Photo by John Decker
Interview: Renee Maskin delivers eerie haunted house metaphor with ‘Sage’
Renee Maskin chats scary stuff and songwriting.
Ghosts haunt our lives in various forms. Whether literal ghosts or haunted houses, spectral presences leave imprints on our lives. And then there’s the matter of heartbreak — the metaphorical ghosts that scare up tremendous frights and provoke sleepless nights. Borrowing these spooky elements, Renee Maskin conjures an atmospheric ode to forgotten love and brokenness. “Sage” sends up puffs of campfire smoke, aching with cutting strings that cast cries into the night. Within those screams, Maskin’s voice rises soft and sweet, a tender manifestation of her agony.
“There ain’t enough sage to unharm this place,” she laments. Metaphorically dressed in black, Maskin trudges through an eerie funeral march. Her steps are heavy. Weaving to and fro, the singer-songwriter carves out her heart with a haunted house metaphor drawn from real life. “My boyfriend has some crazy real-life ghost stories. Wild, unexplainable experiences. One day, he saw a house he used to live in being renovated,” she tells B-Sides & Badlands over email. “He said something about sage not being enough to cleanse the place. It stuck in my mind as a lyric. You could say that about a house. You could say it about a relationship. Or the world. Pick your poison.”
While Maskin didn’t find her perception of heartache shift, “it was cathartic to write both in metaphor while also speaking so plainly,” she says. “‘You only come around when I’ve got something you want’ — the ways in which some people will disappear when times are tough, but reemerge when they want to borrow your truck or gear or something. I don’t like to put out songs as a kind of therapy. I almost find that embarrassing sometimes. But in this case, the haunted house metaphor rings true to a lot of facets of life and the world. So, I went with it.”
Maskin roots the song in scratchy acoustics, as is often her way. But it became a musical post-pandemic way of life. “I was playing in bands for a very long time before going solo after the pandemic hit. One of the things that happens in that transition is you start filling up space that used to be where the drummer lived,” she explains of the song’s airy base. “So I’m doing a lot of the work of the song on the guitar: building a rhythm, building the chords. When I play it live, it’s all that guitar picking and my voice.”
With a new frame of mind, she took to the studio with Nicole Scorsone (Bernie Worrell Orchestra, Yawn Mower) who contributed violin and viola tracks. The song expanded from there with the addition of a mellotron and other light percussion. “Even with all of those elements, the core of it is a simple, picky guitar song,” she adds.
“Sage” primes the listener for a forthcoming full-length album, tentatively expected in 2025.
Below, Maskin talks scary. movies, album themes, and lessons learned from past musical outfits.
“Sage” is certainly perfect for spooky season, so I have to ask: do you like scary movies?
I am such a wimp. I want to like scary movies. But I watch them and then walk around for days feeling weird and on edge, so I largely avoid the real-deal horror films, the stuff you can never unsee. But I do try and wade in the kiddie pool. I just recently watched Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. What a cinematically interesting film with some really creepy, haunting, beautiful scenes. And a more recent flick, I really enjoyed A Ghost Story, which is less about the scare and more about time and energy and the unknown. That’s actually the part that interests me, personally, trying to figure out what ghosts really are.
What is it about haunted imagery that so many people like and gravitate toward?
A24 films are an obvious example of how beautiful horror films can be. Isn’t it an interesting juxtaposition? Taking something frightening and making it gorgeous to look at. I think the unknown, in general, is enticing to people. It’s just human nature to try and piece together mystery through making and consuming works of art.
Sage is so often used in cleansing. How did that come into the picture when writing this song?
This is making me laugh because I didn’t actually use any! The town I live in, Asbury Park, has such a weird energy to it. Anyone who lives here will tell you that. I don’t want to cleanse; I’m tapping in.
In what ways does it prime the listener for your next album?
The record is similar in its instrumentation and also in its themes. It’s a little more fun, though, it’s not strictly this quiet, cinematic vibe. There’s some cheeky humor in there, too. There’s a song called “Scream Queens” for the legendary Lynn Lowry who indirectly tried to invite me to dinner once. That’s a story for a different day. There’s another song that starts out with the protagonist feeling socially awkward and then shifts to seeing visions of ghosts on the beach on a crowded summer day. It’s been fun to write; I’m excited for it to see the light.
I know the album is yet untitled, but what are some other themes that decorate the album?
It’s really ghosts, mostly. There are some drugs in there, too. A dash of psychosis. Mostly just a lot of observing and making parallels to the bigger, unanswerable questions.
Albums are so often snapshots of an artist’s life at any given point. How does the record speak to where you are in life now?
I, like everybody else I think, am pretty concerned about the state of the world right now. So it’s easy to write a scary song when you’re living in a scary world. However, one of my concerns is how to offer up a little bit of light, too. I have a lot of artist friends who simply want to hold a mirror to the world and call out all of its ugliness. And some of them are finding a lot of success with that approach. But I think it’s more important than ever to also call out some goodness when you see it, too. To show beauty and not just horror. And not in a cheesy way, but in a real one. Taking stock of everything, both bad and good.
You’ve performed in numerous bands and written countless records. How does the songwriting process stay fresh for you?
It’s such a part of me; I don’t even think about it in those terms. I write every day. I don’t write a song that I’d want to release every day, but I am present in the process all the time. Some songs float to the surface and make their way onto the stage or a record. And some get cut. I just move forward with it.
What have you learned most through all the years of your creative endeavors?
You know, I am so thankful that at 13 years old I learned a chord and wrote a song, and figured who I was. It gives me purpose and direction. I know so many smart, kind, cool, even financially successful people who float through life never really figuring out what they actually want to do with it. And you know, I’m not rich. I drive a beat-up old Honda Fit and I live in a one-bedroom with my boyfriend with a fair amount of cool-but-hand-me-down furniture. But I don’t envy material things over what gets me out of bed every day, which is writing songs and playing music. I’m thankful to have that kind of value in my life.
