Tucson singer-songwriter Lara Ruggles hasn’t released an album under her name in nine years.
She has been working with her electro-pop group Sharkk Heartt, but with her most recent album, she is bringing more of an acoustic folk/pop music again.
Ruggles will host an album release party for “Anchor Me” in Phoenix at Last Exit Live on Thursday, Dec. 5, with her band, Freddy Jay Walker, Kevin Larkin, Pete Connolly and Patrick Morris. Support acts are Dad Weed and Bogan Via.
The following day, Friday, Dec. 6, she will play in Tucson at the Splinter Collective.
Released on Nov. 15, “Anchor Me” is a collection of songs that she wrote over the last decade. She said she believed they were too acoustic-sounding and intimate for her group. She decided they would fit better as a solo project.
“Some of these songs I wrote 10 years ago. I recorded it in 2022 just trying to get the songs out of my head,” Ruggles said.
“They’ve been bouncing around in there for long enough that they’re not going to get out of the way and make room for something else unless I actually get them out.”
She said even though some of the songs are older, they still speak to her on a personal level.
“They still felt new and relevant. They still felt fresh when I performed them, and I didn’t feel like they were in the past. I felt like they were still resonating with me, and they were still resonating with audiences, and that that still feels true,” Ruggles said.
“There’s one song in particular that I wrote at the end of my first major relationship, and it’s about the dissolution of the relationship, but it’s also about kind of reckoning with what is home? What does home mean to me, and how is that different from what it means to you? And I think that’s a question that’s still relevant. There’s a lot in that song about the desert being home and walking down dirt roads feeling like home. That song was in my subconscious, realizing that Tucson and Arizona were home before I was willing to admit it.”
Leading up to “Anchor Me” was released, Ruggles released the singles “Bend the Truth,” “Lighthouse” and “Love Me Instead.”
She wrote “Bend the Truth,” the newest song on the album, last year while doing an artist residency at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
“That was a month in Hawaii on the Big Island, within sight of the ocean,” Ruggles said.
“I can’t say enough good things about that opportunity. I wrote ‘The Truth’ while I was sitting on the side of an estuary in Hawaii. I knew as soon as I wrote it that I needed to go home and record it because it belonged on this album,” Ruggles said.
In the album, she delves into her first failed relationship, the magical nature of experiencing love again, the divide between the love expected and received and her relationship with the music industry.
She shares vulnerable moments with audiences and gets into the pain and loss she has experienced.
The album was recorded at Gregory Alan Isakov’s farm in Boulder, Colorado. Her friend, Tyler Sabbag, an Emmy-winning composer, added percussion.
She went on tour with Isakov’s band, selling merchandise for them. She said that recording at his farm was laidback.
“There was a tiny house on the farm that I stayed in, and he had a little studio on the farm, and we spent most of the three days in the studio,” Ruggles said.
“It was pretty relaxed. We would get started at like 10 or 11 in the morning…We’d wrap around 5 or 6 p.m., and then I would hang out and have dinner with him and his family. The last day that we were in the studio, his 9-year-old daughter sat in and that was that was so much fun to have her there in the studio with us.”
The project was completed in Tucson at St. Cecilia Studios, where she recorded an additional song with her regular band members.
Several songs on the album are stripped down and simple, with just instruments such as the guitar, piano, bass and/or mandolin.
Others are more fully realized and produced. A cover of “One Thousand & One” by Anna Tivel features whistles.
Ruggles said, with her music, she is open to crossing genres.
“At this point, I feel a lot more comfortable just bending genre rules a little bit and just doing what a song wants, as opposed to trying to fit some preconceived notion of what music I think I want to be making,” Ruggles said.
She grew up in Tucson and began playing the piano around age 8 or 9. She also plays the guitar.
She started doing open mics and make demos starting at age 16, when singer-songwriter Jewel was a major influence.
“My family was out on 7 acres surrounded by cattle ranches outside of Tucson, and I had a couple horses in my teens, so I just envisioned myself as the Arizona version of Jewel,” Ruggles said.
She moved away for school, and lived in Denver and Boulder for nine years before moving back to Tucson in 2016.
High rents in Colorado caused her to move back to Tucson, but she has found that she developed a new appreciation for her hometown. She lived with her parents for a time when she first moved back.
“They lived right along the Rillito River. I was going on these jogs right at sunset, where everything was just silhouetted beautifully, these beautiful silhouettes of saguaros, mesquites and beautiful sunsets that I was watching as I ran. Within two weeks of moving back to Tucson, I met my husband, and within another like two or three weeks after that, my sister announced that she was having a baby,” she said.
“So, I thought, ‘OK, looks like I’m going be here for a while,’ and it turns out I’m really glad that Tucson is where I ended up.”
Even living in different parts of the country, she always returned to Tucson to do album releases.
Before releasing “Anchor Me,” her most recent album was “Wars Our Mothers Fought” with Sharkk Heartt . She said it’s more political in nature, just as Sharkk Heartt tends to be.
“Sharkk Heartt songs, not all of them are this way, but they tend to be more music with a message, music that views the world through an anti-capitalist lens…What I mean by ‘anti-capitalist’ is reimagining a world where we treat people as if they matter just because they exist and not because of what they’re contributing in the world, or what they’re producing for a company,” Ruggles said.
Ruggles said her music as a solo artist and with Sharkk Heartt have similar qualities because of her voice and approach.
“If I listen to both sets of music side by side, it’s clear it’s the same person. It’s the same vocals and the same general approach to songwriting, just like slightly different production vibes,” Ruggles said.
Along with her music, Ruggles has worked on fundraising efforts for organizations such as the Rialto Theatre. She helped to coordinate Arizona efforts as part of the National Independent Venue Association’s Save Our Stages Covid advocacy efforts, which sought to raise funding for independent venues.
She is on the association’s board. She is currently the chair of the inclusion, diversity, equity and access committee. She can offer insight based on her experience with fundraising and grant writing.
She said she got involved because she felt invested in saving venues as a musician.
“Because I was working at a music venue, and as a musician, once the pandemic hit, it was like if there aren’t independent music venues, then there’s nowhere for independent artists to play, and then the music industry is not going to be at all what it was. If I’m even going to be able to perform music again, then this is priority number one,” Ruggles said.
Lara Ruggles
WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6
WHERE: Splinter Collective, 901 N. 13th Avenue, Tucson
COST: $20 suggested donation
INFO: lararuggles.com
