Rebecca Parks Unveils ‘Secret Stage’: Where Music Meets Life’s Quiet Revelations
Rebecca Parks has spent decades gathering the kind of stories most songwriters only hint at.
With ‘Secret Stage,’ her first album in a decade, she finally lets them breathe. At this stage of her being, she’s distilling a life. Thirteen tracks dive deep into aging, justice, illness, and love, all filtered through a richly personal lens. Parks picked up fingerstyle guitar in her mid-40s, and here it’s clear she made it her own. Her voice, textured and confident, glides alongside her husband Gary’s harmonies, their creative partnership anchoring the album’s emotional weight. The recording hums with unvarnished honesty, captured live in all its raw, breathing beauty by producers Cookie Marenco and Robert Berry.
There’s grace in the details: a song sparked by a quiet evening at home, lyrics shaped by past trauma and healing. It’s folk, sure, but shaded by classical precision and Broadway verve.
When asked about some further details she replied:
“One evening my husband Gary, who is an artist, was at his drawing board, and I was playing my guitar. Out of the blue, he said, “Your music is the soundtrack to my evenings.” With a slight expansion, this became the first line in the song that became Secret Stage. It celebrates our 24 years of creative and romantic partnership.
The title was partly inspired by an underground theatre that had recently been rediscovered decades after being walled off and forgotten. To me this symbolizes how creative people often devote themselves to their art even if they never become widely known for it. Gary and I are fortunate not to have to do this alone.
I first wrote the song on my guitar, but I think it has more gravitas on the piano. The recording is almost live—everything you hear is only what the microphones picked up. We wanted it to be as close as possible to how we would perform it in our living room. Or on a secret stage.”
What Parks is doing goes beyond writing songs that simply reflect herself. She is claiming space and making it hers in a way only she can. In that sense, we have a truly remarkable record before us.
Rebecca Parks will be performing on August 5th at The Bistro in Hayward, California; on September 5th at the Salinas Art Walk in Salinas, California; on September 21st during Open Mic America on The Internet; on October 11th at the Piedmont Center for the Arts in Piedmont, California; and on October 19th at the Los Altos Hills Town Hall in Los Altos Hills, California.
Headline photo: Paul Schraub
Rebecca Parks Website / Facebook
