A Conversation with Sarah Sample – HuffPost 10.25.10

Mike Ragogna: Sarah, let’s catch everyone up on your new album.

Sarah Sample: So, I had released my third album, which was called Born To Fly, and that actually was just an EP that we put out with just five songs. Since then, I have gotten busy writing, touring, and other things, and I decided that I was feeling the urge to write a new album. So, we wrote all new songs for this album called Someday, Someday, which was released on Oct. 12th, and I’m really excited about it. It feels like a first album–I don’t know how to explain how a fourth album can be a first album–but it feels like a first in a lot of ways for some reason. I don’t know if that’s just the progression that my career has had or the saturation time I’ve had making music that has allowed me, for some reason or another, to be able to meet this group of songs at a different level than I have before.

MR: Many artists seem to have a similar experience.

SS: Yeah, it’s interesting because I go to a song school every year. I’ve been going for about nine years, and the community is amazing. It’s held in Colorado, it’s part of the Folks Festival, and you get to hear classes on songwriting from songwriter greats like Darryl Scott, Mary Gauthier, Jonathan Brooke, and kind of on and on. This year, Darryl Scott was talking about finding your true writer’s voice and how important it is to really listen to what the song wants. He talked about how when we’re writing songs and the inspiration comes, that song has its own idea of what it wants to be, and we kind of have to throw the rules out the window and let the song be the judge of what it wants to do. So, I think what I mean by saying “this feels like a first album,” is that it feels like I’ve found my writer’s voice more so than I ever have before. With this album, I feel like I’ve really held true to the integrity of that inspiration. So, I think it’s been a really interesting process to go through this time around.

MR: In the past, labels understood that it takes a little while before an artist comes into their own, that it took a nurturing, maturing process. Also, you’ve gone through more experiences, you’ve got more tools in your kit, and it’s great that you pass through Iowa every few months.

SS: Well, it’s not too often. I generally tour in the West, but with this album release, I started touring more in the Midwest and East Coast in the last two years or so.

MR: Can you go into what you’ve been doing as a creative artist over the last few years?

SS: I feel like the term “wanderlust” kind of encompasses my life. I’ve probably moved twenty-five times, and that really hasn’t slowed down in the last ten years. I’ve lived mostly in the West, but I’ve lived in Austin, Wyoming, Texas, Oregon, Utah, and I’ve been in Seattle for the last three years, then just this Summer, my family moved to Boise, Idaho, for my husband’s job. The great thing about moving around so much is that I tour so much anyway, it doesn’t really matter to me too much where I live. It also allows me to get a taste of different artist communities and seek out the artists wherever I’m at. Seattle was an amazing place to be for music and arts, and I loved living there for the last three years or so. With this new album, Someday, Someday, we hired a filmmaker to document the making of the album and also a little bit of touring. I do a lot of house concerts–about half of my touring is to house concerts or concert series’. I don’t know, I’m trying do things a little differently or up the ante with every album I release, maybe to try to get the word out more about what I’m doing.

MR: Can you go into the venues a bit more?

SS: House concerts, I think, are THE singer-songwriter friendly venue because there are established house concert series’, and then I also do a lot of fan-hosted concerts. I’ll send an email out to my fan list and say, “I’m looking for a show in Iowa–or wherever–on these dates. Does anybody want to host me in their living room?” It’s been a great way to meet people, and I think there’s something really special about hearing music in a home, or in an intimate environment. It also means playing in less noisy bars, the more house concerts I play. So, I play everything from solo shows to full band shows, and as far as the venues that we play, we play everything from house concerts to festivals, so we kind of play it all. I was really lucky to be able to have been an artist on the Cayamo Cruise last February, which is a music cruise that leaves from Florida and it has pretty much every hero I’ve ever imagined on it like Darryl Scott, Patty Griffin, Lyle Lovett, Buddy Miller, Brandy Carlile, Indigo Girls, and on and on. That was pretty amazing, so that was one of my favorite show weeks of the year.

MR: Sarah, Someday, Someday is a fan-funded album which is becoming more popular for DIY artists. Can you go into the details?

SS: Yeah, I have a lot of singer-songwriter peers who I’ve noticed over the last couple of years have done fan-funded albums. It is a lot of work to put together a campaign, and a lot of trust that you’re putting into your fans to put yourself out there and say, “I need to raise this much money, can you help me do it?” At the same time, it became a really fun way for me to get my community and my fans involved for this album because they were involved before I even started recording. I came up with five or six different levels of sponsorship, each level was a different amount of money, and each came with different incentives–from certain numbers of signed copies of the album, all the way up to me flying wherever in the country to play a house concert for however many people you wanted to invite. So, I really liked the idea of involving fans, and there are a lot of websites out there that are kind of already set up to create a campaign to do such a thing. I had a lot of fun with it, I thought it was really great, and I was humbled by the turnout of people who showed up and said, “I want to help you make this album.”

MR: Personally, I think it’s really important for both artists and fans to recognize alternate ways of recording and releasing projects.

