Changing your career can be daunting at the best of times. Doing it as a self employed person just increases the stress and danger, particularly if you’ve decided your new career is in music. saintr (yes it’s all lower case) is the new project of Rebecca Crow who most people will have seen performing on stages at club nights or will know her for her modelling. Here she talks to Gary Trueman about why she’s moving into making music and what it’s like to be starting out again as a beginner on a new path.
What are the reasons for you moving into music with saintr?
“I’ve always loved music and my job has always been heavily based around music as a performer and artist. The time was never right and I’ve also never had the resources. I didn’t realise how expensive making music was. Recently, the last few years, I’ve really noticed a lack of representation of non-binary people, of sex workers, and of people like me just loud mouthed lefty feminists, in music. I noticed along with the rest of the country rising hate and prejudice within the alt scene. So I was like, I want to be a musician now. So here we are.”
You obviously have something to say and music is the format you want to say it through. Have you found it a quite cathartic way to speak out?
“I have found it very cathartic. It’s been interesting because I’ve really had to reckon with being a beginner again which is a thing that I’ve found uncomfortable. But it’s been fun to embrace being a beginner, but also to deliver my message.”
You say you are a beginner but surely there’s some stuff you can take from your performance career that works in the music industry as well?
“The crossover is so real, and this is why I’m most excited for the live shows, because I thrive in the environment of live production. I’m going to have choreography, I’m building a set, I’m going to have special effects and visual effects. There’s going to be somewhat of a storyline to the live shows as well. So, there is a huge crossover. But when it comes to music it’s like a different language. So there are some areas where my skills are completely useless. It’s a weird feeling.”
You mentioned how expensive getting into music is. Did that surprise you?
“Oh my God! Music costs so much money. I knew the live shows were costly because I’ve been doing live events for some time now. But just producing music, not even the equipment, I have to collaborate with other people. I haven’t had the time to learn how to produce and to play all of the instruments. So I have to pay somebody for their experience and that is expensive. I know there are ways to make it cheaper and there are grants and stuff. But for grants you need to already be a musician.”
You say you are beginning again. Are you listening to the stuff you’ve already put and thinking I could have done that differently, or I’d like to change this?
“It’s so easy to fall into that trap isn’t it, of continually tweaking little things. This is something that I know I do. I suffer very much from analysis paralysis and just being a neurospicy brain as well. I can easily keep something in development for so long, so I really pushed myself to release music at the level that I’m at right now which is not a Grammy award winning artist. As much as I hate that fact because I’m an over achiever and a perfectionist. But I just pushed myself to release where I’m at, but I do think it has the potential to go back and be reworked in a few years time as I gain more skills.”
It’s a bit like painting or drawing where what you see in your head doesn’t come out the same on the paper.
“It’s so real. A big shout out here to my producer Mike Freear of Slamboree. He and I are very similar people and he understands when I come to him with an idea and I don’t have the technical term for it, like, I had to learn what chord progression was. It’s a huge part of song writing and I didn’t know what it was. So I’ll come to him with an idea and he’ll be able to translate it for me. When I listen to my music now I can almost hear myself thinking about it, I can hear myself thinking I hope I do this right. I get very much in my own head about it. I think eventually I’ll be able to produce my own music, and hopefully it’ll sound the same as it does in my head.”
How did you come up with the name saintr?
“saintr is a piece of lore of me as an artist. I wanted a name that honoured my sex worker roots. But I knew that having something like the word stripper on Instagram would just immediately result in censorship. So I took the word ‘stripper’ and took the s and t off like the abbreviation for ‘saint’ – st and then the word ‘ripper’. Then I though what if I take it one step further and make it a bit more unusual. So I took the ‘ripper’ part and have that just for Instagram. My handle is ‘saintripper’. Then I expanded the st back to ‘saint’ and added an r on the end because my name is Rebecca and also ‘ripper’. So that’s where saintr comes from, and it’s all lower case.”
Let’s talk about lyrics and first up Spyher where there are a lot of nursery rhymes incorporated into it, and in a creepy way too.
“It’s super creepy. I wrote it quite a long time ago and it came to me as a fully fledged idea about being eaten by a spider. I’m quite a concept driven human being. When I produce my performances or make any other sort of art it always has a story, a theme, like a colour palette it comes as a whole package. So that’s sort of how my music comes together. It taps into existing narratives and story telling and pulls it all together like threads.”
Your music is obviously visually driven as well then.
“Massively. Which is sort of why pink is the brand. I’m trying to drill that home. Then hopefully when it gets to the live shows everyone will understand what I’m on about.”
So do you want everyone coming to your shows wearing pink?
