By Lee Valentine Smith – After 20-plus years of incredible music-making, Boston-based Sarah Borges has found her niche for creating brilliant slice-of-life vignettes within the confines of passionately evocative songwriting.
Since the singer-songwriter debuted with the acclaimed Silver City in 2005, the Massachusetts-born musician has issued a cache of intimate and often-rocking compositions. On her latest, the disturbing presence of a global pandemic inspired and ultimately fueled her craft.
For Together Alone, released earlier this year via Blue Corn Music, Borges was locked down and focused on songwriting, with her longtime collaborator Eric “Roscoe” Ambel at the helm from his Cowboy Technical Services Recording Rig studio in Brooklyn.
Aided by a stellar team, helmed by Bottle Rockets bassist Keith Voegele, Ambel assembled the tracks in his “MacGyver Method” of recording, referencing the inventive ’80s TV series sleuth. Singing into her iPhone in her closet as a repurposed vocal isolation booth, Borges sent her tracks to Ambel’s home recording setup. From there, he determined what else was needed and who else should play on it.
In addition to Voegele, Ambel’s longtime Yayhoos bandmate (and current Lynyrd Skynyrd bassist) Keith Christopher joined in the fun, along with at least three drummers. The assembled multitude worked on one song at a time until the project was complete.
The result she says, is a ‘really good representation of who I am, both musically and personally.’
Recently, we caught up with the gregarious Borges by phone from her home studio.
Sarah, I really dig the latest album. I actually think it’s your best one yet. It’s available on CD obviously, but are you planning a vinyl edition of it as well?
Thank you! I feel like I’m finally able to just be myself on this one. And yes, as for vinyl, I’m sure you’ve heard about the delays with vinyl production, so our ETA will be fall. But that’s sort of good because it gives us another occasion to celebrate and do a little tour behind the vinyl release. We’re also going to go to Europe in November and that’s a real big thing over there as well. So we’re looking forward to having it in time for that tour.
Besides the great cover photo by Liz Linder on the front, another thing I like about the album package are the very informative liner notes from producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel.
We call the way we got this record together, the MacGyver method. I couldn’t quite explain it so he wrote a really great letter just to sort of be included in the press release or in case we needed it. It was so helpful in understanding how the record came to be that we just went ahead and included it in the package. I think having to find a new way to do things during the pandemic was a big thing for a lot of people.
This record is very much a product of the pandemic.
It is. It was my lifeline during that lockdown period. As I was writing the songs at first, it just made me feel good. Then the songs sort of started to take on the character of the record. Some of them being about the experience we were going through because it was really emotional for so many reasons. I definitely think the times found their way into the songs.
Did the lockdown change your songwriting technique?
Yeah, I think it did because usually, I’ll write a song individually and then bring it to the band and we’ll kind of flesh it out or what we need to do. But in this instance, I wrote them all at home and then did some co-writing from afar but I really didn’t do a huge amount of self-examination afterward because I didn’t feel so insecure. People were recording their parts on these songs from another state. So it wasn’t like they were going to laugh at me. I felt a little more free to just be honest.
Let’s talk about the title track a little bit. It really moved me emotionally. I’m old and jaded and it’s hard for a record to really move me anymore. But that one really did.
Well thank you. That was the last one I wrote for the record. I knew I wanted to call it Together Alone because it was a title that I felt described the situation we all found ourselves in. But also it was a lyric from a song from the record previous that I had, from a song called “House On A Hill,” but I just liked phrase.
How did it finally gel into the version on the album?
I knew I needed a title track for the record. So I went out to Springfield, Illinois to visit my boyfriend, Keith Voegele who’s on the record too. He was in the Bottle Rockets. We sort of started playing it on the guitar a little bit. Then he was like, ‘Do you want me to help you write some words?’ I said, ‘Go away, give me half an hour.’ And it came out really quick and easy but I left that one till the very end. I think because I wanted to see what the character of the rest of the songs were like. So I could sum it up most efficiently I guess.
The songs really work as a complete album project. It’s not just a batch of songs thrown together. Together Alone needs to be actively listened to as an entire collection that explores a definite theme.
Right, well what we did, you don’t usually get to do. Usually when you go into the studio you do the tracks in a couple of chunks. But for this one, we did one song at a time from start to finish. So I think we kind of got a running start that way because we knew where we were at with each song and what it sounded like. It was always a good jumping off point for the next one. Whereas, recording the usual way you don’t really know what you’ve got until you’re done.
It turned out to be a seamless project even though everyone was scattered and isolated.
Roscoe is so smart. He assembled the pieces into the way it needed to be. Over the years, he’s just become sort of a mentor to me because I ask his opinion about a lot of things. I know I can trust his take on whatever it is.
It’s been quite a productive relationship.
It’s been, let’s see, holy cow, probably more than six or seven years now we’ve been working together. We’ve done two full records and an EP and we’re hitting the road with this record this summer and he’ll be in the touring band too.
In interviews you’ve been very candid about your sobriety. Has being sober changed your songwriting or performing techniques?
Yeah. I think I got to a point with alcohol where my body was just so wrecked from it that I didn’t have the ability to tune into that inner creative voice anymore, or to just get quiet enough in my mind and my heart to think about being creative. It just deadened my soul but if people can be joyful drinkers and it’s not wrecking them, then more power to ‘em, but that’s not how my body works.
Interesting. Because as you know, many people use alcohol and such as a bit of a crutch.
That’s definitely right. For the live show, I was used to having three or four beers in me when I would get up there to play. Then you have a couple beers while you’re playing. You do feel more free right out of the gate, but you can also get there sober. You just have to remember that everybody wants you to have a good time. Everybody’s there to support you. So you’re already winning when you first get out there. So my advice is always to just relax. I feel so much of addiction is based on insecurity and pain that people try to hide. I’m trying to just be open about everything as a sort of antidote to that.
In all the live clips I’ve seen, you always look as if you’re having an absolute blast – whether you’re sober or not.
You know, we really do enjoy playing. We talk about that a lot after the show, the people are so nice and they’ll come up and say, ‘That was great.’ So really, we have the best job. My job is to go out and play music every night for nice people. And they give me money for doing it! That’s amazing to me. So if you can be grateful for all of it from the beginning, you can just have fun with it. It really is so much fun to play music for people.
Right. I’ve done it a few times and you just can’t beat the rush of that moment.
No, you really can’t! I feel like too, the alchemy of whoever’s in the room that night is a big part of it. Sometimes you’ll get a crowd and they’re small, but mighty – and it’s a great show. But sometimes you have a crowd that’s really big and they suck. So if there’s a great crowd in the room and everyone’s really into it and stuff, you can totally vibe off of that. It makes it so much better.
The beauty of live performance is every show is different. That’s the great thing about it because every audience is different. Every moment is different. That’s why live shows are so great.
It’s totally true. You never know what’s going to happen. And I can almost specifically remember now that I’m not drunk so many individual shows what the room looked like, what we played specific moments from the show, they’re all unique. When we first started going out again after the lockdown, I has almost forgotten how to do it! What you’re supposed to say and everything. That early reentry was so hard.
After such a long downtime, how did it feel to be back out there?
(Laughs) I had watched a whole lot of videos of people playing their first show back out, right? So I was trying to make a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, I’m so excited to see you guys!’ But I said it so many times! It was so nice to be around people again, I just couldn’t help it.Together Alone is available from most music retailers through Blue Corn Music. Visit www.bluecornmusic.com for more information.
