https://indiebandguru.com/interview-sarah-herrera/
IBG Interview – 7 Questions With… Sarah Herrera
There will always be something special about an artist that isn’t afraid to truly speak their mind. In the punk scene this is even more amazing. Our new friend Sarah Herrera has her own set of morals and ideals and is never afraid to show it. She has made some big waves in the scene with her style and decisions.
We had a chance to chat with the NYC punk‑rock bassist and singer‑songwriter to get a little deeper into her mind and message. Enjoy the interview here:
How would you describe your sound (without any boring genre descriptions)?
Oh wow, I’ve actually never been asked that before. I started off as hardcore punk, that was what I was exposed to when I was 10 or 11 and going down to the Lower East Side in NYC. You know, sets with two minute songs, distortion up the ass, 50 people in the club max, broken bones and people punching each other in the face, blood and beer and vomit everywhere. That was a great scene. My first band, vomitsemen, was pretty active in that scene, although we weren’t all that great, we were high school kids. So that was my sound. But everyone evolves, and Miguel (Estrada, drums) and I started getting into third-wave ska, and we started to veer off into ska-punk. There’s nothing new under the sun, it’s not like we invented a new genre, but I think we were pretty faithful to the Orange County bands of the 90’s, kind of taking them a step further. Jimmy (Cullen, guitar) is actually pretty good at the chicken scratch guitar sound, and the addition of Carl Horneaux was huge in solidifying our sound.
Which artists have had the biggest influence on Sarah Herrera?
Small underground punk bands that nobody other than people in the NYC scene has ever heard of. These were the bands that drew me in. They were never going to get signed to Elektra Records or Sony or whatever, but that was kind of the point – they did it for the love of what they were doing. So, off of the top of my head, Cuntzilla and Intestine Boy out the Bronx, Fucknado was I believe out of Rockaway Beach. Rectalstick, Motherfucksmith out of Brooklyn, Prostate Operator was from Yonkers I think. These were early influences.
The other main influence was Sha Na Na, which I was exposed to as a kid and was very influential to me as a singer. My Dad had old VHS tapes of the variety show. Johnny Cortado could go high on Remember Then, and then Lenny could go low on Mr. Bassman, and Bowzer could go even lower. Bowzer is actually a personal hero of mine, and we were going to collaborate with him at some point – it fell through because of scheduling conflicts, we just couldn’t make it work, but that would have been a dream come true.
What is it that drives you to create music?
Royalties! Money! Me me me me more more more mine mine mine!
No, just kidding. It’s freedom of expression. Like most punk musicians, I work a hump job during the day. I answer help desk tickets that come in, call the client, tell him to read the fucking manual and hang up. I get to do that 25-30 times a day. There’s no freedom of expression, other than me yelling at clients who can’t follow instructions. In the studio, I can be myself. On stage, I can really be myself. Drunk, profane, and half-naked. If the club owner says look guys, please don’t play “Song For My Niece” or “Is It Really A Stereotype If It’s Actually True?”, we make sure to play them both, and stretch them out with extra verses. If some guy starts giving me shit when I’m on stage, I’ll point him out and ask the people around him to beat the crap out of him, and they generally do, although if boxcutters come out, I usually ask them to chill. Not that I mind a little slicing and dicing, but we won’t get to play at that venue again. So, yeah, freedom of expression, and the fans. We’re a dopey small time band, but the fans we do have are pretty hardcore, and you have to respect your fans. When we did the song “I Like Your Afro”, for instance, a fan had reached out and asked if he could provide a voice sample as an intro. We were like hell yeah, and it’s on the song, with him credited as an additional lyricist. When I got drunk and posted my phone number on my Facebook page and then didn’t realize it for like 5 days, I got a lot of phone calls, which was kinda cool (well, most of them were cool). Of course, I also got a lot of calls with heavy Indian accents informing me that my credit card had just been used to purchase 10 new iPhones and did I want to confirm this purchase. So I had to learn some pretty abusive words to say in Hindi.
How does a song come together for you? What is your songwriting process?
I’m pretty open with my history with substance abuse, and how I deal with it. I have a simple philosophy that has really helped: complete denial. I am not sure I have written more than 5 songs (out of maybe 150) while not high, drunk, tripping or nodding off. And if you look at the lyrics to songs like “A Collect Call From Nowhere”, “What’s Yours Is Mine” or “I Drink and Drive Because I Want to Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road”, you’re going to be scratching your head, saying either this person is severely disturbed, or needs to detox, like yesterday. So the answer to that is probably both, but my creative process usually takes the form of a small clear packet with God knows what in it, usually some really stepped on shit that I didn’t ask for, being handed to me backstage or in an alley.
So yeah, the lyrics shape the song, at least for me. I’m also pretty open about my struggles with dyslexia, so I almost always structure the song backwards. So if it’s a standard metered song, it goes outro, verse, bridge, chorus, solo, verse, chorus, verse, verse, instead of the other way around. Now we do re-order the elements of song, people have written that I record songs backwards and our producer just flips them in the studio, which is pretty funny. Actually, it may have been me that said that. Other than that, we try to keep it as organic as possible. It’s not like Jimmy lays down his tracks and I do mine and Miguel does the drums separately. We get in the studio and pull up the board and plug in and just do it over and over until it’s right. I don’t accept anything less than perfection, if that means 100 takes, then that’s what it is. If we get two minutes through a song and Jimmy flubs a note, we yell profanity at him, and Miguel does a 1-2-3-4 countoff and we try again
We know you pulled all your music from streaming services the same day your latest album hit Spotify. Tell us about the thought process behind that decision?
I have to be a little oblique here, because as of this morning we’re being sued over that. Me, I don’t care, you can have my crappy futon, but Miguel has a good job and Jimmy’s got a family. Our label dropped us about two hours after I did that. That was a fun phone call, they were screaming so loudly the phone was vibrating in my hands. I recorded the phone call, it was pretty funny. Let’s just say that my artistic integrity is worth more than pennies per thousand listens from streaming services. And for my friends in other bands, and bands I have previously been in (not vomitsemen or Death By A Thousand Cunts – you won’t be hearing them on Spotify anytime soon, haha), this is unsustainable. Our CD’s are sold at cost at our shows. 8 dollars, which is how much we pay to have them made up. Actually, if you calculate in the shipping, we’re probably taking a 45 cent haircut on each. We’re not in it for the money. You want me to play the Super Bowl halftime show for a million dollars, I’m in, but I’m going to write a song about bestiality.
So, this was a gesture of solidarity with my fellow musicians. Is it going to amount to much? No, it isn’t. Do I sleep better at night? I do. I get two hours of very peaceful sleep each and every night.
How can other musicians and fans join in your crusade against the current state of the music industry?
I won’t tell you not to stream music. The toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s not going back in. Besides, art is a public good, it benefits everyone, and should be available for free. But free to the listener. Not so some Spotify executive can have a solid gold cockring on his nightstand.
You want to make a difference, come out and support the artists in person. Buy a CD, buy a t-shirt, stick a few singles down my panties. You’ll never get the raw energy of a show from listening to a studio track on some streaming service. You’ll never get to tell your friends that you went on stage once and got punched in the nuts by Sarah Herrera.
Give us a look at the future for Sarah Herrara and The Tommy Lasorda Experience.
Oh, the band is done. Finished. Finito. You don’t pull down that much music and keep going, nobody will ever, ever, EVER sign us. The future for me? I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.
Well it sure sounds like it will be an interesting ride. We are here for it!