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by Barbara Bales To become a professional musician and initially find gigs, Sarah began uploading her music to mp3. "It was the only way at the time to promote yourself for free," she says. "When you have three pennies in your pockets, that means something, so I got us an mp3 page. Then I just told everyone I have ever known about it. Before you know, it is 200,000 people I don't know and I am celebrating with some red wine and chocolate. I also work all the time. Like many people in society today, I have the work virus. I have to work to stay alive. It is just convenient that the thing I work at all the time is music." In fact, Sarah's debut CD, Cocooned, received well over 100,000 plays on mp3; likewise, the release yielded five No.1 hits on mp3.com's alternative charts. To find gigs, "always meet people, always have an open mind, always think creatively about situations that were not creative before you got there," she imparts. "It works. I met a lot of bands at mp3.com that hooked us up along the way. Then I got a copy of Musicians Guide to Touring and a copy of the Pollstar Guide and just made calls until I was ready to puke. Usually when you are ready to yak, you have done a good job and should go have a cigar. "A Perfect Dream is a departure from Cocooned, explains Sarah, in that "it is based on entirely different experiences and I was in an entirely different frame of mind. I was looking for outside sources this time. There are enough crying-about-that-boy-I-love-you-don't-leave songs for a million lifetimes. I decided I wanted something more real, but real like a dream, if that makes sense. "Then I spoke to a million geniuses known by the police department as vagrants, and they had a lot to say but no method of communication. So I listened and then said it for them. I like to think I did an okay job of capturing them, but who knows. They are such greater artists than I am - the ones we should be listening to...." Sarah describes the first time she listens back to a new song as "agony, absolute agony. Torture. Trauma. Never good enough. I am one of those girls that pulls her hair out when she can't think of the right answer. After I am done and there are knots in my hair and static all over, then it is okay for people to hear it ...sometimes." Sarah's lyrics read as if they were first written as complete poems, which she says springs from her
love of poetry and "a love of writing and reading in general." Certain songs have hit a collective nerve in her fans. "People love different songs for different reasons," she says. "I get a lot of people who write four-page letters about how I wrote a song 'for them.' One girl wrote me a small diary about how 'Red Paper Bag' from Cocooned was about an abortion she had when she was 12. I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night. I still read everything I get, eventually. When I feel horrible, those are things that make me feel better."
"I get an enormous satisfaction from giving music to people," she says. "A teacher I knew once said, 'You make them laugh, they got their money's worth, but if you make them cry, you got 'em for life.' He was right. When someone opens up to you with no words, there is no embarrassment. It is just truth. And you can talk without talking. It is the best thing in the world. I just want to keep the wheel turning." Asked to define art and the responsibilities of being an artist, she remarks, "Art is everything and everything is art. My responsibility is to make people feel something. It doesn't matter what it is. It is so easy to be dead and it is difficult to be alive; I want to help keep people alive and waking and remembering what is important. I hope one day to make a larger difference in our world. Every human being has an obligation to help lead our civilization to a place where the acquisition of wealth is not the main goal, but where the main goal is peace and a better future for humankind. "Things are f* * * ed up right now. People are dying and unhappy and getting ready to nuke each other. It is so sad and useless. I can't even tell you how difficult it is for me to get up in the morning. But these are things dreams are made of. The only time things get hopeless is when the dreamers go to sleep. That is what A Perfect Dream is about." Contact: SergeEnt@aol.com Phone: 770-850-9560 |
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“I
come from a metalhead brother and a Carole King mother," begins
NYC singer/songwriter/pianist Sarah Fimm, who says that her father
was similar to the poet Leonard Cohen, except that Dad had more
of a business head. "So I like to think I turned out okay."
Sarah performs with her band throughout New York City, on Long Island,
as well as out of state. The dulcet tones of her voice, coupled
with titillating lyrics, have drawn comparisons to Tori Amos and
Bjork. She has said of her own music that it is as though "Tori
Amos slept with Trent Reznor and had a young kind of mellow child."
Her sophomore album, A Perfect Dream,
is getting stellar reviews, and she has been referred to as the
music industry's dark angel.
In
fact, "Be Like Water" (from A
Perfect Dream) has had a lifesaving effect on a particular
fan, according to Sarah. "One girl was bipolar in a very serious
way. She wrote about how she could not stop cutting herself until
she heard 'Be Like Water.' After she heard it she
retreated to Hong Kong to receive medicinal healing for her problem.
That definitely touched a nerve. It was the best letter I ever got.
Because she had an emotion that for the first time in years was
not a negative one. It forced her to change the way she feels about
life. There is no greater reward than to touch someone like that.
She still writes me sometimes. I just sent her a Valentine at her
rehab institute.
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