Sara Melson Interview

SM: It's not really my record release party, it's just a show, and I'm one of like 5 different bands playing so I didn't want it to be like "Oh, record release!" It's more just like "Come see me play," and then my record comes out six days later, you know? So, I didn't really bill it as my record release but that seems to be what people are treating it as such so I'm like "hey, have at it, come on down!" (Laughing) I'm excited to play because my band sounds amazing. At rehearsal last nights the sounds were just incredible.

SM: I have a new member who kind of alternates between cello and piano, and he's incredible. We've only been playing for like 5 months or 6 months.

SM: The bass player and the guitar player and the drummer have played with me for like a year and a half and they recorded all those songs with me too.

S: That sounds good. Now, I heard you were both self-trained and a classically taught musician, is that right?

SM: Yes I am. I'm classically trained on the piano and for guitar I taught myself completely. In fact I only recently have had a few guitar lessons. (laughing) Yeah.

S: So, being that you're both classically trained and self taught how has that affected your ideas of the creation of music?

S: Being that you're classically trained and self taught has that affected the way in which you go about your craft, composing music and coming up with lyrics?

SM: Oh! Oh yeah! That's an excellent question, and actually it's amazing how complex of an answer that is and I want to try to explain it. Basically, it's like you grow up being sort of forced to practice something, I loved the piano and after a while my parents didn't have to force me to practice but it was definitely a very disciplined way of learning an instrument. It was definitely out of the book reading music, reading the notes, it was never improvisational, it was never very creative other than how you interpret the pieces.

SM: And so when I went to learn guitar was when I really started to write because for the first time I felt like I could pick up an instrument - even though I could barely play it - and accompany my own ideas. Which is funny because you think "well duh, you're incredible at piano and your technique is such that you could totally write your own song" but for some reason I was kind of handicapped, mentally; I had a mental block, literally about writing on the piano. It was when I started to write on guitar, ironically, that I went back to the piano and realized "Wait a second, I'm so much better at the piano than I am with the guitar." (Both laughing) "Why aren't I writing on the piano?" And I had to teach myself, like a child how to just play simple chords to accompany with my songs. It was fascinating, even to me, you know?

SM: It was like "Wow, this is a trip! I mean, I'm really having to retool my brain," you know?

S: Let's see. So, let me see, so just for our viewers, who are you listening to now?

SM: I love Wilco(?), I'm pretty much crazy about them. You know, Shelby Lynn's(?) got a great new record out, Half Power(?)'s a great new record out. I love the Shins(?). I'm trying to think. I mean, I love The White Stripes. I still listen to all my favorite old standbys. I was just listening to T-Rex, Old Day(?), Dillon(?), and you know, that never changes.

S: Speaking of that, I was reading online that you met up with one of your idols, Jody Mitchell(?) in a public bathroom in LA?

SM: That was really great! We ended up staying in there for a while, and having a relatively standard conversation, you know? It wasn't like long, but it was more than just a little exchange. We kind of hung out for, I would say about 5 minutes, which is with Jody Mitchell(?) is amazing. I was like "this is so cool, she's so awesome!" I don't know, I would love to cross paths again, I'm sure she would have absolutely no memory of that! Of course, it was burned indelibly into my brain!

S: Of course! Was she how you envisioned her? Was she how you envisioned her before you met her?

SM: Well, kind of. I mean, she's older than when you look at the album covers when you're a kid and so that's a different person she is now, but the same. Basically the same.

S: Yeah. Me and my family really like Jody Mitchell(?) and really respect her as an artist and as I was getting a look at your material, and your lyrics, I really like the way in which you write your lyrics. They're very simplistic but the rawness of their meaning is just so immensely powerful.

S: I really, really enjoyed all the songs. I just, actually like two days, I friended you on Facebook.

S: Yeah, I really enjoy your music, especially The Raise(?) because like now a days, the lyrics tend to be overly complicated or poorly written and it's just about promoting the music and getting a product out there.

S: So, it's just refreshing to see someone to actually take time to write music!

SM: No, I know definitely. I mean, I really appreciate that. That means a lot to me, it really does.

