After more than three decades of songwriting and touring, New York singer-songwriter Rachael Sage is returning to the Eastern Shore with a new perspective on both old and new music.
Sage performs Aug. 21 at the Stoltz Listening Room in Easton, Maryland, before heading to The Listening Booth in Lewes, Delaware, on Aug. 22. The shows come as she celebrates the 30th anniversary of Empress Records, the independent label she founded early in her career.
Her forthcoming album, Under My Canopy, strips back songs from her 2025 album Canopy, reflecting how they have evolved on the road.
“The more that I play these songs live, the more that they kind of take on a different life and a more acoustic, kind of stripped-down approach,” Sage said. That process of revisiting music extends much further into her catalog. Three songs originated when Sage was a teenager or young adult, including “Kill the Clock,” which she says came from her “Debbie Gibson phase.”
“Sometimes there are songs that just haven't really found their footing yet, and you don't really know what they mean until years later when something in your life or the world happens and it clicks,” she said.
Sage has experienced plenty of those changes herself. Now in her 50s, she approaches the music as a cancer survivor, business owner and bandleader.
Her commitment to maintaining her own artistic voice dates back to the founding of Mpress Records. Sage said she created the label after an early opportunity with a major label left her concerned about pressure to change her sound and collaborators.
Thirty years later, that independence remains central to her work, but Sage says her goal onstage is simple.
“Our goal is to bring joy,” she said. “What we're hoping to do is to get all different kinds of people in one place and remind each other what it means to be human beings and where we overlap.”
