LAUNCH:
And Surfacing came out just in time for
those shows? Was that a plan? Because I thought the album was scheduled
for release a long time ago.
SARAH:
I don't deal with deadlines very well. I set a deadline
of last year to finish the record and obviously it didn't get finished
then. It was rather unrealistic for me at the time, as I'd just come off
the road after two and a half years with Fumbling, and I
really needed to have some down time and reassess my life. I decided
instead to go right into the studio. I thought, "I have to start
writing!" It was terrible because I was denying myself the fact
that the last thing I wanted to do at the time was write music. I really
wanted to just have a life. So, you know, I finally realized that's what
I needed to do. I just stayed at home and tried to relax, and about six
months later, I started to write in earnest and I really enjoyed it
again. It was still very difficult to write, though. As far as
deadlines: deadlines are meant to be broken. And I just keep breaking
them. I'm happy the record came out in time for Lilith Fair, but that
was a total fluke because I certainly wasn't going to force it
out--that's the last reason in the world to push a record out before
it's ready--for the sake of a tour. There will be many tours. But I was
lucky that the timing of it worked out really well.
LAUNCH:
So are you saying you suffer writers' block?
SARAH:
Yeah! I get writers' block on almost every record. I
notice this perverse cycle reoccurring: I go out on the road for much
longer than I probably should and lose more of myself than I should, so
that when I go back, the process of songwriting for me is tearing down
all those walls. And there generally is a big writer's block in there
because I don't know who I am. So I'm trying to write, and I'm writing
from a place that isn't me, so I'm writing crap. I was for awhile--I was
writing horrible things. That's what I call writer's block: that place
when nothing good is coming out. That lasted for five or six months,
actually longer because I was suffering it on the road, as well.
Although I don't tend to be very good at writing while I'm on the road
because everything is moving way too quickly.
LAUNCH:
A lot of distractions?
SARAH:
Well, this record was definitely full of distractions. It
took longer than it would have--I did have the writers' block, and it
took me a long time to get settled back into myself. It was the hardest
record I've ever written because of all the [emotional] places I chose
to go to. And of course, it's very therapeutic for me to write.
LAUNCH:
It sounds like you had a hard time.
SARAH:
Like I said, this was the most difficult record to
make because there were a lot of distractions. One of them was that I
chose to elope with my drummer. We didn't tell anyone for two months, so
that definitely ate into recording time because I'm an air sign, an
Aquarius, and something like that--well, my feet were 10 feet off
the ground! I couldn't concentrate or anything. That ate two months out
of the schedule right there. And then the writers' block took a long
time.
LAUNCH:
How's marriage treating you?
SARAH:
I think being married has given me incredible strength.
Having that unconditional love and support made it easier to make this
record and to go into those places that aren't necessarily the good side
of you. I'd come off the road and had completely lost myself--I needed
to completely figure out who I was again. I had a lot of things going on
in my personal life that made me go, "Wow, this is a nasty pattern
I see going on and on...I have to break this," which involved some
therapy and stuff. But again, there were great lessons in there. I think
it was a lot easier having someone behind me saying, "I know who
you are. I love your good stuff, I love your bad stuff. So you do what
you have to do." It was great support.
LAUNCH:
How much of this album is about you? How
autobiographical are these songs?
SARAH:
Something that is different about this new record is
that it is probably the most personal and autobiographical record
yet. A lot of songs I've written in the past, if I felt they were
getting too personal, I would tend to go into characters--into third
person--but with this record, it's very much about me. I'm in that place
and I'm not pretending to be anything--and again, this is going back to
that process of tearing down all those walls that we build up to protect
ourselves. I had to tear them all away to find myself again. People will
often come up to me and ask, "What is that song about?"
because they are very personal songs--emotional songs--and people react
to them very strongly. For me, when I write a song, it's a private,
personal thing, and when I'm happy with it, I give it up to the public
and it becomes their song. It becomes whatever they get from it,
whatever empathy they can derive from it and that resonates in their
life. And people will say, "What is that song about to you?"
And my immediate retort is, "What is it about to you?" It
doesn't matter what it's about for me. It's about how it's helped you or
how it's affected you.
LAUNCH:
People--radio programmers, especially, really seem
to be affected by "Building A Mystery." Tell me about that
song.
SARAH:
"Building A Mystery" is a song I wrote with
my producer. He actually wrote most of the lyrics. It's interesting that
it's the first track on the record because it's all about walls--the
walls we create to protect ourselves and the facades we build up. When
we have insecurities, we try to create this interesting appearance to
make ourselves feel better about ourselves. The rest of the record is
completely the opposite of that, in the sense that it's about tearing
away all those walls and finding out what the real thing is, and
looking at all those dark places you don't really want to go. The track
has been received really, really well. It's amazing. I've never had the
"bang-out-everybody-jumps-on-the-single" right away
experience. "Possession" got a bit of radio airplay and then
it sort of petered out. Then it had a resurgence, almost like it was a
little more timely. Radio was a little more friendly towards women at
that point. Now, "Building A Mystery" is getting added
everywhere, which is fantastic. I love it. It's a fun song to sing. It's
a little more playful than a lot of other things.