S: So, do you have any specific way you go about writing lyrics, or a song perhaps?

SM: You know, it varies from song to song. Some of my songs have literally just poured out in their completeness. It's really trippy when that happens. That's one of the most exciting things about writing, is when you're just kind of like a channel and that it's just a burst of song, you know? But a lot of times it's different. A lot of times it comes together over, sometimes a period of a long time. Hard Tracks(?) is an example, where I have scribbled, I forget where I was. I think I was adding up my receipts for taxes or something. The original lyrics are written on the outside of a manilla file folder, so I quickly scribbled them down, and it was just the chorus, just "you're going to be hard pressed to find" just that, "find a woman like me." It was just that idea, that nugget if you will, that kind of was the kernel of the song and that was the concept at first for the whole song. Later, much later, I think I found that file literally I saw it while looking for a receipt or something, saw the outside of the manilla folder, and was like "Oh my god, yeah! That could be a bad-ass song!" Then I sat down and I wrote. First I wrote the rest of the lyrics. Then, this is an interesting story: At that time I was a substitute teacher and I was teaching in different schools. This was before I got my job as a music teacher, cause I taught music in a French school for a year and a half.

SM: Yeah, to little kids. Before that, for about a year, I was kind of floating being a substitute teacher in all these different schools.

SM: Yeah, it was great. I was teaching music at this school, fancy school in Beverly Hills and the kids were at recess and I was left in this really nice music room with a grand piano, and nothing to do for half an hour. So I sat down, and I had my notebook, the one with the Hard Pressed(?) lyrics in it, and from the outside of the file folder to a first grade classroom in Beverly Hills, and the song was finished.

SM: That's an example of how a lot of my songs come into being. It's just strange Frankenstein circumstances or situations where circumstances meet in this magical way and all the sudden the song is finished. It's really cool when that happens.

SM: Well, my parents were really big into traveling and on a budget, it's not like we had a lot of money but they would just save up everything to be able to take me and my brother on these crazy adventures.

SM: We have pictures of me at 2 years old in a backpack on my dad's back going through Europe, things like that. So, since I was very little I've been all over. I mean, I lived in Israel for a year and a half. My dad worked in political science there, and while we were there we went to Egypt, and we went through the Sinai Desert with camels; slept in tents with Beduins(?). Yeah, I've had some amazing adventures, you know? I've been to Japan, and I took an acoustic tour of Japan.

SM: Oh, no, I mean, not until I release a record there. But, I mean, I'd love to! It was so wonderful. I love the Japanese people.

S: That's good. Speaking of touring Japan, are you planning on touring anywhere in the US any time soon?

SM: Oh, yes, absolutely. We're working on that obviously and trying to find the right situation.

SM: So, when you accept a tour you want to make sure that it's going to be the right thing. But I'm playing around LA, for those of, well, your audience doesn't live here but I'm playing here the next couple months and then I'm going to go out and I'm sure our paths will cross down the line. In the mean time, people can just go online! I mean, we have the internet, and you know people can go to MySpace, go to YouTube, and go to iTunes because my record's going to be out this Fall on iTunes and Amazon.com and all that, really soon. I think maybe even before the release date. Obviously at least by the release date.

S: I'm definitely going to have to hook up with that, because I'm definitely going to be buying that.

SM: Cool! Well, really, it's very grass roots so I definitely need people like you to just, you know, it's all about viral spreading the word, you know? And basically that's how things get heard.

S: You were saying that you're an avid promoter of the musical evolution of the different mediums like MySpace and Facebook? Because some people tend to think that it might lead to a certain cultural and musical monotony instead of the grass roots type of thing.

S: I mean that they think that it takes away. There was the whole issue with everyone was upset with iTunes because you could buy a song and it was possibly destroying the art form of the album?

