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Left of Me, Sally's 2002 recording, brought her national exposure via a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered — but after three and a half years of living and recording in Los Angeles, she concluded that she needed to make a break for a fresh start and reconnect with her own muse and soul.
And so it was that she ultimately found herself starting anew in Austin, Texas — no slouch of a music town itself, albeit one with an organic, honest vibe that seemed light years removed from either L.A. or NY. “There’s a lot less hype here,” she says, “and a lot less riding on a visual stimulus. But Austin is its own force to be reckoned with, which I don’t think people recognize until they get here and start to try and work here. Austin is like a bootcamp for songwriters, and I just totally put myself through it when I got to town. I came to Austin to kind of start over, to learn how to really, sincerely believe in what I’m doing for the first time in my life. Now I feel like everything I did before I started writing and living here was just kind of an experiment."
And where Sally is at right now is in the middle of writing and recording the best songs of her life, aiming to finish up a new record sometime early next year. The songs she’s finished so far reveal a beautiful evolution. They also possess a seamless fusion between the naked honesty of her first record, Roughly Forgiven (1999 recorded in Fort Worth, Texas) and the edgy pulse of Left of Me, largely due to her beloved, vintage Dr. Groove beat machine and her guitar of choice, a black Telecaster. “I kind of tricked the beats and loops out myself during pre-production,” she says proudly. “They’ve got a little hint of hip-hop and rock. And the Telecaster has a sloppy, thick sound that I love.” But she’s equally excited about the talented friends she’s met in Austin who are helping her to flesh out and enhance her sound: namely, arranger/pianist Stephen Barber and Screen Door Music, an instrumental/production trio comprised of keyboard player Bukka Allen, cellist Brian Standefer and guitarist Rob Gjersoe.
But any great record starts with great songs, and on that end, Sally more than carries her own weight. She exorcises the ghosts of the past with a trio of the album’s most emotionally compelling contenders whose titles alone speak volumes: “Everyone is Faded,” “Final Punches” and “Past the Point of Sad.” She also celebrates her newfound sense of self, place and independence in the assertive “Southern Suburbian".
“Now,” she continues, “I feel like a different voice is coming.”
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