https://www.vcreporter.com/2016/06/09/rain-at-the-movies/
The multitalented Rain Perry has been a fixture in the art, culture and music community for years. The Ojai singer and songwriter has released multiple records, sung the theme song for a national TV show, made an appearance on that same show, written and performed a play based on her own childhood, and played host to countless songwriting workshops, classes and house concerts.
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by Pam Baumgardner - VenturaRocks.com
Ojai musician singer/songwriter Rain Perry’s foray into filmmaking has resulted in a thought provoking, fascinating look at the music industry and how it has evolved the past fifty years. The film highlights the career of musician/producer Mark Hallman of Congress House Studio out of Austin, Texas. To make the film, Perry teamed up with Micah Van Hove, Director of Photography, who taught her invaluable lessons on filmmaking. Perry was able to produce the film as a result of a successful Indiegogo campaign.
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Art of the Song - Katie Anne Mitchell
Our guest this week on the Art of the Song Mid-Week Coffee Break is Rain Perry.
Rain Perry is an award-winning songwriter. Her song “Beautiful Tree” was the theme for the CW Network’s Life Unexpected, a criminally cancelled series on which she also had the surreal pleasure of playing herself alongside Ben Lee and Sarah McLachlan.
In addition to releasing four albums on her own Precipitous Records, Rain is the author of the autobiographical play Cinderblock Bookshelves: A Guide for Children of Fame-Obsessed Bohemian Nomads.
She is the Grand Prize winner of both the John Lennon Song Contest (Folk Division) and the ROCKRGRL Discoveries competition, as well as a Telluride Troubadour finalist. She divides her time between motherhood and the lucrative world of independent folk-rock music.
Rain has received many nice reviews (and one really snarky one), but her favorites are those Google-translated from Dutch: “The album Cinderblock Bookshelves is not the melancholic childbirth that you would expect…Rainy Perry is a veritable asset to the music world!” – Kindamusik
Rain also recently directed The Shopkeeper (discussed in this interview) on Mark Hallman of Congress House Studio. View the preview here: https://vimeo.com/165494197 and check out full details, including premier dates here: http://www.shopkeepermovie.com
By Karen Lindell, Special to The VC Star
The brew at a mom-and-pop coffee shop is subtle, classy, beloved, one-of-a-kind.
Kind of like Mark Hallman and his music.
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For any regular reader of the VCReporter, singer-songwriter, Rain Perry should be a familiar name. We have long followed the Ojai resident’s musical journey in our music section, and for good reason; the married mother of two is always up to something interesting.
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Folk-rock artist Rain Perry has some important questions about the music industry, so she’s chosen celebrated music producer Mark Hallman to be the subject of a new documentary. The Shopkeeper takes us to Austin TX, where, after 35+ years in the business, Mark Hallman is still making music in his studio, The Congress House. How can Mark’s life path (a songwriter turned producer) help answer questions about the state of things now? How can artists make a living in the age of Spotify? How has technology influenced artists and audiences alike? Rain sits down with No Film School to discuss being a “noob” to filmmaking, how it compares to creating music, and important lessons she’s learned so far.
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Rain Perry is an award-winning songwriter, an actress, playwright, event organizer and now film producer. Her song “Beautiful Tree” was the theme for the CW Network’s Life Unexpected, a criminally cancelled series on which she also had the surreal pleasure of playing herself alongside Ben Lee and Sarah McLachlan. In addition to releasing four albums on her own Precipitous Records, Rain is the author of the autobiographical play Cinderblock Bookshelves: A Guide for Children of Fame-Obsessed Bohemian Nomads.
Music documentary-in-the-making The Shopkeeper looks like quite the double-edged sword (or double-sided guitar pick – more on that below). On one hand, singer-songwriter and first-time filmmaker Rain Perry is making a heartfelt ode to her Austin-based producer, Mark Hallman, and his locally legendary Congress House studio. But there’s more going on here than another cinematic example of Austin’s music scene celebrating itself. Perry elucidates the stakes in the opening lines of her Indiegogo campaign for the film: “Everybody can make a record, but nobody can make a living. Is there a problem with that?”
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As Ojai singer-songwriter Rain Perry was musing about the current state of her chosen profession, she began to fixate on a curious conundrum.
“Everybody can make a record now,” she thought, “but nobody can make a living. Is there a problem with that?”
To find the answer, she decided to make a film.
Rain Perry is making the leap from music to film with The Shopkeeper: A Documentary about Mark Hallman & the Congress House. While the documentary genre has more female directors in it than probably any other, it still isn’t easy to break through, especially since fundraising is often the hardest part of it. A lot of female directors have revealed that it’s usually all fun and games until money is involved, but trusting “women” with money is often a sticky area.
Full Disclosure: I’ve known Rain Perry for more than 30 years. We shroomed on Ventura beach back in the 1980s, slogged through the agony of high school together in Ojai, and stared up at the stars on one too many summer nights wondering what we would end up doing with our lives.
