A flourish of guitar like a blooming flower. “Stuck in the middle of where I want to be and where I was / Everything’s crashing down / But I had it under control,” Stout sings. “I’m going under / Deep underwater / I’m trying to find my way out.” Her voice conveys all the vulnerability of the lyrics, but puts a solid foundation underneath it. The words speak of the struggle. The voice itself carries strength, as if rising above whatever adversity she faces isn’t a question; it’s a near-certainty.
“Under” is from Stout’s EP Highs and Lows, which the New Haven-based artist released in February — shortly before the pandemic began. Undeterred, Stout, a.k.a. Denise Renee, has continued to create.
She made the video for “Under” in August at Kennies Earl Kreative House on Shelton Avenue.
“We created it right there and it didn’t take long at all,” Renee said. “We just did about two or three things. It was about expressing and acting out the song — performing it, in a way.” Released in the same month, the video “really brought back a lot of attention and awareness to the song. “It started to create another buzz for me.”
Part of that buzz involved landing a slot on the popular YouTube-based digital variety talk show The Terrell Show. But Renee had a deeper mission in mind. Listeners had told her that they connected with “Under,” and Renee felt she understood why.
“At some point we feel, or have been feeling that way,” she said, especially during the pandemic and its related shutdown. Even if it was just a song, “Under” was “something to lean on, to listen to, to guide them through those feelings.”
But meanwhile, Renee was also working on new material. She started writing “Alright OK” in the spring. after friend and guitarist Bruce Robinson, based in Georgia, sent her some samples of him playing guitar.
“As soon as I heard the one that’s the foundation for the song, I started writing,” Renee said. In June, she traveled to Los Angeles to record with friends and heavy hitters Cory Henry on keyboard, TaRon Lockett on drums, Sharay Reed on bass, and Jairus Mozee on guitar. “It flowed so well and organically,” Renee said. “The vibe was there.”
“This song was an extension of my faith and my optimism,” Renee continued. “All my songs come from my life experiences. This one in particular was a manifestation of me encouraging myself, keeping myself sane,” she added. “it’s going to be alright.”
The video for the song likewise came together easily. “The artists from back in the day always inspired me,” Renee said, name-checking Diana Ross and the Supremes and Aretha Franklin. “I feel like I’m actually from that era. I wanted to pay homage to the aura that they carried. And it just matched with the vibe and the sound of the song.”
She found a collaborator for the video in friend, artist and dancer Jazmine Robinson “She came up with the choreography. I came up with the look,” Renee said. They shot the video at Kennies Earl again; everyone brought their own wigs and styled them. “You have a vision, you sit down, strategize, execute — it’s possible,” Renee said.
Keeping The Faith
For Renee, getting through the pandemic has been about “keeping my spirits high and continuing to create,” she said. That she is still able to do so and “express myself — in a different way now — is OK.”
In a way, it didn’t enter her mind that she would ever not keep writing and performing new music. “That’s just who I am. I’ve always been this way, since I was very young,” she said. “It’s an outlet for me. Even though things around me have been pretty uncertain or chaotic, I can channel what I’m feeling into my music. Music is a way for me to escape, and help others escape, or bring them hope or bring them joy. I’m never going to stop.”
Renee misses playing shows and singing for live audiences. But the pandemic has also “been a time for reflecting, soul-searching, all of that. It’s been beautiful. And tough. Some days are better than others.“ But she has felt “a deeper understanding of my purpose here on earth…. Just going through this and seeing so many lives lost” — including a friend — “it has made me more grateful for life and those around me. It’s driving me. it’s making me become more ambitious. We don’t know what the future holds. I’m going to do all that I can with it.”
“Live life,” she added. “Really live life. Let go of the things you can’t control and take it one day at a time.”
But that said, Renee is already looking ahead to 2021, when she plans to release a full-length album that she’s currently in the process of finishing. The title, she said, is “top secret.”
“I’m really honing in, focusing on this record,” she said. “I’m very excited.”