SS: I was talking to my producer, and he was saying that recording studios are going under by the dozens because there isn’t enough business. I think that’s because a lot of people are forced to make their own albums because to make a high quality studio album as an independent artist costs anywhere from ten to thirty grand easily. I was in Nashville a week ago talking to a girl who is a manager at a recording studio, and they don’t make an album for less than thirty-thousand dollars. Thirty-thousand dollars is a ton of money for someone who is getting paid in coffee to play coffee houses across America. It’s a really interesting dilemma we’re facing–how do we continue to make a good product and still have it be competitive. The old tradition was, you took out a big fat loan, recorded an album, and then you spent two years paying off that loan, so when you’re ready to record a new album, you have nothing. I think the fan-funded album is a great way to jumpstart the process and not fall so far behind.

MR: Everything is so cost prohibitive. Seriously, how does an artist make money now.

SS: That’s so true. I was reading an article about this local record store and they were just saying at the end of the day that digital music has ruined a lot of the industry because so many people copy or burn things, and they’re not buying physical albums like they used to. Although I’m getting paid to perform, where I really make my money is selling CDs, and the only place I really sell CDs is at live shows. I do sell physical CDs off my website, but in general, I think most people have turned over to this digital age of music, where they’re buying an album for ten bucks on iTunes, and the artist is seeing six or seven dollars of that, compared to the fifteen dollars they would have gotten from the sale of a physical version of it. I’m not against digital music at all, but it does raise an interesting question of how does an artist make money

MR: Nice. Now, with the new album, did you take a different artistic approach than you had with your previous albums? You said earlier that this feels like your first album, so in what ways do you listen to it now and feel that way?

SS: I think, for me, the songwriting is most important. When I listen to a piece of music, I want the song to hold its own weight and be able to stand on its own feet. So, I’m mostly concerned with the quality of the song without any production. I wanted every song on this album to be able to be played with just me and a guitar, or to be able to be played with a full band and still have it be a meaningful interaction. I felt like I did that, and I felt like I was true to that inspiration that the songs were asking for. We recorded this album as a live album, so we had about ten players–some who play with me regularly and some that have played with my on other albums–and we all got into this great, big studio called June Audio with our producer Scott Wiley. We literally just sat down with the songs and spent some time getting to know them, just playing them over and over, and we literally just kind of pressed the record. The caliber and the quality of the musicians that were there was at such a level that we could do that. I know that that’s not an option for some people, or even that some people would want that, but there’s something that feels really dreamy about “what you hear is what you get.” When you listen to my album, that actually happened right there in that moment. I think that’s how a lot of albums used to be recorded in the ’60s and ’70s, and there’s something about a live take that is really appealing to me. Not all of my albums have been like that, and I’m sure in the future they won’t always be like that. But for these songs, I think it really fit the bill.

MR: Would you go into the story behind “I’m Ready”?

SS: “I’m Ready” is just an anthem-y song that I wrote in response to a question from a friend who said, “Are you ready to step into your greatness?” The question kind of made me smile because it sounds a little bit like a hokey question, but I think there is a lot of truth in embracing whatever strength that we’ve been given as an artist and owning that. So, that was an answer to that.

MR: Another song I’d like to hear more about is “Calling Your Name.” You’re calling Elijah in this–would you explain the nuances of that?

SS: (laughs) Yeah, it’s funny because songwriting to me never feels super easy, it generally feels like a lot of work. But that song, I felt, was kind of handed to me–it happened really fast, it came all in one sitting, and I loved singing that song. It’s basically just a song from general humanity’s ability to be lonely, suffer, or have heartache. The first verse says, “Calling, calling, calling his name. I need a friend in a really bad way.” That kind of structure of that verse follows through the whole song to, “Calling a mother, calling a lover.” I feel like I am a really spiritual person, and I’ve always loved any sort of spiritual or Biblical references because even if people don’t believe it, they know the stories. I love the story of Elijah, and when they’re surrounded by the army and someone says to him, “We’re surrounded, we’re never going to escape,” he asked God to open his eyes, and he sees the whole mountainside is filled with chariots of fire. So, that was kind of the call of someone who needs a friend, and what better friend than to have someone who can show you you’re not alone, you know?

MR: Who is singing with you?

SS: That’s my really good friend Paul Jacobson, who sings that duet with me. I really love the idea of duets that aren’t just harmony on the choruses but the whole song. That holds true for this one, “Calling Your Name,” and also there’s another on the album called “Shadows Of A Song.” Paul Jacobson is an amazing songwriter, and he has a great band based out of Salt Lake. He is one of the best writers that I know of, and we co-write quite a bit. There are actually about three or four songs that I got started or got stuck on, and whether he added a lot or a little, he helped me co-write the songs on the album. I hope you guys will check him out because he’s really great.

MR: Continuing the “first album” theme, even the front cover looks like an “Introducing Sarah Sample” concept. Was that intentional?

