How to Build a Creative Identity That Feels Like You (Rivkah Reyes)
Rivkah Reyes, known for playing Katie in the film School of Rock, shares how she’s built her own creative identity across music, acting, writing, and filmmaking. We also discuss her award-winning short film "Gianna” and her latest single and music video “Miss Congeniality”.
Key Takeaways
Sometimes the thing people know you for is only the starting point, not the whole story.
Building a creative identity takes time, especially when you’ve been connected to something iconic.
Social media can feel frustrating, but it also gives artists a way to build real relationships with their audience.
Rejection can become creative fuel when you put the feeling into the work instead of shutting it down.
The best creative voice usually comes from being specific, honest, and a little messy in the right way.
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Why This Matters
There’s something really relatable in Rivkah talking about being known for one huge thing, while still trying to build the next version of herself. A lot of creatives deal with that in different ways. Maybe it’s a past project, an old job title, a band they used to be in, or even just the version of themselves other people expect them to stay.
What I love about this conversation is that Rivkah doesn’t reject the School of Rock legacy. She honors it, but she also keeps moving. That’s a tough balance. The work that opens doors can also become the thing you have to grow beyond, and the real creative challenge is figuring out how to carry it with you without letting it define the whole story.
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Transcript:
Michael: Hey Rivkah, how’s it going?
Rivkah Reyes: It’s going so good, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Michael: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for being on the show. I’m really excited about this interview. I noticed that you mentioned getting some food in a little bit, so we’ll try to go through as much as we can. But gosh, we have so much to cover.
I’m really excited because you’ve done so much in your career, everything from acting to music to writing. One of the core things I noticed is this overall subject of performance. I know that’s a very broad statement, but I wanted to know what that means to you, the importance of performance.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I mean, I’ve been a performer since I was a kid. I started taking music lessons when I was two. As soon as I could pick up a hand percussion instrument and learn how to clap on beats, I knew that music was what I wanted to do.
My sisters and I would write little plays and perform them for our family. I had one of those cassette recording players, and I would record little radio plays. I don’t know, I was always performing and singing and all of that. Honestly, I probably started singing before I could talk, not to be cliche about that.
Performance is just so innately a part of my life, and it always has been. I come from a very creative family. We were always encouraged to create and draw and do anything that tickled that artistic, creative side versus sit and rot and play video games or watch TV.
So yeah, I think I was just born a performer and always will be a performer till the day I D-I-E.
Michael: For music lessons, was there a particular instrument? Was it vocal?
Rivkah Reyes: I trained at the Suzuki Institute in Chicago, where I grew up. The way it worked was, as soon as you were two years old, you were eligible for a class called Baby Steps. Baby Steps was learning how to sing, learning how to play drums, learning what rhythm was, learning what a beat was, and very basic things.
It was just a fun class for parents and kids to go to together. Then by the time you were four, you were eligible to start taking private lessons and group lessons on an instrument. They gave us some options. It was all to be classical. The options were pretty standard: violin, piano, cello, flute, and guitar, which stuck out to my family.
My mom had taken violin and flute and piano when she was a kid, so those seemed like the options because then she could help me. Initially I picked violin, and then on my first violin lesson, I was holding the violin like a guitar.
I think a little bit of my dad’s influence crept in there because we would listen to rock music every morning on the way to school. I would watch videos of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, whoever, and see the rock stars with their guitars.
My natural intuition was to hold the violin like a guitar and play it like that. My parents were like, “Uh-oh, I think we got a little guitar player on our hands.” So I started taking guitar lessons. I was classically trained in that, and I fell in love with guitar immediately. Once I learned how to play “Twinkle Twinkle,” I was hooked.
Then I started ear training myself outside of the lessons because with the lessons, you’re pretty much learning little drills to learn how to do scales and then maybe playing a song. With the Suzuki method, there are levels, and there are different books with maybe 10 songs per book.
The level one stuff, I kind of breezed through it and was like, “I want more.” So then I would just listen to whatever my dad was playing, Zeppelin, Prince, whatever it was, and try to play along with it. I found myself pretty nifty with picking stuff up by ear.
Michael: That’s great to have because I also took music lessons when I was about five years old on piano and had the visual. I can read sheet music like no other, but I never got the ear at all this time.
I was a trumpet player for a while. I trained in jazz and never got the ear for it, ever. You tell me, “Hey, what’s this note?” and I would have a hard time guessing. But if you put a sheet of music in front of me, no problem at all. So that’s a talent to have.
Rivkah Reyes: See, that’s interesting because I struggle with the sheet music still to this day. I know how to read music, but bass clef, I could not even tell you what’s going on there. Piano, forget about it.
If you tell me what chords are in a song, I can figure it out. But yeah, I’m pretty much learning everything I learn by ear. So you play piano?
Michael: Well, I used to, a very, very long time ago.
Rivkah Reyes: But you don’t anymore?
Michael: No, I don’t really get to. It’s interesting because I’ve found that when you get older, if you don’t have an outlet to really play in, it’s challenging to just play for your own sake. Some people can do it, but for myself, I’m a very entrepreneurial spirit, so for me, I need a goal. If I’m going to be doing this, why am I doing this?
Rivkah Reyes: Let me ask you this. When’s your birthday?
Michael: December.
Rivkah Reyes: Are you late December?
Michael: Early December. December 6th.
Rivkah Reyes: Okay. Sagittarius even. Okay.
Michael: Yes. Or the new, what’s the new one called again?
Rivkah Reyes: Oh, we don’t believe in that. I don’t count that one. That one does not exist in my style guide.
Michael: Yeah, there was the one that came out a long time ago.
