IF YOU LIVE IN LOS ANGELES and are free on Saturday and would like to assist with the shoot, please hit me up! We are in need of a couple extra pairs of hands, mostly for lugging stuff around, but also for helping capture some behind-the-scenes photos and whatever else might come up during the day. We are also looking for a guy to be an extra in the video, so now’s your chance to launch your acting career! At the very least, you’ll get a free lunch out of it…

Make sure you’re in the email club so I can keep in touch even when I’m too busy to post updates online! There’s a lot of big stuff coming up and I want to make sure you’re along for the ride!

Love,
Sarah

“The Florida Sessions” are now available for a “name your price” donation on Bandcamp! I’m pretty happy with the turnout. Stream the entire thing right now: CLICK HERE.

The Florida Sessions
by Gardening, Not Architecture

1. The Passing of a Year
2. Bird’s-Eye View
3. Cities
4. My First Love
5. The Blank Canvas
6. The Most Important Goal
7. Birdsong
8. Rules
9. Careful Descent
10. Sunday Traditions
11. Change
12. Tiny Explosions
13. Almost Over
14. Summers of Our Youth

Enjoy! ♥

Tonight! Tune in to “Parenthood” on NBC to hear my song “Far & Wide” during the show! BYOPIZZA

“It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”



Signing off from The Florida Sessions,

Today:

- Got the email from NBC confirming their use of my song “Far & Wide” in the season finale of “Parenthood,” which airs next week

- My song “Play It Cool” was played in an episode of the TV show “Jane By Design” on ABC Family

- Got a handwritten letter from a G,NA fan… in the mailbox! Actual fan mail

- Found out that my friend suggested me to Kevin Seconds for a series of comps he might be putting out

And, I got to snuggle on the couch with THIS guy:

I’m pretty much the luckiest girl in the world.

Love,
Sarah (& Raggy)

Don’t get me wrong: Change within ourselves is possible — it can be done — but the sad fact is that it rarely is.

Imagine, though, what the world – and our relationships with people – would be like if everyone spent as much time focusing on changing themselves for the better, as they do on everything they actually spend time focusing on, each day?

I’d get up late, walk and feed my dog, then walk/bike/drive to my favorite Mexican restaurant, a local place in Burbank called Santa Fe Cafe owned by two sisters in their 40s. (They have since relocated to Northridge.) They made the absolute best breakfast burrito I have ever had (the “Gringo Breakfast Burrito”), and their homemade chips and guacamole were ridiculous. I got the same thing every time I went there, for almost three years. It got to the point that as soon as I walked in the door, they were already working on my order. I brought everyone I knew to that restaurant, and every band who stayed on my floors during those years got dragged there to try my favorite meal.

The restaurant was in a mini strip mall in a parking lot, and there was a Starbucks across the way. While I waited for my food, I would walk over to Starbucks and order a vente iced coffee. This Starbucks was near all the film studios in Burbank, so it was great people watching. Once I saw Molly Shannon and almost turned fan-girl, but stopped myself.

By the time I got back to Santa Fe Cafe with my coffee, my food was done. The sisters would thank me (by name), and I’d head back home. Once there, I’d get settled on the couch and put in a DVD, and spend the afternoon watching a movie, hanging out with my dog, relaxing, and eating the best combination of flavors in the world: breakfast burrito + coffee.

I miss those days.

The wind picked up around five o’clock, and by six the lightning and thunder had begun for the night. It still hasn’t stopped. Oh, how I love thunderstorms!

I decided to stick with the same “technoish” vibe for today’s song, but added a little bit of what it actually sounded like here in the house where I was recording it:

I’ve been re-reading “Velocities: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1992″ by Stephen Dobyns, one of my favorite poets, whom I accidentally stumbled upon in my college library while trying to find a poet to write a report about for one of my classes, many moons ago. Every time I read his stuff, it makes me want to write again:

All winter you felt nothing. As your body
continued its necessary tasks, your sister,
the snow, remained keeper of your heart.
Now it’s the first warm day of spring.
You walk out to the pasture. There’s much mud,
and still snow on the north side by the pines.
You take this poem from your pocket.
Raising your voice, you read it aloud to the sky.
Soon birds being to come, first the dark ones:
birds of anger, birds of despair. Then you see
the wren of friendship, the gray dove of hope;
then others of patience, joy and love’s own red bird.
As you read, they begin to fill the air above you,
twisting and diving in great circles around you;
covering the poem with the sound of their cries
until poem and song become the same sound,
blending together under the warm March sun.
At last you emerge from the lethargy of winter.
Your heart is a great tree beginning to bud.
In narrowing spirals, careful descent, the birds
you have summoned arrive to make their nests.

“Song For Making the Birds Come”
by Stephen Dobyns
From Heat Death (1980)

The last few songs were pretty intense, emotionally, and took a lot out of me. I never really thought of writing songs or being creative as something that could burn calories or drain my energy, until I recorded “Saboteur” last fall. If you were a Kickstarter Backer, then you read my daily blog posts during that process and I’m sure you picked up on how exhausting the process was! Three weeks straight in the studio, working day-in and day-out, in total concentration.

But it’s not the the hours or the performing that’s the most tiring — it’s the actual effort it takes to think about the songs and feel the emotions that the songs evoke. Sad songs are particularly draining, if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing (which I am). Sad music hits me in the center of my heart and squeezes it like a boa constrictor.

So anyway, these past few songs (actually almost all of the songs) I’ve written and recorded (meaning: listened to over and over for hours each night) have taken a lot out of me and today I just couldn’t bear the thought of trying to write another song that might force me to think about the meaning of life or the existence of true love or outer space or something.

I decided that I would set a few rules for myself to make today’s session a little bit more fun, and take the pressure off. Rules have always helped me in songwriting, to not get too caught up in finite details or spend too much time over-thinking things. They also help me branch out creatively and try new things. It would be like someone giving me a blank canvas and a bunch of random paints and tools and telling me to paint a specific picture. For tonight’s song, I gave myself a two-hour time limit to write, record, and mix the song (usually it’s taken me anywhere from three to seven hours). I decided I would start with the beat rather than a piano or guitar part, and I told myself that I had to go with whatever the first thing was that I played. So the first part you hear in this song was the very first thing that my hand did when it touched the keyboard.

The bottom line is: Sometimes you just need some techno music to help you break out of a mood.