SS: You know, I have a really talented friend named Ryan Tanner, and he not only plays and sings all over this new album, but he’s a band member of mine, a great songwriter in his own right, and a great film photographer and graphic designer. He’s designed all of my albums, and he took the photos for this album. There was something about that photo–he showed me about five different options for the cover–and I hadn’t really noticed that photo on its own, yet there was something that was just so intimate and revealing about it. It kind of just said, “Here I am.” So, I love the cover of this album, I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on it. I think it’s kind of a brave move to plaster your face on your cover that largely, but at the same time I loved that it was just saying, “Here I am.”

MR: It is a lovely picture of you.

SS: Oh, thank you.

MR: Of course. Another one of the songs that hit me on the album is “Don’t Bury Me.” Can you go into its storyline?

SS: That song took a while to complete, but it started when I was thinking about my grandfather. He was a farmer, he owned a cattle ranch and grew alfalfa, and he worked incredibly hard. I noticed, growing up, spending time in the Summers on this farm, that he never got a day off–there was never a day where he was like, “Well, someone else can do the work” or “Someone else can move the wheel line.” I saw this figure or character come into my head–someone who was a farmer, but it wasn’t the life that they had wanted. So, the premise of the song “Don’t Bury Me” is based on the thought of someone who is kind of tied to the land, but their heart really wants to be a fisherman or be on the sea. Also, I finished that song when I visited Great Britain this Summer. I was up in this area of Scotland called Galway that was right on the ocean. It was amazingly gorgeous, and I was sitting in my hotel room, looking out over this bay, and I literally just started weeping when I played this song because there was something so touching to me about the thought that our lives aren’t always what we want them to be or imagined them to be. The chorus of the song says, “When they lay me down in a box, please sail me out to sea. I’ve spent all my time being tied to this land, please don’t bury me.” This man knows that he can’t really escape whatever his life has led him to, but in the end, he wants at least to know that he’s not going to be forever in the ground, basically.

MR: Yet another touching song is “Texas.”

SS: My family on my father’s side is all from Texas, and my grandparents live in this little town called Ingram, which is kind of near Kerrville, where they hold the Kerrville Folk Festival. I spent my Summers there growing up, going to the Guadalupe River, and there was something so romantic about it, especially during the ages of being a young adult–falling for cowboys and two-stepping on the country swing dance floor. There was something that just felt a little bit like a dream. It wasn’t something that was anything like what I was used to–I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, and there wasn’t really any part of that there. There was something that was so charming about visiting Texas in the Summertime. There’s kind of a joke in the song about how my grandmother, who grew up in Longview, Texas, used to travel with her family in the Summers up to Colorado Springs because they didn’t have air conditioning and it just got way too hot to stay. There’s something in the chorus that says, “Texas in the Summertime, it’s the biggest secret that I know because everybody leaves Texas in the Summertime, leaving Lone Star all to my own.” Even though I didn’t grow up in Texas, it does feel like, when I would spend time there, that there was something about it–you know, first love and being able to experience Texas on a really intimate level. The song starts out, “The first kiss is the one you’ve waited for the longest.” I think a lot of my cousins and their siblings had their first kisses on the Guadalupe River.

MR: Sweet. Where is your tour heading?

SS: From October through December, I’ll be touring through Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, up to Chicago, and then I have a whole week of shows in Nebraska, and then I go to California. Then, in January, we head up to Oregon and Washington. Next Spring, it will probably head more East Coast. That’s kind of the news for now.

MR: Since you’re a recording vet now with four albums under your belt, what advice do you have for new artists?

SS: Hmm. Well, I think we live in a time and day, right now, where there are so many tools out there to help young artists and to help new artists make an album, make a show, build a website on their own, or a million things that really weren’t accessible maybe ten or fifteen years ago. So, I feel like, if you have an inclination to try being a songwriter or if you are a songwriter, there are a lot of things–social networking and such–that can help. I would just say to let it say something that is something sweet in your life. It is an art, and I think it should be valued and treated as such, so I would just say be true to that artist’s voice. Keep writing, keep playing, and always make your decisions from the standpoint of whether it’s bringing more joy into your life or not.

MR: Very Beautiful. As you know, we’re also going to broadcast this interview on Solar-Powered KRUU-FM. Got anything you want to add about good old solar power?

SS: I love it. (laughs) I really feel like I’ve seen a lot more people make an effort to be more environmentally conscious, and I think having solar-powered radio is a huge step in that direction. I applaud it.

MR Thank you. Currently, we’re the only solar-powered radio station in the Midwest, and what’s bizarre about that is that it seems like other places with even more extreme exposure to the sun should logically be running on it. So, would the protagonist of your song “Texas” want to use solar power? Then again, considering its oil industry history, that state probably would be the last state to come on board, all things considered.

SS: Maybe not. Maybe you should plug it to Austin because they’re a pretty forward-thinking group over there,

MR: Yeah, I have a feeling that once people start seeing their electric bills, or lack thereof, it will change a lot of people’s minds.

SS: Yeah, of course.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney