Rona Mac’s Musical Labour of Love

The term “singer/songwriter” has become somewhat synonymous with guitar-strumming, self-indulgent dirges (“I’ve suffered for my music and now it’s your turn”, as musician/satirist Neil Innes once observed.)

But Pembrokeshire singer/songwriter Rona Mac’s rich and glorious music is in a world far away from such dreariness.

She coaxes beautiful sounds from her guitar and weaves them harmoniously with her soaring voice and emotionally charged lyrics.

When we speak, she has just finished a run of 20 gigs in 32 days, promoting her latest album, Honeymilk & Heavy Weather.

She agrees that her highly affecting songs can be simultaneously sad and celebratory, a bitter sweet experience. “Life is full of juxtaposition, the light and the dark,” she says. “It’s there in the album title, Honeymilk & Heavy Weather… it’s shit weather outside and you’re drinking hot milk and honey indoors.”

Originally from Leicestershire, she was eight when her family moved to Fishguard.

“All of my family were musical,” she says. “And I’ve always written songs.” By the age of 14 she was part of a mostly covers trio called the Lovely Somethings – with Rona on percussion and backing vocals. “We nearly got signed at one point. But then the others wanted to go to university,” she says. “I had got lots of gigging in my teens, though.”

Her guitar playing is delicate and seems carefully focused – she was taught by local guitar teacher John Rodge. She cites Ben Howard as a major influence on her songwriting.

I mention that the way in which her music seems never to be simply an accompaniment to her voice and her lyrics but that it all seems to come as one essential package brings to mind the work of Joni Mitchell.

“Ah, Joni,” she says with more than a hint of recognition. “”We grew up listening to Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash, Bob Dylan, John Martyn…”

Today, she is very much a single act, doing the writing, the playing and every aspect of the recording process on her own. “I’m a team of one,” she says. “On the new album I did everything myself, apart from getting Gethin Jones to play some drums.

“My solo project started about five years ago when I was 24 or 25 – and at a crossroads in my life. I decided that I wanted to do an album before I was 30.”

She did that well ahead of time with her first album, Sheelah, in 2020. But the genesis of her latest one has taken up the best part of the past three years.

And it was a true labour of love. “The songs were written over a period of 18 months. They were inspired by a friend’s suicide four years ago,” Rona explains. “She was a girl I was best mates with who struggled with mental health and she was a great writer and a great musician. It’s rare to have that friendship where you can sit together and feel the same feelings.

“Her funeral took place in covid, with only a small number of people allowed to be there, and it felt like such a shit way to go.”

The album took a while to bring to fruition because Rona herself had health issues to deal with. Plus, for her, it wasn’t simply another record. “I wanted it to be something that wasn’t just a rung on a ladder in a music career,” she says. “It’s now super satisfying to have completed it.”

The album process included her not only doing the recording, but also the mixing. Basically self-taught, and with the help of some YouTube tutorials, she says: “I love recording. I learned through trial and error. And I’m comfortable with the tech.” She confesses to being something of a nerd. She did the mastering of her previous album herself but this time she brought in Sam Brown from Cardiff to do it.

Home for some time was a tourer caravan that also doubled as her recording studio (“I just put some foam on the walls”). But now she and her partner and dog live in a static caravan, and her studio has been transferred to an annexe at her parents’ nearby home in St Davids.

Rona seems to have a mature head (and heart) well in advance of her 30 years. And that appears to be the result of much that she’s been through. “I’ve experienced a lot of death and mental health issues within my friendship group,” she says.

“Life is a gift that comes with grief. I used to be quite influenced by taoism – you have to relinquish control, be grateful for everything. Even seeing people you love suffering… there has to be acceptance.”

On a brighter note, one can palpably hear Pembrokeshire’s landscape and seascape in her music. is it a big influence? “It’s kind of obvious that it would be,” she chides. “How could you stand on a cliff looking out to sea with the wind blowing and not be touched by that? It’s nature – you watch the changing landscape. You see stuff destroyed and you see stuff come back.”

Rona defines her music as “queer alt-folk”. Is the “queer” label important? “Queer – it’s not just about being lesbian,” she says. “It’s about how you live your life. The people I mix with are queer in the broad sense: they may be queer, heterosexual, bisexual… but they’re all open, weird.”

And what’s next for her? “I’m going to slow down for a while. Until the spring. I have about 60 new songs written and some of those will be ready to go on an EP.”

On the strength of the music she has made so far, it should be well worth the wait.

Honeymilk & Heavy Weather is on Spotify and Apple and you can buy it at bandcamp.com or via ronamacmusic.com.