Rivkah Reyes: No, that one does not exist in my style guide. Okay, interesting. I guess I get that with the entrepreneurial spirit though, that you mentioned, and meeting a goal. That does kind of track. I was thinking maybe you were a Capricorn. But anyway, none of that matters.
Michael: It is very interesting. But having that ear, even going through ear training, is really, really challenging. To be able to have that is an amazing skill set because, like you said, you can listen to something and pick up an instrument and figure things out as you go.
But it also comes to the fact that you were in an environment that supported that, that gave you the training and support to perform and learn how to play music.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. It’s interesting. My guitar teacher growing up, her name is Julia Miller. She’s amazing and taught me everything I know. She had come from a non-classical background. She always played in cool bands, noise music, mathy stuff, stuff that I could not even remotely define by one single genre.
She had in her house all cool pedals and cool gear and electric guitars and stuff. I would always be like, “If we have time, can we play with some of those?” And she’d be like, “No, no, we have to do the class stuff.” But I could tell she was yearning on the inside to teach me how to rock out.
Luckily, we did get the opportunity later, but I won’t spoil the good part.
Michael: Yeah, we can certainly jump into that. Most people know you from the film School of Rock, where you played the bassist. I found it really interesting, and I love the film as well, but I’ve interviewed a number of musicians on this show before, and a number of them have mentioned that their inspiration, the reason they got into rock music and wanted to become a musician, was because of that film, which is truly remarkable.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I still to this day get that. I get a lot of people, either people that I meet out and about in New York or in the DMs or messages to my team or whatever, from people just being like, “You were so inspiring in that movie,” or, “That movie inspired me to start a band.”
The legacy lives on. Even being a small part of it, although I would say that the bassist is sort of the main character in most bands, just kidding, it was an honor to be a part of something that was so inspiring to so many people.
Not every kid is as lucky as I was to have a family that’s super supportive of their kids’ artistic endeavors. I think more so my generation, but now I think parents are really dying to have their kids be a little rock star if that’s what they want.
Michael: Absolutely. It’s interesting that you mention that because I think also these days, the ability to have a career in music now, you hear so many artists talking about the struggles, whether it’s social media or just trying to get music out there, just getting people to pay attention.
But also you have to realize, if you put it into perspective, that wasn’t the case a long time ago when social media didn’t even exist. The only way you could ever realistically produce commercial music was to have financial backing, go into a professional recording studio, lock in a label deal, and get into record stores and on the radio.
That was, for the most part, the traditional model for a very long time, with some outliers. But nowadays, anyone who has a phone or a laptop can make professional-grade music and release it to the entire world.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. One of my singles is a demo that I made on my phone. It’s a voice memo that I made while I was staying in a legendary haunted hotel using a guitar that I rented from the guitar store next door. I just had to record it and had to make this thing.
I put it on Spotify almost a year later. It’s cool, the things that can be achieved. I think everyone having access to things like Ableton and Logic and Spotify and whatever the other streaming platforms are is really cool.
Simultaneously, it makes everything that much harder for indie artists and people who don’t have label deals or PR or anything like that to explode onto the scene in an overnight way. Most of these overnight success stories that we’re seeing actually secretly took 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, however long.
Michael: It takes time. There are exceptions like anything else, but most of the people that I know who have developed successful music careers have been doing it for a long time. Most people don’t realize that. They only see the success part. They don’t see the trial and errors they’ve gone through.
Some musicians, especially if they start popping off in their early to mid-20s, it’s because they’ve been doing this professionally since they were 15 or 16 years old. They’ve just been working on it leading up to now. Those are the ones who are successful, and that’s a small percentage of the ones trying.
Even then, there’s no guarantee, but the ones that have found success are usually ones who have done it very early on. They’re the ones who have been able to try to understand the music industry. A lot of them either work at a record label, intern with a management company, whatever the case is, to also learn how that side of the business works. A lot of times, that’s how you get your relationships and networking in.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I wish I had done that. I wish I had done some sort of internship at a studio or Electric Lady or Atlantic or whatever, because I don’t know anything about the music business. I’m just now starting to learn. Thankfully I have an amazing team.
I am very privileged in that I happen to work with people who are giants and who have done this for a long time. They don’t have the same kind of trajectory as me, where I kind of zigzag around from film to music to comedy to back to film to back to music to writing to whatever. They’ve been consistently in the business of music for a long time, and they know what they’re doing.
Thank God, because I still find myself sometimes having conversations with my producer or my manager and being like, “Oh wait, why does it have to come out on a Friday?” Questions that I think people would be like, “That’s a stupid question.” But they’re so gentle with me, and they’re so happy to tell me the way things are. I’m also very happy to just surrender my music career to them because they know what they’re talking about and I don’t. I love learning new things.
Michael: I am a strong believer, Rivkah, that there is no such thing as a stupid question. I tell my artists this all the time, or anybody who wants to ask me questions about the music industry or the music business. There’s no such thing as a stupid question.
I admire the fact that you ask those questions because there are so many that don’t, and then they’re confused about why their team is making the decisions they are or get frustrated when something doesn’t work out the way that they hoped, which always happens.
That’s always something that I tell artists too. Most of the things we’ll be doing together will fail because it’s true. Most things will fail. But that is the journey to finding what ends up working. You have to ask questions because otherwise you’re completely left in the dark as far as what your team is doing, why they’re doing those things, and why they’re making those decisions. Like you said, dropping a single on a Friday.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah, exactly. With the social media of it all, every artist I know is like, “Ugh, I hate doing social media. Why do I have to do this?” Even I the other day was like, “You wouldn’t ask Kurt Cobain to make a TikTok promoting his new single. You wouldn’t ask Amy Winehouse.”
And I’m like, right, you wouldn’t because that wasn’t the norm back then. This is the norm now. The norm now is that people do have to make content, which is such a derogatory word, I feel like. The word content creator can be like a slur these days.