SM: Oh! Right, right, right, right, right. Weal, yeah. I personally just think that's true in the sense that when you grow up holding a record (or even a CD, but back in the day when it was records), you'd sit there and hold this beautiful piece of art and just stare at the pictures and read the lyrics and experience this thing in such a different way. You know? But I personally am a huge fan of iTunes, and especially because it's so Democratic. Anything you want to find, you can find it! It's out there, and you can look it up. It really is globalization at its finest. It's one of the great things that has come out of the internet and out of unifying people. I think there's a real strength in being able to just buy the tracks you want to hear. I mean, frankly I'm sure I'm not alone, but you hear one great song, you run out and spend fifteen bucks on the record, and everything else is filler!

SM: And that's why I made a point of weeding out, of all the songs I'd written, taking my 12 best songs and then putting a 13th bonus track on there because I wanted every single song to be an experience that people would love. I didn't want any of the songs to be just around the single or whatever. I think iTunes is cool in the way that you get to narrow down what the songs are that you want. So I'm totally into it and I think it's great for the music industry. There's going to be way more stuff like that popping up.

SM: I got to cover "Everybody's Talking(?)" which is like, my favorite song. So I downloaded that and I downloaded just a few other Nelson songs that I wanted to hear. So, I had a whole Nelson download. You know, I download stuff all the time, tons of time. I think probably not as much as most people because I already have so much music. I have so many things that I need to experience already, you know? I'm a huge iTunes fan. I love it.

S: If you had to download one of your songs off from iTunes, which would it be?

SM: People are really going to disagree about that, and that's what I love is that people have different favorite songs off the record. I mean You are Coming (?) obviously was on Grey's Anatomy and people love that song but "Never Been Hurt(?)" is one that people for some reason they really respond to that one. They really respond to it. I would say it's interesting, because I don't even know which song on my record is the single. (both laughing) I guess that's a good thing. Yeah. What do you think?

S: It's just the emotion that seems to pour out of it, and it's so simple and yet so complex at the same time. It's just good music. It makes you want to listen to it. That's my take on it; there doesn't need to be a whole dealer promotion on it like more pop, like for Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera, there doesn't need to be any promotion because the music will promote itself.

SM: That's what I'm hoping, you know? I'm hoping that real music fans are going to find this record, and tell their friends, and it's just going to go from there. That's what I'm hoping. I mean, let's put it this way: Part of the reason I made the record is that I had to make these songs come to life, and I just felt so good knowing that it's done. It just makes me feel so happy, you know?

SM: It was a wonderful place to grow up as a little kid. It was safe, you could play on the sidewalk, and it was a wonderful world to live in as a little kid. You know?

SM: Oh, my gosh! Yes. That was the problem though, is by the time, if you have any kind of restless soul, or you're an artist, or you want to make something of yourself, by the time you hit puberty, you by this time are kind of getting wind that there's a lot else out there, you know?

SM: And that's when it becomes a problem. So I just wasn't one of those people that could stay in Indiana, and I just had to get out. It was not a moment too soon. That being said, I'm very fond of it! I love going back to visit! I don't want anyone from Indiana to take offense to reading that. It's growing up in a small town anywhere that's like that.

SM: It's not a function of the state, it's a function of growing up in a small town and having big dreams, you know?

SM: I had all these songs that I was writing, and I was learning guitar at the time and didn't play very well. I mean, I played piano but really just learning guitar. Just basically kind of decided I was going to do acting, and I did actually do a bunch of acting. It's like, it's funny but if you go to imdb.com, have you heard of that website?

SM: It's I M as in Mary, David as in David, B as in boy, dot com, imdb. It's the Internet Movie Database. They list everyone's acting credits. It's pretty funny, all the stuff that I've done. So I had this, basically, this acting career and then it sort of just ended up falling by the wayside, and my songs kind of came together, and I had a band, and you know.

SM: Yeah! I was on Frasier, and Wonder Years, and Beverly Hills 90210; all these random shows, you know? That was then, this is now. Different life times for sure. Interesting.

S: I was also reading a quote that said that as an artist that you stated on record you "Capture a unique moment in time?" What do you think your new album "Dirty Mind" captures?

