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Sarah Sample is a storyteller whose wanderlust brought her and her family to Sheridan just over two years ago.
“I have always loved folk music. I’ve always been drawn to the story tellers and the people’s music.”
Sarah loves the connection, the intimacy brought by folk tunes, by the stories that they tell. Her drive to write and create is a drive to connect, with herself and with those who will listen to her tales. We asked her the big question: why? What makes you play, write, sing, what is it?
“I’ve had different answers to that question at different stages in my life… I feel something when I play music that I don’t feel anywhere else… There’s just this magic that happens when you’re on stage and the audience is with you and you all go on this journey together.”
For Sarah, music has never really been about “hitting it big” or anything like that. She writes because she loves it, and sings because she loves it. She shared with us that music, for her, is almost an obligation.
“I don’t want to say that music isn’t a choice, because it is, but I also think that as long as I have clarity about what kind of music and environment makes me happy, then there is no fulfilling the showing up, it’s feeding me in a really important way.”
Sarah shared with us a story of the first day she spent in Sheridan, a day when the beauty of our spot hit her.
“I was hoping to find a place where I could feel like I belonged… I was on this dirt road, all by myself… I came around the corner, and there was this lone tree on this hillside, and a big stag sitting in the grass under the tree. I pulled over the car and got out… and I look all around me and saw tons of these red wing black birds flying… and I just started weeping. It was this profound moment where I felt like, ‘there’s room for you here.’”
She’s moved 35 times in her 35 years, from coast to coast and just about everywhere in between, constantly pursuing her own creativity and passion for stories, a passion to take others through what she’s experienced. One thing that Sample has decided is that she doesn’t think she will ever be famous. But she’s not really worried about that.
“I feel conclusively that I will continue making music. It gives me something that I can’t get anywhere else, and therefore it’s priceless”
Overall, Sarah Sample is in the game because playing makes her happy. The gift that she has to share her stories is one that gives back, to us and to her. The beauty is in the self-sufficiency, the independence.
“No one is showing you deadlines or telling you what songs to write, making you go out on the road in a rental car with your guitar to play to a room full of 50 people… You have no compensation and you keep showing up for it! Musicians I know keep showing up. Maybe that’s just the way we’re wired.”
We like the way you’re wired, Sarah, and there is definitely room for you here.
Check out Sarah’s tunes here on Soundcloud