But in order for people to care about your music, you kind of have to build a relationship with them. That’s what these social media apps initially were for, just building relationships and being on the same platform as your friends, but also your favorite musicians, your favorite actors, your favorite brands. Everyone’s on an equal-ish playing field.
It’s wild to watch how technology is both making dreams come true and crushing hopes and dreams of many at the same time. But it is what it is. I happen to really like social media, and I like to think I do it pretty well. I’m still learning some little tips and tricks.
I have a coach. I have a guy who sends me ideas for content that either work or don’t. It just depends on how I interpret those prompts and make them my own. But it’s all just a science experiment. It’s all a big throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks and finding the formula. Not necessarily to go viral every time I post, but what works? What’s the unique Rivkah Reyes thing that gets people to find my music on Spotify?
That’s the other thing. People’s attention spans are so short that they see something that seems like a call to action that would make them leave TikTok, and they don’t want to do that. They want to stay and scroll forever. So I’m like, how do I grab them?
Michael: That’s exactly correct.
Rivkah Reyes: Usually the School of Rock thing really helps. Usually the School of Rock thing or making it specific to the lesbian community really helps. Not playing into the lesbian thing. It’s just making it specific to that community so they’re like, “Oh, there’s a new lesbian girl singer in the chat. Let’s check her out.”
Michael: That’s more tribal. That is a part of you, part of your identity that you want to make sure people are aware of because you want to find others that can relate to yourself and your experience.
I think that’s always important. Everyone’s going to be different as far as their comfort level on discussing anything personal about themselves. But if that’s part of your persona as an artist, that’s important because you’re letting people know this is the type of people that I’m trying to attract, or this is the type of experience that I want to portray through my performance and through my music.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. It’s been a journey for sure the last couple years of releasing music. Film is such a visual medium, and there’s a very different audience for both of those things.
With School of Rock, we were so lucky because it was a music-centered film. For film people, having Richard Linklater and Mike White and Jack Black, the trifecta, the holy trinity behind that film. Then for the music heads, having it be so rich and full of musical references and fun jokes about being in a band and things like that. It really blended those two worlds in a way that I don’t think was really seen that much before, aside from Spinal Tap and things like that.
I didn’t grow up with that type of movie. I feel, again, really lucky to have been a part of it, and I feel grateful that it inspired a wave of young musicians to get started.
Michael: Did you find that there was a challenge, because you mentioned starting to develop your solo career, especially post-School of Rock, to start developing your own identity and your own career? After that point, I know you were in a number of bands that you were trying to get off the ground, some came and went, but then you were continuing your acting career as well.
Did you find challenges trying to essentially make it on your own?
Rivkah Reyes: Definitely. Well, I haven’t talked about this a whole lot in public, but after School of Rock, and I guess this was more back in the day, before big streaming platforms and before the rise of nepo babies, right after School of Rock came out and it was huge, I started taking a lot of meetings, both with film people but also music people.
My mom and I went to meet with a songwriter-producer who was interested in me doing an album. He had written some pretty generic pop songs for me and showed them to us. We just weren’t vibing with it. My mom and I were like, “This doesn’t feel authentic to me.”
I had also started writing songs pretty young, maybe when I was in fourth grade, right before School of Rock, that I wouldn’t dare show anybody. But I had a banger in the summer before seventh grade called “Two Guys.” It was about these two boys at summer camp who were fighting over me. At the end of the song, I ended up choosing myself because I didn’t even like either of them all that much.
There was a while where I was performing that song live as an adult, and it was pretty fun. But yeah, I wanted to have agency over my creative voice if I was going to pursue a career in music.
I also felt like I would do better with a band because School of Rock was my first band. On day one of rehearsals, they put me and Joey and Kevin, who play the guitarist and drummer respectively, in a room together to just jam. I had never played bass before.
I’d had one mini bass lesson with my guitar teacher, who was just like, “You just play the rhythm of the song, and you play the root note of the chord. Feel free to add a little flair if you feel comfortable with that. But for most songs, classic rock songs, you’re going to be hanging on that beat and hanging on that root note of the chord. Have fun. It’s a lot easier than classical guitar.”
I was like, “Okay, great.” Then they put us in a room together. We played “Iron Man” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Smoke on the Water.” I was just like, “I want to do this forever. I want to be in a band forever.” I had so much fun playing with the boys.
When I started having these meetings with music people who wanted me to sing the songs that they wrote, and they just didn’t feel like me, I was just like, “Ugh, I don’t think this is what I want to do.”
Similarly with acting, I was auditioning a lot. I auditioned for a lot of Disney, a lot of Nickelodeon, and I was very quickly shown by the level at which I was rejected that not every audition experience would be like School of Rock, where I auditioned for it and booked it after one callback.
I was just like, “I’ll audition for whatever I’m sent and do all that, but I don’t think that at my age, at my experience level, this is something I really want to go balls to the wall and pursue.” I also had an affinity for musical theater, so I was like, “Maybe I’ll just go home and do the school play.” I really just wanted a normal life.
Something hilarious was that right before we went to film School of Rock, I had been cast in the school play, the titular Alice in Alice in Wonderland. I was just like, “What? I’m going to miss playing Alice? Come on.” My mom was like, “You’re taking the movie. It’s going to be huge. Jack Black’s in it. You’re going to take the movie.” I was like, “Okay, fine.”
She was like, “I promise, when you’re done with this, there will be other opportunities for you to play a lead character in a play.” That did happen. I got to have that experience in high school and college where I did the school plays, then went on to do professional theater in Chicago and LA and New York. I love all of it.
