," she says. "Everybody understood that if he got that record out, we were to sit down and shut up."

Ron Hosking worked the unenviable night shift at a Shasta County sawmill to provide for his family – wife Judi and daughters Sheri and Rita – and never realized his own musical aspirations.

"I grew up with a real respect for the voice, for folk music," Rita Hosking says. "I could tell it was my father's passion, that he would have loved to do that. Just recently, we were on the phone, and he said, 'You're doing exactly what I would love to do.' When he would sing, I would get so excited."

It fell to the next generation, to one of Tom's great-grandaughters, to carry on the Hosking tradition.

Rita Hosking and Cousin Jack (she gave her band the nickname accorded miners like Tom Hosking, who emigrated from Cornwall, England) will play four Northern California shows over the next few weeks: Saturday at the Cozmic Café in Placerville, Jan. 10 at The Palms in Winters, Jan. 31 at Evangeline's in Colfax, and Feb. 13 at the Sutter Creek Theatre in Sutter Creek.

At age 39, with a husband (Sean Feder plays banjo and dobro in Cousin Jack) and daughters Kora, 14, and Hava, 9, Hosking is having the time of her life.

She's taken a leave of absence from her job as a U.S. history teacher at R.W. Emerson Junior High School in Davis. She entered, and won, the Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest at the 2008 Sisters Folk Festival, in Sisters, Ore. She spent time in Austin, Texas, where she recorded her third, as yet-unnamed album, due out in spring. And she's been on the road, playing with her band.

She's so excited about her music that she may ask for additional time off from school.

"I love connecting with people through songs and singing," she says. "I love expressing what I can only say in song. Somehow, it frees me up to say what's in my heart. There are people who hear it, and it connects with them somewhere deep inside. That connection is what is so beautiful. It's a natural, wonderful part of being alive.

"My husband said the other day that my songs relay that poor people have dignity, too. That stunned me into a strange, defensive sort of epiphany. How could it be that simple? But it did make some sense."

She writes songs about such matters as a devastating mountain fire ("Kitchen Table and Chairs"), the dangers of underground mining ("Cool Black Water") and hope ("Come Sunrise," which will be on the new album.)

Her music is informed, in part, by her upbringing on lonely Hatchet Mountain, altitude 4,000 feet, in eastern Shasta County. It was land on which her grandparents lived before her parents settled there to raise their daughters.

"My mom went along with it and was a great mountain girl. My dad worked very hard. When I was young," Hosking says, "he worked at the sawmill down the hill. He pulled 'green pay,' the night shift – and very yukky work – for many years, and he worked his way up and got out of there. My mom stayed home as much as she could, and then she started working at our school (in Montgomery Creek, population less than 100). She'd ride the bus to school with us.

"I definitely draw on my childhood for my music, and that still seems to be, even though I've lived more of my life in Davis. People say home is where the heart is, and that's where my home was, definitely. It was such a wild and rich upbringing."

Hosking was the first member of her family to attend college. She got a degree in religious studies and cultural anthropology at the University of California, Davis, where she met fellow student Feder.

They're regulars at the twice-yearly Strawberry Music Festival held at Camp Mather, near Yosemite National Park.

"We've played there, and our kids just love it," Hosking says. "Almost every year we get something out of Strawberry that we didn't anticipate, some inspiration, or we meet someone who makes something happen. It's always some kind of blessing."

Last spring, it was the performance of Mississippi native Caroline Herring. Hosking bought Herring's album and discovered that Rich Brotherton, longtime mandolin and guitar player in Robert Earl Keen Jr.'s band, had produced it.

"I loved it," says Hosking, "so I 'My Spaced' him and said, 'Hi, my name is Rita. Would you be interested in producing my next album?' He wrote right back and said, 'Sure.' "

In addition to Brotherton, she was backed by such musicians as Lloyd Maines (father of Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines and a well-known musician and record producer), Warren Hood of the Waybacks, and Tom Van Schaik and Marty Muse from Keen's band.

"I feel really lucky," says Hosking. "It'll be done, except for pressing, in February, but I want to sit on it a little bit to see if I can find someone to help me market it. I want to do it right. I want to do a national media blitz."

Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134. - Sacramento Bee, Jan. 2009

Hosking's two biggest assists are her singular voice (a soulful howl from the mountains) and quality songwriting. Between tunes she talked a bit about her upbringing near Hatchet Mountain (Fall River area). She talked about the devastating Fountain Fire prior to playing her great bluegrass tune "Kitchen Table and Chairs."

This combination of quality storytelling, genuine personality, super songs and that voice have put Hosking into the big leagues. After a full weekend of amazing performances, I woke up Tuesday morning with her tune "Are You Ready" playing in my head.

The next time she passes our way, do not miss a performance by Rita Hosking.

(from Spring Strawberry Music Festival performances, 2007) - The Record Searchlight, Jim Dyar for D.A.T.E. magazine, Redding, CA

Hosking's old-timey vocals are the calling card for this up-and-coming act from Shasta County in northern California. Her presentation may be reminiscent of Gillian Welch, but this California girl comes by her mountain-music sensibility with true authenticity, with original songs deeply rooted in her family's frontier experience.

- festivalpreview.com, Dan Ruby

Her music is rootsy bluegrass at its core and it is spare and nuanced, while somehow remaining soulful and resonant. It must have been that mountain upbringing.