LAUNCH:
It's a nice song.
SARAH:
"Building A Mystery" is kind of a departure
for me because it's very simple, very basic and straightahead. It's
obviously a pop song, and that's not something I'd ever done before, and
it wasn't a conscious maneuver, it just came out that way. It felt
really great to just be "bonehead" for awhile. Not that it's
bonehead, but it's really simple and I love that element.
LAUNCH:
Have you got a favorite song on the album?
SARAH:
"Angel" is another great song for me just
because of the honesty of it. I wrote it when I was reading an article
in Rolling Stone about heroin and all the people in the music
business who were O.D.-ing. It took me to that place where I was on the
road and feeling completely lost and messed up, and like, "Just
give me any distraction. Give me anything to get me out of this place
right now because I just can't stand being here." I totally
understood. I've never done heroin, but I totally understood what would
drive people to that distraction--to need that so much. But when I was
first writing it, I thought it was about them--even though I did
the first person thing--but that's the most beautiful thing about
songwriting: It's a very instinctual process and I don't really
understand what it's saying to me, and that song very quickly
revealed itself to be completely about me. "Building A
Mystery" is me. They're really very autobiographical songs. I'm not
trying to hide behind anything, not trying to put in a false sense of
hope. Songs are about wherever you are and whatever place you're in. You
should just be there--feel that--and don't deny it, which is definitely
a departure for me in songwriting.
LAUNCH:
Cheap therapy, huh?
SARAH:
It was hard work because I was going into [emotional]
places that were hard for me to look at as far as the therapeutic
process. Fumbling, on the other hand, was a very easy, joyful
record to make. I don't remember any weird things about it. This one was
just all sorts of hard, hard, hard work. But it's my favorite because I
went to those places and did all that hard work. It makes me love it all
the more.
LAUNCH:
Speaking of places, you live in Vancouver, not
necessarily a music industry hotbed. Why Vancouver?
SARAH:
I moved to Vancouver when I was 19 with the idea that
I would be there for six months to work on a record. I immediately fell
in love with it. It's so beautiful; it's got nature in all its glory:
beautiful rugged mountains, the ocean is right there...It's beautiful,
green, lush everything! It does rain a lot, and if you're there all
winter, it can get very, very depressing. But it's very beautiful. It's
certainly not a town where there's a lot of nightlife. It's much more of
an outdoorsy, sporty place. I need to live by the ocean. I've been to a
lot of cities and a lot of countries, and Vancouver has so many
fantastic elements. I live right in Vancouver, but it's almost like a
little country community. It has that small-town vibe. We actually
recorded all of Surfacing about an hour outside of Montreal in
the woods. I did most of Fumbling there as well.
LAUNCH:
This record seems to be a kind of breakthrough for
you. Is it strange to be getting all this attention, what with the
success of Lilith Fair and all?
SARAH:
I've heard myself referred to as a "quiet
superstar" and I don't quite know what that means. I've been very
lucky that my career has spanned 10 years, and it's been a nice slow
pace upward. I haven't become an overnight sensation where all of a
sudden I'm selling a million records on my first album which would be, I
think, very detrimental to me because I was way too young and naive to
have handled it well. So I'm very thankful for the pace that it's taken.
I'm not a media darling. I'm not on the cover of all these magazines. I
just quietly do my thing. People have been enjoying it for awhile and
it's slowly been gathering momentum.
LAUNCH:
Here's a random question. What makes you really
angry?
SARAH:
Other people's ignorance really pisses me off. Actually,
yeah, I'm not sure if it's ignorance or stupidity. Well,
"stupidity" is when you can't help it, "ignorance"
is when you choose not to understand something. That is perhaps the
single thing that frustrates me most about people.
LAUNCH:
I've got to ask the obligatory computer question.
How computer-savvy are you? Do you surf the web?
SARAH:
I'm very computer illiterate. I know how to get my
email and play solitaire and that's about it.
LAUNCH:
But you've produced a CD-ROM, right?
SARAH:
My manager really pushed the issue of this interactive
CD-ROM for Freedom Sessions.
I was on the road and I had no time to deal with it; I was like, "I
don't know anything about this, you just deal with it." I came home
from the tour and the people at the label had compiled all this
information and put it on a CD-ROM. It was amazing. It looked beautiful.
It was really fun to see that computers can do that. It was a real
eye-opener for me. I broke down a year ago and bought a computer, and
now I have a PowerBook, and I take it with me to get my emails. When I
was working on the record, that was pretty much my only connection to
the outside world, especially with the Lilith stuff. Lots of emails.
LAUNCH:
What's the next year hold in store for you?
SARAH:
The new massive thing is obviously Lilith Fair. Then
my band is going to do a full-fledged North American tour after that
which will take us up to Christmas. I figure I'll probably be on the
road for about nine months, and maybe I'll stop at that point to
reassess. I might do some Lilith dates next year. I'd like to see the
festival have longevity and go for a number of years. Then we'll
see...maybe I'll get pregnant. Who knows?