That’s a very long-winded way to say there are always challenges in any rejection-based industry, especially with acting. Especially as a girl, there was a lot of, “Oh, she’s too tall,” or, “She’s too tall, but her face looks too young,” and a lot of physical stuff that I, of course, internalized and made about me, even though it was fully not about me. I just wasn’t the right person to tell that story.
I’m grateful for the fact that I didn’t end up on a show like Zoey 101 or Hannah Montana. God bless that girl, Jennette McCurdy. Have you read her book?
Michael: I haven’t read the book, but I know a little bit about her story.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. Thank God I didn’t end up working for Dan Schneider. One of my sisters from School of Rock, she worked for Dan Schneider, and she ended up leaving that relatively unscathed, but I’m sure she’s got some horror stories about it.
I’m very grateful for the fact that I left my experience as a child star and transitioned kind of seamlessly into pursuing acting and performance as an adult, with a couple battle scars, but nothing too crazy.
Michael: Good for you. I also know that you wrote a lot of this in an essay back in 2020 called “Confessions of an Obsolete Child Actor.” I know you went into depth on that subject as well.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I love writing, and that came at a point where I was pretty newly sober. I had had a couple years of crashing out pretty bad with substance abuse and other addictive behaviors and tendencies. I just wanted to write a piece about it.
I don’t think my drinking and using was directly a result of being a child actor, but a lot of the fears and self-loathing that caused me to pursue the drinking career were a result of being a child actor who did one big thing and then never really popped off after that.
My views have really shifted and expanded since I wrote that piece. That piece was very well received and published pretty widely, and it comes up a lot. I often will say that even though the classic trauma that comes with being exposed in the public eye super young and having to deal with gnarly comments from dudes on the internet and bullying from kids when I got back to school, all of it kind of made me who I am, which is pretty great. I like myself quite a bit now, even if I didn’t always.
Michael: Yeah, good for you. It can be tough to reflect on those things and be happy where you are today, and understand that going through that is what makes you the person you are.
One of the things I did find interesting, going back for a second, is the band. You mentioned loving being in a band, right? You’ve been in a number of bands over the years. But you also decided to start a solo project. Did you change your mind or just need to take a different route?
Rivkah Reyes: No, I still need a band. I love going to the studio, just me and my producer. His artist name is Blonder, but his name’s Constantin. When I approached Constantin, after we had worked on my single “Big League Chew” together, which was a co-write with another amazing, prolific songwriter named Brasco.
He works with Yungblud a lot and Magdalene. He’s worked with a lot of really cool artists. I met him at a grunge tribute that we were both singing on in LA. I was like, “I have to write something with you. You’re so cool.” He was the only one. He sang “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and he was writhing around on the ground. I was like, “That’s a real rock star. I want to work with that guy.”
He’s so fun. We wrote “Big League Chew” together, and then Constantin produced it. After working with Constantin, I was just like, “He’s on another level. I want to work with him in another capacity.”
Then we wrote “Miss Congeniality” together. I love working with him. Right now he is my bandmate. On some of the new stuff that I have coming out in the next couple months, it’s just us in the studio. It’s me and him on all the instruments, on the computer, making these songs sound like they’re coming from a band, but it’s really just two guys. Just me and him.
But now that the songs are coming out, I need to perform them live. I’m like, “What am I going to do?” It can’t just be me and an acoustic guitar. So I’m on the hunt, putting it out there into the universe that I’m on the hunt for a hot girl band because that’s always been my dream.
Going back to references of music movies, Josie and the Pussycats changed my life when I first saw it, when it first came out. I was just like, “I want to be in a girl band so badly.”
Even if it’s a three-piece and then I just have Ableton pulled up and play the other vocal tracks and other cool synth things in there, I would love to front a girl band. That’s always been a dream of mine.
But the bands that I played with, I was always the only girl. Even School of Rock, aside from the background singers, I was the only girl instrumentalist, and I wasn’t singing much. I can’t deny, I love singing. Of all the instruments I know how to play, which is a handful, singing is where I really feel the closest to God or whatever version of that I believe in today.
I do miss playing with my bands, but I was never the main character, so I had to take a step back and think about the kind of music I wanted to make before I bring other people into it.
Michael: Good for you. It’s important to take the time and find where your main character is. It takes time to figure out. That evolves over time too, right? That might mean a completely different genre. It might be a completely different look. Maybe it’s just a tweak on the things you’ve done before, but maybe in a different way. Maybe it was solo before, but now there’s a full band backing it. It constantly changes.
Rivkah Reyes: Totally. My years doing film and writing film, I guess I have a project called Gianna that’s out. It’s a short film that I wrote and star in. I play two characters in it. I play basically a fictionalized version of myself, and then a heightened evil version of myself, like an evil twin.
Finding my creative voice in that way, it all is connected, right? Who’d have thunk? The mind, the body, the spirit, the music stuff, the film stuff, the comedy stuff. It’s all connected and makes one big Rivkah Reyes.
Across all mediums, my art is always going to have this level of femininity to it. It’s always going to have this edginess to it, like a little bit of a bloody nose and smeared makeup to it, and a grunginess. It’s always going to have something that makes you giggle.
The songs that I’m writing now are not overtly funny, although I did have a brief stint as a stand-up comedian who was doing kind of a Bo Burnham thing and a comedic songwriting thing. I did love doing all that. But the songs I’m writing are a little bit self-deprecating, I guess, and hyper self-aware.
Oftentimes I’ll be playing a show and I’ll sing a lyric that was heartbreaking for me to write, and then people will laugh. I’m like, “Good, it’s working. Good. It’s making somebody feel something.” That’s all I want. If that feeling is making that person laugh, whether it’s out of, “What did she just say?” or relatability or discomfort, good. It’s working.
