When I was younger - in elementary school - my parents are both teachers, so we moved around a lot. For the most part we always lived, before we settled south of Dallas, we always lived in the outskirts of city suburbs, kind of in these weird, desolate neighborhoods. Very brown and flat settings. I love Texas, I love the openness.
Sarah JaffeUsually when I'm in the van or if there's downtime, I'll just mess around in Garage Band and work out melodies or ideas I've had in my head. There was a period where I creatively plateaued and wasn't writing at all. But I have been creatively a bit more inspired lately - it has everything to do with moving and being in motion.
Sarah JaffeThere's a part of me, and I'm sure every single musician that writes for themselves has this: there's a layer of precious that you have to shed. I'm constantly trying to let go of, "Well, what about this, this would be cool." Some of that is needed, but a lot of it is total BS.
Sarah JaffeI had gotten to know the music scene there, and just fell in love with it. I've lived there a little over four years now. There's a charm to Denton. The musicians in Denton are all very talented, but they're also all very accessible and very community-oriented.
Sarah JaffeI was really kind of miserable with myself personally and all of the things that you can be creatively, until someone said - and I don't know what about it made it click at this specific time - but they said, "You're not 18 anymore, and you're not writing songs in your old bedroom. It's work. You should get up every day and set a perimeter of time and start compartmentalizing your life."
Sarah JaffeLately I haven't been able to write for the guitar - it'll usually start out with a melody on the bass, and I'll layer vocals. I just can't really physically hear the guitar anymore, so I'll just go into GarageBand and play around with the keys. I'll sit on a melody or some lyrics for a really long time and just play with it.
Sarah JaffeI've done four records now, and your idea of what it's going to be for that record is never what it ends up being, so there's cynicism in my outlook but there's also some positive outlook in it, like, "I can't really control anything outside of what it is that I do, so I'm going to do my very best and put my best foot forward in everything that I do." The music and whatever else comes outside of that, if something great comes out of it, awesome, if not, I'm going to make another record and another one after that. That's really all I can do.
Sarah Jaffe