“That would be fucking cool, I never thought about that. But hey, if you want to go full pink I think that would look visually stunning.”
Moneyspell, the next single is very witchy. There’s a lot of things being said recently about witches and how they were maligned back in the day which fits your feminist narrative as well doesn’t it?
“Abolutely, Listen! So before I was anything I was a little teenage witch. And I’m drawing a lot from my youth for my music. I think possibly because I’m early in my career and that’s sort of where I left music, when I was a teen. I didn’t do any form of music between the ages of 16 and 30. It comes from teenage me in her bedroom writing songs, and now as an adult I’ve sort of come full circle to realign my identity as a witch. But also very strongly as a sex worker. One of the big themes of sex work is make lots of fucking money. So I wrote a spell to help you make money. And that’s what that song is.”
Are you viewing the move into music as a parallel career to the sex work or are you seeing as you get a bit older that maybe you want a career change and the sex work will be put more on the back burner?
“A little bit of both. I’m still aware that I’m now 33 years old, oh my goodness! When I first started modelling I was 16. So I’ve been a model longer than I was alive before. That’s crazy to me. As my body ages, I have Hypermobile EDS (Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome) it’s going to be harder for me to full time perform and model. But I live to be on the stage and I live to entertain so music is something that helps scratch that creative itch whilst also giving performance opportunities that aren’t as taxing on the body. I’m very proud to represent my sex worker community in the music industry because a lot of people get it twisted.”
Yes, do you think some people might take it the wrong way that you want to move away from that community and explore other things, whereas you are still very supportive of it?
“I’m sure some people are going to have a lot to say about it. But people just need to mind their own business more. I think it would be great if sex workers could be happy for another sex worker moving into another industry and representing. Obviously I don’t represent all sex workers and I don’t speak for the industry. I’m an individual sex worker, but representation is important where ever we can get it. And I’m here to kick the door down.”
Looking at a slightly different aspect of your multiple careers, you’ve also been bringing your vlogging back and we’ve seen you at various different events including music festivals now doing interviews. Do you think that’s another string to your bow and an additional presence?
“I love interviewing people. I’ve always been a people person. It’s something I dipped my toe into a little bit whilst I was being an event manager. I have so many interesting people in my life so I began interviewing them for my podcast called Crowversation. I hadn’t done it for a little while. It fell off the wagon during Covid because it was really hard to maintain everything. It’s something I’ve always been passionate about. I love human beings – sometimes. And I love getting into their brains. And also really enjoy being an entertainer. So the interviews I’ve been doing at festivals have been for my podcast called Fucc Musik and that is a combination between sex and music which is my current career and my new career. I think it’s a really important conversation and I don’t see enough people having these conversations about sex and music in a responsible, entertaining and educating way. There’s a lot of sensationalism and negativity around sex work. So I thought I’d bring a valid voice.”
You could also argue that the music industry has sexualised women whilst at the same time criticising that very thing.
“A hundred per cent. When I first began my career as a sex worker it was heavily linked to music. It was very fashionable to bash us. For a long time people referred to women who hung around the music scene as groupies whether they were a sex worker or not, they were sexualised. Music has been incredibly guilty of this, of sexualising women with and without their consent, and also profiting off of it. Then casting them to the side when it comes to giving those women the credentials to move up in the industry.”
You’ve released a couple of singles and if the financials allow you’ll be doing more. What sort of support have you had from your friends and fans?
“I have a very small but incredible group of humans who genuinely enjoy my music around the world. The reaction from them has been incredible. I literally feel euphoric that people are fans of my music. My friends and family have been great. I don’t know if they quite understand what I’m doing. I want them to love it but I also understand that music is very niche, it’s full of niches. So somebody won’t enjoy your music but they can still support your career. There’s been another reckoning with that because as a neurospicy person I’m very sensitive to rejection. So I’ve been building up my confidence and that thick skin to say hey do you want to listen to my music, if you don’t like it it’s OK but I’d still appreciate your support.”
We’ve talked about you transitioning from a model at 16 and now you’re 33 making lots of career moves on the way. We’ve had the stages of Rebecca and seen change over your life. Where would you like to see Rebecca at 40 and beyond?
“I love this question! I would love to be able to say that I am consistently putting on phenomenal live shows as saintr. I would love to pursue getting some proper funding for this project and making it as big as possible. I want it to be a feature of people’s year where once or twice a year they’ll come and see me, like it’s a whole night out for your friends and your family. I want to distract people from the absolute horrors of being a human being on a daily basis. By 40 I would like to have that. And in my personal life I would like to live in the middle of nowhere. As I move into my old age those are the things I really go for.”
Rebecca Crow (katsandcrows) – Instagram
Interview and photos by Gary Trueman