Michael: That’s the point, right? In the end of the day, whether it’s music or film, you’re trying to evoke some sort of emotion out of somebody, whether it’s discomfort, whether it’s something they’re going to laugh to or cry to or feel elated about, whatever the case might be. Isn’t that the whole point?
Rivkah Reyes: It is. I want people to feel things, and I want them to feel seen just like they did when they saw me on bass when I was a little kid.
For some reason, people latched onto that visual of a girl playing a bass guitar and not saying much, and being a little more reserved, but still giving off this cool energy, which I didn’t know that was what I was giving off. I didn’t know what I was doing at all.
I was kind of just like, “Don’t look at the camera. Don’t look at the camera. Don’t ruin the take.” Then when I was playing with the boys, I was always just like, “Yeah, this is so fun.” I was just having a good time in that movie. I was either thinking about not ruining takes and not breaking when Jack was saying something funny, or having the freedom to just be myself, which is what Richard Linklater wanted with all the kids.
He was just like, “Just be yourselves. These characters were crafted for you guys.” The script was very different when we first got the audition. There was a little darker humor in it, and there was some weird stuff with the drummer character popping Ritalin during class. They decided, “Yeah, they’re in fifth grade. Maybe we should change that and not make it like a preachy thing.” They wanted it to be a little less cheesy.
My character didn’t even exist until I auditioned. Thank God I did. Thank God I came in there with the guitar in my hand and performed whatever song I auditioned with, “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles.
Then in my second audition, they were like, “We would love to see her rock out.” So my parents bought me this electric guitar, and I played “Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz. I really just got into that. They were like, “Bassist.”
Michael: Which is so funny because you never played bass before. That’s amazing.
Rivkah Reyes: I had never played bass. But the second it was in my hand, I was like, “I know what to do with this thing.” Now I love playing bass. That’s why I spent so many years in the back of boys’ bands playing bass. Of course, who doesn’t want the girl from School of Rock playing bass in their band? But I loved playing bass. It was so fun.
I even got to play bass in a musical I did. In Chicago, we did this really cool production of American Idiot, the Green Day musical, where all of the actors also played instruments. I played guitar in that show, but I also mainly played bass. It was super sick. I love any opportunity I get to play bass, even if I’m just practicing in my living room.
Michael: It’s also amazing because, as you mentioned, your calling, if you will, is singing. That definitely comes through. You have an incredible voice. I went and listened to a number of your singles, including your latest single, “Miss Congeniality,” which we’ll talk about in a bit.
It also shows the wide range that you can do, obviously between acting, but also being the frontperson of the project itself. I can tell you’re so passionate when you’re talking about that.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I mean, I’m a Leo. I love being front and center. I love having a microphone. I love the power that having a beautiful voice gives me.
I don’t know, I just love being on stage, and I love giving people a good show.
Michael: Yeah, and you certainly do. It comes across not only in the performances themselves, but also in the music videos. I noticed that you’ve done almost a music video for every single, or at least most of them, from what I discovered.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. The one single that I have out there that doesn’t have a music video is “Chiquitita,” but I made that specifically for Gianna, which one could say is the music video for “Chiquitita,” the cover that I did by ABBA.
I picked that song because I grew up listening to ABBA. ABBA is one of my family’s, my mom’s side, the Filipino side’s, favorite bands. And if you can call ABBA a band. I guess they’re a band, right? There’s four of them. Yeah, sure.
Michael: It is.
Rivkah Reyes: They’re a band. They’re a rock band. They’re so good. What I love about ABBA is that every song has such high stakes and is so intense. “The Winner Takes It All,” that song just goes so hard. I feel like it could be such a good metal song if somebody were to take that idea. Take it, listen to this, and make that song a metal song.
But with “Chiquitita,” I had been listening to a lot of Boygenius at the time and all of their individual stuff too. I was really into Lucy Dacus. Her song “Night Shift” changed my life. When I heard that song for the first time, I was like, “How does she know? How does she know exactly how I feel?”
I wanted to do kind of a Lucy Dacus-esque cover of that song, and I weaved it into the movie. I was like, “Yeah, let’s find a place for this to seamlessly come up.” I made it the main girl character’s song with her ex.
There’s a shot in the movie where I flash a “Chiquitita” tattoo and I’m like, “Look, I just got this tattoo.” But it was all a ruse to just have a place for my cover of “Chiquitita” to go.
I mean, it was also a ruse for me to get to play a she-devil version of myself and act with a really hot girl that I had a crush on and work with Margaret Cho. But I wanted Gianna to be kind of a calling card to show what I could do both as an actor and a writer, but also as a music supervisor because I also picked all of the music for that movie and cast it and wore many, many hats on that project.
But yeah, “Chiquitita” doesn’t have a music video, but everything else does.
Michael: That’s truly remarkable. I very much understand the wearing of multiple hats. I have several friends who are filmmakers, and I very much understand that role, where you have to do everything.
Rivkah Reyes: You get it. Especially with indie and especially with a short film that is super low budget. We had a pretty low budget on that film. It was a big budget for a short, but we did not have that much time.
We were also working with COVID and locations that were only letting us have their space for a couple hours, things like that. So we were really scrappy with Gianna.
The other projects that I’ve produced too, ones that I’ve acted in and ones that I’ve not acted in, there’s always a level of scrappiness to them and people wearing multiple hats. The first AD is also the line producer, and the second AD is also the wardrobe person, and hair and makeup is also a gaffer.
It’s a fun world, but that’s also kind of like band mentality. When I was in Sweet Revenge, which was my band in high school, our lead guitarist was also our booking agent, and our drummer was also our driver. There’s always this level of, all right, who’s wearing multiple hats?
And I was always a diva. I was always just like, “And I’ll see you at the venue, and I’ll be wearing a cute little outfit.”