SM: It's interesting. I mean, now when I play the songs with my band, I feel like "Oh, god! Why don't we just record this rehearsal and that'll be the record! Oh god! Let's just do it over!" Every time you work on something it just becomes better and better. Now, what you have to deal with as an artist is the reality that what's on the recording is on the recording. You have to be okay with that. You have to be like "That was valid, because that was that day, with those people playing, and that was at the point when I had written the song a month before and we were just getting used to the song. It sounds beautiful for what it is and now it sounds, in my mind, it sounds better. For someone else it might not. It's so subjective, you know?

S: Does it tend to come out that each time you play the song it kind of holds a different meaning?

SM: It does. I also feel like, when you write a song, you're in an emotional moment that you're trying to articulate, you're trying to express in words or music. Later, let's say a year later, or a year and a half, or two, or 10 or 15 years later like James Taylor, you know? How do you recapture the connection with that emotional moment in your live performance for your fans to have that same experience? You know what I mean?

SM: Exactly. It's allowing yourself the permission to go back to how you felt when you wrote that song in that moment. It's being able to tap into that, and access that truth, because if you don't, people can smell it a mile away, and it's not going to sound real.

SM: If you're not connecting, every time, not 90% but 100% of the time, if you're not connecting with that material, it won't come across and so I think one of the biggest challenges is remembering what that song means to you personally, and transmitting that feeling to others. I think that's really important at the center.

S: What kind of message do you think that your album is going to send out to the audience? Do you have a message that you think your songs are going to tell?

SM: I do, I really do! It's interesting because it's kind of dovetailing with the election. I feel like no matter who we end up with I feel like the country and the world as a whole needs a message of hope, as trite and clichéd as that sounds. We need hope. We need to look at the positive. There's just so much negative out there. That's kind of like "Nuclear Sun(?)" and the message is "The time is now." You know? It starts out "Maybe the damage has been done." It's just kind of like people throwing up there hands in apathy and going "we can't do anything, we can't fix anything," and the song is supposed to be uplifting saying "yes, we can. The ride has stopped, and it won't last, and it's already in the past. But we're only here once. We only go around once. This is our time, and it's our chance. And then we die."

SM: Really! That's how it works! We can either choose to be apathetic and throw up our hands and flick a cigarette into the street because the damage has been done or we can inspire each other and ourselves and uplift each other and ourselves and believe against all odds. It's like Martin Luther King. It's like, "Yeah, I have a dream." And that is my dream, that things can change and in any small way I can I want my voice to help be a part of the solution, and not the pollution.

S: Well I definitely think as unique and special as your voice and your music tend to be that I don't think that'll be a problem. I think your message will be widely heard by all that hear.

S: One little tidbit for our readers, is there anything special or unique that no one else knows about that you might be able to tell us?

SM: Sure! I don't know if this has come out in any other interviews but, a really big part of my life that I hope to be able to share with people as a whole is my yoga. I've been doing yoga for 13 years every day. I teach yoga. It's a huge, huge, huge part of my life.

S: Was it just something you stumbled into, or was something happening in your life and it just came up as something that might calm you down?

SM: Yeah, I mean basically it was a need to get centered and find out who I was and stop the shattering noises that there's just so much stress. At the time I was going through a really bad breakup and just really needed something to, you know, center me. My friend brought me to a yoga class and I've never looked back since. (both laugh) Never.

SM: Actually, it was out in LA. Yeah, and it was one of my first experiences here, and I was like "Okay, this is so California." But I hoped that it would work, and it really means so much to me. It really really does.

S: That seems to be a really popular form of exercise and meditation among celebrities in Hollywood now a days.

SM: Yeah. It's popular for a reason. That's why I say for people reading this who never thought they would like it or be challenged by it or want to try it, I would urge them to investigate it with the right teacher, because a bad teacher can really turn you off with it. With the right teacher there are really ways to find out things about yourself physically, mentally, and even emotionally. You just have no idea. It starts to affect your whole life in such a positive way.

S: It definitely wasn't what I expected when I went to one of my classes because I was sore for at least 2 and a half weeks after that class! (laughs)

SM: I'll tell you , it's true! People are like "oh, that doesn't look like much."

SM: That's so funny. I actually have to take my two dogs out right now. Are you close to the end?

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