Just Plain Sarah

That’s so sweet, and I’m so glad you managed to find/remember me!

A little backstory: for those of you who don’t know, I spent most of my teenage years attempting to write music, play instruments, and slowly record my first collection of songs. I finally self-released my first (and so far, only) album, Child of Tuesday, for free in 2005; I mostly distributed it online, but I also had 100 copies printed. Its songs were written mostly as a response to my father’s death in 2002, so as you might expect, it’s pretty damn morbid and angsty. But the process was incredibly therapeutic, and taught me a lot about my own determination. Plus, I even got a decent review on the coveted website CollectedSounds.com, so that was cool too!

When I saw this question on my dash and went looking for the remnants of my music that remain online, I realized that I put Child of Tuesday online for the first time on January 4, 2005—tomorrow will be its sixth anniversary. So to celebrate, I uploaded some of my old music to a way more awesome hosting site, and also gave the cover art a slight update. Although I originally released it under my legal name, I’ve “reissued” it under the name Just Plain Sarah. I did this for two reasons: 1) I don’t want my students to ever do a Google search and find evidence of the most vulnerable period of my life, and 2) there are several other active female singer-songwriters with my given name, so this helps set my stuff apart from them. I also changed the name of “my label” (aka my desk) from Tigress Records to Fermata Records, because Alana Davis named her company Tigress Records, EVEN THOUGH I WAS FIRST AND ANY GOOGLE SEARCH IN 2005 COULD CONFIRM THAT. Ahem. Another rant, another day. 

Normally, I’d feel kind of reluctant to post this and risk people who only know me now see a glimpse of me from back then. Not that there is anything to be ashamed of, although I still cringe at my frequently off-key singing and clumsy mixing. But I’m really trying to make a go at this whole “self-love” thing, and part of that is learning how to acknowledge and appreciate my past accomplishments (modestly, of course), instead of shrugging them off and moving onto the next thing. And I think reclaiming my inner tortured, teenage musician is a good way to start. It might also be a good way to figure out who I am as an adult musician. I do still write music, after all, I just find recording tedious and frustrating most of the time.

So, to finally answer the question, you can find my first CD and a couple of b-sides here at justplainsarah.bandcamp.com. I’ll link to it in my blog header for future reference, and in a couple of minutes I’ll post of picture of the CD art. :o)  Any other questions?