Michael: Yeah.
Rivkah Reyes: Back in the day. But the boys were always trying to flex and carry everything. I’d be like, “Are you sure I can’t help you?” And they’d be like, “No, it’s fine. We got it.”
But yeah, I was always such a Stevie Nicks about it, even though I wasn’t the lead singer.
I love making music videos because I get to flex my filmmaker muscles and my actress muscles. I like everything to be sort of cinematic. Even something as simple as “Big League Chew,” which, I don’t know if you noticed, the music video for “Big League Chew” is just one shot. It’s me walking down the street. No cuts, no nothing. Just me walking around in my neighborhood, listening to my own song in my headphones, which is something that I often do, and feeling the song and feeling the feelings that the song brings up when I play it and when I was writing it. It’s kind of just having this flirty relationship with the camera.
Whereas something a little more high production value like “Forgot Your Name,” there was a huge cast. We shot at our friend’s house and in a little studio that we rented at Second City when I was living in Chicago. That’s higher production value.
Either way, it’s all visual storytelling that is in support of the story that the song is telling.
I grew up watching MTV when it used to be music videos. That was a huge part of my morning ritual as a kid. I’d practice guitar, then get ready, and while I was waiting for my siblings and my mom to be ready to take us to school, I’d just put on whatever music videos were on TV and get inspired and learn from that.
Seeing the girls kiss in the rain for “All the Things She Said,” I credit that with why I realized I was gay. Music videos have the power to change lives in the same way that a movie or a good song does.
Even the other day, I just saw Charli XCX put out a new music video for one of her new songs, “Spring/Summer 26,” and it’s a direct reference to one of my favorite episodes of Sex and the City. It’s so cool that us musicians get to play with those kinds of references, which is what I was hoping to do with “Miss Congeniality.”
Michael: Right. If I understand correctly, that’s from the Sandra Bullock film, right? Which I love, by the way. I love that film. That’s kind of a reference to that film, correct?
Rivkah Reyes: A direct reference. I watched that movie on the plane that I took to record that song. I wasn’t going into that session thinking I was going to write a song about Miss Congeniality the movie, but I knew that I was going to LA to record some new stuff.
I was watching the movie, and I was like, “Dang, this is such a good movie.” I’ve seen it 100 times, but I had just walked away from a messy, I can’t even call it a relationship. We’ll call it a situationship, or a humiliationship, or a deluluship, or whatever you want to call it.
It left me feeling like, “Dang, why is it that I am always in these situations where I’m so close and then I just don’t get chosen?” But they’re like, “Oh, I’ll always remember you. You’ll always be my favorite,” whatever.
I’m like, “Why am I always the fan favorite but never the girl who wins the dang pageant? Why am I always Miss Congeniality?”
And I was just like, “That’s a song.” I had to write it. It was one of those things where sometimes I don’t like songwriting, but I do it because I have to, because the song has to be written. It’s what I’m feeling.
Sometimes when I’m feeling big feelings about rejection or relationships or whatever, instead of doing what my impulse is to do, which is to just shut the feelings down or numb them out with distracting myself with whatever. In the old days it used to be alcohol, but now I have other fun coping mechanisms.
Why don’t I put it in a song instead? So that’s what we got, and I’m really happy with it. It’s one of my favorite songs I’ve written to date just because it came from this primal, feral place.
I feel like it also comes across in the music video and in the movie Miss Congeniality, how rough around the edges her character is while still being the hottest girl in the room and still kind of maintaining this pageant-like composure while also just being a feral fighter on the inside.
Michael: Which is almost an analogy to the music video itself, where it takes place in a boxing gym.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. Never boxed a day in my life. I don’t know if you can tell.
Michael: No.
Rivkah Reyes: Maybe I’ve taken four boxing classes in my life over the course of the last five years, and I always have fun doing it. But I’m more, I just love a sport or an activity that also requires a little bit of a costume. So I love boxing for that reason.
My friends have this boxing gym down the street from my house, and it’s a queer trans-owned gym. I was just like, “Oh, it’d be so cool if we could get that boxing gym for a couple of hours just to have fun and roll around and play in the boxing ring.” They had these pink gloves, and I was just like, “Perfect.”
Michael: It’s awesome. It’s a great music video, by the way. So is the song. Both the single and the music video are very well done.
Rivkah Reyes: Thank you. I think it gives you a window into the new chapter of the solo project, where we’re going. The first three singles, “Sick,” “Another Vice,” and “Big League Chew,” I think all were building blocks to what I want my sound to be. Now with “Miss Congeniality,” I think we’ve found it.
Michael: I can tell there was essentially a progression, but there was still an underlying, okay, I see the vibe that you’re going for. The types of genres, which is also an interesting conversation about what genres are these days.
But I can tell the relative style you’re trying to go off of. It’s this combination of everything you talked about. It’s very soothing, but also biting in the same way, and also messy at the same time. It’s all these combinations put together.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I was interested to know what genre you perceive it to fall under.
Michael: It’s interesting because I was looking at it, and it’s really hard to nail down. I would say probably anywhere between indie, indie pop rock. I would definitely go more on the indie pop side personally.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. That’s what we’re going for. I always want to have guitar. I want it to be guitar-forward, anything I do.
I’m such a child of the late ’90s, early 2000s. I love No Doubt, and I love grunge. Grunge is probably my top listened-to genre, whether that’s Soundgarden or Nirvana or Ben Folds Five. Anything with the...
I knew there was a little Ben Folds in you somewhere. Any guy with glasses who plays piano who’s from the same generation as me, I’m like, “Yeah, you like Ben Folds, don’t you?” Pository. Pository.