(June issue article, "Hatchet Mountain is at the Heart Rita Hosking's Music", 2007) - After Five, the North State Entertainment Magazine, Jon Lewis

Superb country folk from a brilliant singer/songwriter

This third album from Californian singer/songwriter Hosking hearkens to the likes of Gillian Welch and Rachel Harrington in its simple, straightforward delivery of folk songs leavened with a touch of bluegrass, country and old time Americana. Recorded in Austin, Texas with a top notch selection of musicians including Lloyd Maines and Robert Earle Keen guitarist Rich Brotherton (who produced the album) this is a bit of a treasure trove with a wealth of great songs and great delivery. Dobro, pedal steel, fiddle and banjo adorn the songs while Hosking’s vocal delivery is strong and emotionally captivating with a hint of Natalie merchant about it.
With eleven self penned songs it’s difficult to select any particular ones as stand outs as they are all uniformly good. There are tales of alcohol fuelled knife fights (Montgomery Creek Blues), historical oddities (Little Joe, about a cowgirl who passed herself as a male) and the baloney that is passed as received wisdom from the media (Holier Than Thou). Hosking’s lyrics hit the spot everytime and the songs sound as if they’ve always been here, a sure-fire sign that she has hit the songwriter’s motherlode.
While each and every song here has excellent country backings there are moments when producer Brotherton dons electric guitar to great effect. “Hiding Place” has a slow burning slide as Hosking sings of a girl’s fear of a Windigo, a malevolent spirit. “Upside Town” ditches totally the acoustic setting as the band rock out on a biblical apocalyptic rant, which starts with

“Jesus said he’s going to Texas/He told me last night in a dream/And when he gets himself to Texas/He’s gonna knock down the church doors with his love.”

The overall impression one gets from this album is that of a very talented artist with the ability to step up to that pantheon of great female country folk singers and writers. Highly recommended.


Date review added: Monday, January 11, 2010
Reviewer: Paul Kerr
Rating: 9/10 - Americana UK

Rita Hosking might call Davis, CA home (18 km / 11 mi West of Sacramento) but the geographical and cultural influences that shape her excellent new release, Come Sunrise, could plot here anywhere between a rural West Texas roadhouse or the front porch of an Appalachian cabin.

Recorded in Austin with producer, engineer and Robert Earl Keen guitarist, Rich Brotherton and featuring some of Austin’s best musicians – Lloyd Maines on Dobro, Glenn Fukunaga on upright bass, and Danny Barnes on banjo, Warren Hood on fiddle, Brotherton plys several instruments himself and Sean Feder from Hosking’s backing band Cousin Jack on percussion and harmony vocals.

With a vocal style somewhere between Natalie Merchant and Gillian Welch Hosking sings all 11 of her original songs with a delicacy that belies the force of her delivery. This is the kind of music I imagine a few generations ago would have easily landed on bestselling Hillbilly charts before some executive in the 40’s decided the term too degrading (and probably less market-friendly) and changed the name to Country & Western.

Now this music finds its home in the Americana genre, where skilled musicians like Hosking remind us that music that tells tales of people’s lives, with instrumentation and arrangement that also hearken from that heritage, is so wholly satisfying in a world more and more addicted to entranced and irony.

The slow burners are the real stand outs. Simple pleasures yearn from the title track as Maines’ Dobro and Hood’s fiddle envelope you with the sonic equivalent of a down comforter, Montgomery Creek Blues is a dreamy pedal-steel laced tale of drunken revelry that ends in murder and Hiding Place (my hands-down favorite) is a sparkling ode to solitude that betrays a hint of menace from possible pursuer.

Precious Little, Little Joe and Holier Than Thou are straight up honky-tonkers that should strike shame in the heart of every Music City big label suit.

With Come Sunrise Hosking gives us a prism that isolates the distinct historic threads of country and folk music and then combines it again into a wholly satisfying and extraordinary body of work. - Twang Nation, Come Sunrise Review

“Rita Hosking has one of those perfectly imperfect voices necessary to do folk music right. An overtrained or flawless vibrato can ruin a good tune about broken lives or crossing over or prison wardens who are happiest when the jailhouse is full. But Hosking keeps it beautifully raw and real in the pitchy tradition of Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams. Musically, her bluegrass-tinged performances hearken back to the best of American music without mimicking the greats.
Close harmonies and strong backup provided by her band, Cousin Jack, round out a sound rooted firmly in traditional music but distinct to an artist with a particular lyrical love for the mountains and the lives they envelop.”
—Adrienne van der Valk for the Eugene Weekly, June 2006.
- The Eugene Weekly, OR

“What first attracted me to folk music years ago, which seems harder and harder to find, is a strong sense of place. Rita's songs are rooted in the mountains of eastern Shasta County, and supported by lovely voice and musicianship. She's also a history teacher, so has a sense of story that comes through wonderfully in works like the Civil War song ‘Tall White Horse.’ Highly recommended.”
--Frank Gosar, host of “Saturday Café” for KLCC, Eugene, OR.
- Frank Gosar, KLCC

“Her voice has that lonely, experienced voice of the mountain people, though her mountains were in Northern California.”
-Brenda Hough for the California Bluegrass Association, CD Reviews
- California Bluegrass Association

"What I appreciate about Rita's music is that she has the innate ability to take the listener back to a simpler and better time in American music.”
--Michael Leahy, a.k.a. “Cornelius” of the KDVS in Davis, CA “Cool As Folk” show
- KDVS host Michael Leahy