Lifelong creative collaborations are often born in college.
It’s the final training ground before launching into the big, bad, real world. Anyone lucky enough to find a spark of symmetry with one or more kindred spirits in college just might decide that the best path forward is to join hands and take the leap together.
Such was the case with Rainbow Girls, a San Francisco-based three-piece singing group, who met and began singing together in 2010 while attending college at the University of California Santa Barbara. At the time, they lived together in Rainbow House — a fact that explains the group’s name.
“There was a moment where we were working on this tune in the kitchen and it really did feel like a fated thing,” said Erin Chapin, who shares the stage with her bandmates Vanessa Wilbourn and Caitlin Gowdey. “The atmosphere around us felt like it was sparkling.”
“It was like lightning struck, cosmic love,” said Wilbourn. “The heavens opened up.”
Years of busking, couch-surfing and festival dates followed as Rainbow Girls built a steady following, recording six albums along the way. They return to Vashon on Saturday, Jan. 18, for an album release show at the Vashon Theater celebrating their seventh record “Haunting.” It’s an early all-ages show at 6 p.m., presented by Debra Heesch.
“We’ve been living together, performing together, creating together for upwards of a decade now and there is so much ease for us because we’re a family,” said Gowdey. “We know how to hang out with each other.”
That familial bond comes shining through in their live performances. Between the mesmerizing harmonies that go into each song, their relaxed, funny stage banter between songs make the listener feel like they’ve been invited over to the Rainbow Girls’ house rather than a theater, not an easy live dynamic to create in a trio.
“We are the Nerd, the Bro and the Mystic,” said Chapin. “It’s kinda like a Venn diagram because we’re all a little of those.”
Rainbow Girls’ new record, “Haunting,” is their first production with a full band and the tunes are clearly elevated by the bigger sound. “This collection of songs is definitely tapping into a lot of grief, darkness, struggle and fear — all of the things that if we actually make the choice to turn towards them, it’s the place from which we can draw our power,” said Wilbourn.
“This is definitely our first ‘concept’ record,” said Chapin. “We realized we had almost fifty songs we could choose from so we picked the title ‘Haunting’ and all of the songs kind of rotate around that.”
Part of what stitches Rainbow Girls together is a similar history in how the musical seed was planted in each of them through various connections to choir singing.
“I grew up around music,” said Gowdey. “My grandpa was in an a cappella choir that would go around to old folks homes and he played piano.”
“My mom told me about how her father and his siblings were all in their community choir in the little village in Switzerland where she grew up,” said Wilbourn.
As for Chapin, her dad was in a band that played lots of Eagles and Beatles music when she was growing up.
“I think I learned how to harmonize before I even knew what was happening,” she said. “I was, like, ‘I’m a little girl — I have this high voice so I’ll just sing this part.’ And that led to choir.”
Rainbow Girls will perform at 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18, at Vashon Theatre — the group’s fourth performance on the island. General admission tickets are $20 in advance, and $23 on the day of the show. Get tickets at vashontheatre.com.
Jeff Hoyt is an audiobook narrator and producer in addition to serving as Voice of Vashon’s long-time programming mentor. His recent conversation with Rainbow Girls, which includes a collection of songs from their repertoire will air at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 11 at voiceofvashon.org.