I actually just got back from a writing retreat that he ran in California. I was on his songwriting retreat for a couple days, and I learned so much from him. He’s just one of my heroes. That thing about “don’t meet your heroes” is so not true with Ben. He’s such an icon and so kind. He was very helpful, brilliant, and smart.
I love his storytelling. That’s the other thing that I always want to put at the forefront of everything, that I’m a storyteller. I come from a long line of long-winded storytellers. However I can convey a story, whether that’s through film, through music, through comedy, through a TikTok, through dance, through whatever it is, when people can see the story, I’m like, “Yeah. Yeah.” It feels good.
But yeah, we’re kind of going for this girly grunge. Bubble grunge is the official genre that I’m writing under. It’s nice to have that umbrella of, okay, does this effect on the pedal give that bubble grunge vibe? Can we find something that’s closer to it? It’s nice to have parameters like that.
Michael: Absolutely. I also appreciate the fact that you are continuously not only trying to build out your team, but also learning how to be better. I think that’s important to note. You’ve been doing this for a while now, performing as a musician pretty much your entire life. But you are still taking it upon yourself to go and take workshops on songwriting. Even though you were writing as a child, you’re still looking for how to be better about it today.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I think there’s something to be said about a group conscience. I was with, it was me and 14 other writers, all different genres. A lot of guys playing piano, a lot of Billy Joel, Ben Folds types. There was a girl who kind of had this folky country vibe, and she was incredible. Her voice was insane. Her guitar playing was so good, and her songs were so simple.
Then there was a woman who writes kind of Lizzo-y, but not. She’s like a white Lizzo. She writes funny pop songs that have a little bit of an F-you energy to them, and God, she’s amazing.
Then there’s me. Where I kind of fell into the group was, I’m the Bushwick lesbian who writes love, question mark, songs. Where it’s like, “Is this a love song? I kind of think she hates this person. Or maybe she hates herself?”
I’m like, that’s what I want. That’s the kind of niche I want to fill. That’s the void in the universe that I want to fill. There’s always, like I said, a little level of, “Oh, I think that’s funny. Was it supposed to be funny?” with everything that I do.
Michael: It’s definitely coming across. Again, “Miss Congeniality” is incredible, and I can’t wait to hear all the next songs that are coming out soon. That’s really, really exciting.
We can start wrapping things up here. I do have a couple of fun questions for you. What was the very first concert that you ever went to?
Rivkah Reyes: Santana. I went to Santana with my dad, and it was at an outdoor venue in the suburbs of Chicago. It was in the Rob Thomas era, right around that album coming out. I think the album’s called Supernatural. They did “Smooth,” and of course they did “Maria Maria.” It was kind of when he was doing that crossover stuff. But then, of course, he played the oldies, like “Evil Ways.” Oh God, it was so good.
Sucks that he’s transphobic now. But yeah, Santana. Then shortly after that, I went with my dad to see Elton John, which was another banger of a concert to see as a kid.
Oh God, I still love going to concerts with my dad. We used to go to Lollapalooza together every year. I’ve seen Tom Petty with my dad. I’ve seen Green Day, Gaga, Radiohead, Yellowcard.
Michael: That’s a huge range. That’s awesome though.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Actually, I’m going to ask you this question. It’s a little bit different from what I asked the others. What was the last film that you actually watched?
Rivkah Reyes: The last film that I actually watched? Oh God. I watched something on the plane to the writer’s retreat. What did I watch?
Oh, I watched Is This Thing On? It’s a newer movie with Will Arnett and Laura Dern, and I really loved it. It was so good. I don’t typically like that genre, like mumblecore. I guess that’s a lie. I do like mumblecore. It’s just that recent mumblecore films have not been great.
But this one was really good. I think Bradley Cooper directed it or wrote it, or maybe both. It’s about getting a divorce. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Will Arnett starts doing stand-up. It’s about this sad dad’s journey in doing stand-up, and he’s so good in it.
I love Will Arnett. I am a huge Arrested Development fan. When I first watched that show, I think it was a couple years after it had finished. I was in late high school, probably early college. I was like, “I want to write comedy. I want to do that.”
I thought it was such a smart show. So I’ve loved Will Arnett since those days. It was really good acting from him and from Laura Dern. Bradley Cooper’s also in it. He’s great. He’s great in everything though. Yeah, love that movie.
Michael: I saw the trailer for that. That looked really interesting, so I might put that on my list.
I’m actually looking forward to Power Ballad that’s about to come out soon with Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas. Is it Nick?
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah, it is Nick. I saw the trailer for it, and I was like, “What?” I was kind of like, “Are you... Oh.”
Michael: It was at South By and got incredible reviews. It’s supposed to be really good. I’ve been wanting to see that. I mean, there’s the Michael biopic that came out, which I didn’t get a chance to see, but I do want to see that.
I’ve been happy to see a lot more music-related films coming out recently. Power Ballad is getting a lot of really good reception already, so I want to go and see that.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan too. I’m Filipino. We love Michael Jackson. It’s part of our culture. Michael Jackson and ABBA are the big ones for the Philippines.
I really can’t wait to see that movie. I think it’s not going to be a theatrical watch for me.
I did just see Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters, and that was one of the most fun cinematic experiences I’ve ever had, being a superfan of the first movie.
Michael: I need to see that too. Surprisingly, I only saw the first one a couple weeks ago or a month or two ago. I’d never seen it before. I know. I’d never seen it before, and I was like, “You know what? Why not? I’ll throw it on.” I really loved it. I thought it was fantastic.
Rivkah Reyes: It’s one of the best movies of all time.
Michael: Yeah, it was just, wow. Now I know why people love this movie so much. This is really well done from start to finish. It held up pretty well for a film from 2006, I think it is. It’s been 20 years since the first one.
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. Wow. The second one’s a treat. If you’ve recently seen the first one, I think go and see the second one super soon, because it’s still fresh in the brain.
For me, a person who has seen The Devil Wears Prada 8,000 times, probably more than I’ve seen Miss Congeniality, because Miss Congeniality is also maybe in my Letterboxd top four, up there with Devil Wears Prada. I would also say Jennifer’s Body, and we’ll say She’s the Man. Those are my four. Maybe honorable mention for Holes, which is a deep cut.
Anyway, I could talk about movies all day. Comfort movies are my special interest, having been in one of most people’s comfort movies.
Michael: Okay, last question for you, and I’ll let you go. If you’re only able to give one piece of advice to someone else, what would that one piece of advice be?
Rivkah Reyes: Tell the truth. Just tell the truth. Be honest in all your endeavors, and I think that’ll get you pretty far. I’ve learned that the hard way.
Michael: Yeah.
Rivkah Reyes: Do you have another fun question? I think we can do one more.
Michael: You want to do one more fun question? Okay. Do you have a guilty pleasure? I like to ask that question too. Film, food, guilty pleasure?
Rivkah Reyes: Taco Bell.
Michael: Okay. Do you have a particular order at Taco Bell or do you change it up?
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah. I don’t eat a lot of meat. I especially don’t do fast food meat. So I will get a black bean Crunchwrap Supreme, and I’ll usually get some spicy potato tacos as well. That’s my order: two spicy potato tacos and a black bean Crunchwrap Supreme.
Lately I’ve been liking the Baja Blast dirty sodas that they do. I guess it’s a Baja Blast with half-and-half in it, but it actually tastes really good.
Michael: Interesting. Wow. Crazy. I’ve been on, ironically, a Chick-fil-A kick.
Rivkah Reyes: I’ve never had Chick-fil-A. They didn’t really have it in Chicago. It wasn’t really a Chicago thing.
Michael: Yeah, it’s not really an East Coast thing. It’s more of a West Coast thing. But Chick-fil-A is good. I’m not going to lie.
I do Dungeons and Dragons every Tuesday night with a bunch of friends of mine and my brother. That’s one of our go-tos, Chick-fil-A. I never had the sauce, and I’ve got to say the sauce is banging good. I couldn’t believe it. For the longest time, I had Chick-fil-A, and I’m like, “Yeah, the sauce, whatever.” Everyone’s like, “You’ve never had their sauce before?” I’m like, “No, it’s sauce.” Now I just can’t get enough of it.
Rivkah Reyes: Do you guys have Raising Cane’s out there?
Michael: We do. We have Raising Cane’s out here too.
Rivkah Reyes: I love Raising Cane’s.
Michael: Raising Cane’s is good. I actually tried that for the first time about a year ago, and that was good too. In-N-Out is always a default.
Rivkah Reyes: I love In-N-Out.
Michael: Some people are so divided on that one.
Rivkah Reyes: No, I love my animal fries. That’s my go-to order there because, like I said, I don’t really do fast food meat, but I love animal fries.
Michael: I’m a big meat eater. My order is down. It’s number three protein style, because I can’t do gluten, with a pink lemonade drink. By heart, I know exactly what I’m getting when I roll up to that window.
In-N-Out is always a good choice. I actually also really like Shake Shack. If you want more premium, Shake Shack’s good.
Rivkah Reyes: Totally. There’s a Shake Shack right by the Barclays Center, which is where the WNBA games are. We love a little Shake Shack after the game.
Michael: That’s awesome. Well, thank you, Rivkah, so much. This was such a wonderful conversation, and telling the truth, seriously. I had such a blast, and honestly, I think we could go on forever.
Rivkah Reyes: Oh my God, I could talk to you for hours. You’re so fun.
Michael: Thank you so much. You’re the best.
Rivkah Reyes: Wait, I have a question for you. What’s your favorite Ben Folds song?
Michael: “Rockin’ the Suburbs.” I love that song.
Rivkah Reyes: Okay.
Michael: It’s one of the most popular ones, but “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” I like just jamming that song. It’s so much fun.
I haven’t listened to Ben Folds in a while though. Most of my music taste, especially lately, has been the alt emo crowd because that’s just the music that I mostly represent. I grew up in high school with Jimmy Eat World and Linkin Park and all that. That’s been my thing.
I’ve been super obsessed with this band called Stand Atlantic. They’re one of my favorite bands right now. They’re from Australia. And LØLØ, I’ve been listening to a lot of her music lately too. She’s awesome.
Rivkah Reyes: How about Julia Wolf? You into Julia Wolf at all?
Michael: No, I have to put that on my list.
Rivkah Reyes: Check her out. Her song, I think it was an EP, maybe it was an album, but she has a song called “In My Room” that has gone pretty viral. Then she has another one called “Pearl” that is referencing the A24 horror film Pearl. I love Julia Wolf. She’s got an amazing voice, and she’s kind of on an emo pop kind of vibe.
Michael: I’ll check it out because I’ve actually been hungry again. I’ve been on my kick of wanting to listen to my comfort stuff right now, but I’ve been getting the inkling back into, “Ooh, I want to check out some new stuff lately.”
Rivkah Reyes: Yeah, I flow like that as well.
Michael: Sometimes I just want my comfort stuff. I had a playlist called “2000 Nostalgia Tron.” It’s all the techno stuff from that era, and I was on that kick for a while. I just wanted my old high school days kind of stuff.
Nowadays, I’ve been trying to get back into, “No, I really should just be checking out some new stuff now.”
Rivkah Reyes: Great. Well, I hope to be in that new stuff playlist soon. I think I’ve got more new stuff coming very soon.
Michael: For sure. Well, thank you so much again, Rivkah. This was such a blast. Thank you so much again.
Rivkah Reyes: Thank you.