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August 1, 1999
Sarah Dougher
Blending punk, folk and soul Sarah Dougher hits paydirt with Day One
By Gerry Belsha
Sarah Dougher's fine rich alto voice is something wholly unique in music today. Combining bits and pieces of Joni Mitchell's intonations; Billy Bragg's polemic earnestness and the Roches' historical foundation, Dougher's Day One (K Records) is refreshing in it's complete celebration of communal individualism. Dougher, who also is in Cadallaca and the Crabs, shines as a solo artist touching on a wide range of topics including addictions, the commodification of everyday life, history and love. Dougher's music and lyrics are articulate and complex but at the same time simple and to the point. Dougher, who has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, works for a public education program and has taught at the university level, has drawn from her vast experiences to create a portrait of what it means to be living in the land of capitalism as a woman in 1999. Check This Out! had the opportunity to speak with her recently about Day One, Indie fanatics and the joys of songwriting.
Check This Out!: The first thing that strikes me with your new CD is the versatility in your vocals. They are definitely much more varied in style than your vocals with Cadallaca. Is that something that has come easy to you, this versatility, or is it something you have had to work at?
Sarah Dougher: I that it's something that I learned how to do slowly as a singer. In Cadallaca there is kind of one register of singing. Kind of sassy and loud. But when I sing normally, in my normal voice, actually my solo record is how I sing.
Sarah Dougher CTO: So you are more comfortable with that style than with the singing you do in Cadallaca?
SD: Not more comfortable necessarily, but it definitely is not like I am affecting moods or anything .I like that. In Cadallaca I am definitely affecting a mood. My other stuff is a little bit more honest.
CTO: What about your arrangements? Is that something that over the course of time you have been able to get more at ease with creating arrangements?
SD: I have to say that I tried to learn how to use a four-track last summer. A friend lent me a four-track and I set it all up, got all ready to go and I just couldn't really work it very well. I couldn't make it do what I needed it to do. That was partially due to my ineptitude and my pride, i.e. not wanting to ask anybody how to work it (laughs). So I ended up sort of making arrangements for the songs of my record more in my head. I would hear different parts in my head and once I got to start to practice with the other instrumentalists I would say 'OK, let's try this.' So all the arrangements were worked out live. Then there was some degree of editing in the mixing process. It was definitely trial and error. I had never done it before. I would love to have an orchestra (laughs). It made me greedy for instrumentation.
CTO: It also must have been different because you had final say in everything for the first time, I assume, in quite awhile. How was that? You seem to be a person that would be easy to work with.
SD: I was encouraged by many friends to really take a strong charge because I think that I am, in general, a very cooperative, collaborative style of person. So being the one who was in super charge is not something that I necessarily do very well naturally. But I am really happy that I did and happy with the way it turned out. It was immensely satisfying.
CTO: How long did it take you to record the album.?
SD: Four days.
CTO: Looking back now, four months from when it was completely, How do you feel about how it turned out?
SD: I'm very happy and glad about it. Especially because now people are being able to hear it. I am very excited when people engage with me about the songs. I am really enjoying it.
CTO: It must have been pretty frustrating in the lag time between finishing it and now releasing it.
SD: I was just thinking about that today because something that I did with this record that I had never done with anything else I had ever done before is try to keep it as private as possible until it was totally finish. Some of my closer friends I would talk to about certain things about it, but I kept it very close.
CTO: A lot of your songs deal with power and the ability to have control over your life, involving various things including addiction. Why do you think people have such a hard time realizing that the power is theirs? Your song 'Everywhere West" deals with a hidden history. I don't think a lot of people have knowledge of their own history as a community. Do you think a lot of this has to do with our educational system?
www.kpunk.comSD: Definitely, There are a couple of things you are talking about here. First of all dealing with something like the topic of addiction is about power but it is not as much about the dynamic of the cultural power versus individual but it's more about internal struggle. But other related themes that I talk about are things having more to do with resisting the cultural education of a consumerist model. Like the song about pornography("Secret Porn Collector"), is totally not even about sex. It is totally about a consumerist fetish. I mean It is about sex too, but it is about the relationship between personal desire and how that desire gets filled. It is about just always wanting a new experience and how do people live a happy life when all they are doing is trying to find a new experience.
CTO: How do you fit songwriting, or any of your other artistic endeavors into your schedule these days.
SD: I fit it in whenever I can. Songwriting for me can sometimes take hours and hours and can sometimes take five minutes. I think about songs a lot when I am not hanging out with my guitar.
CTO: Another subject on your album is junkie romance and how artists seem to fall into that tunnel a lot. Several of your songs try to de-romanticize the whole junkie culture.
SD: One thing that I think is true about romantic junkie culture is that besides supermodels doing heroin, the problems are discussed in a very male centered way. It is all about guys and their problems. I really feel like there are not very many creative ways of talking about heroin addiction from the perspective of a woman junkie. So that was one thing I wanted to talk about. What are the issues that are specific to women when it comes to this junkie lifestyle.
CTO: "Drunk #1" deals with friendships, addictions and relationships.
SD: It is no very cool to engage junkies on their habit. It is a lot easier to ignore it because it is another person's problem. It is really hard to figure out what to do if you find out one of your friends is a junkie. You think, oh my god, they're lost or something. When I really don't think that is the most constructive way of dealing with it. It is very complex and I think that every situation is different but I think that being satisfied with hearing over and over about the kind of wreckage of heroin addiction is just not so exciting or useful in creating a culture, especially a youth culture that rejects it. And I am not 'hugs not drugs.' I'm not like that, but I just think that there has to be other ways of talking about it besides "I'm going to meet my man." It's just boring.
CTO: A lot of your songs make references to traveling, not only in distance but also in experiences.
SD: That is because I lived in Texas for awhile and I traveled back and forth to Portland. I wonder if traveling gives people the opportunity to do a lot of reflection and I think that is one reason.
CTO: How was it in Texas, musically, compared to the Northwest band community? How do they compare?
SD: It is really different. I feel like the music community in the northwest is somewhat homogenized, not entirely, but I think in Austin there are a lot of different types of music that happen all the time. And there are audiences for all those types of music. It's more widespread, more common for people to go have live music as there normal going out experience. It's not like just going to a show, special deal. But in terms of the system and infrastructure, communities of musicians, I think there is a strong group of women in Austin who have been playing together for years and were not really punk rockers. A really different style of women's music going on there than in the northwest. It was refreshing for me because people were playing different styles of music not just punk rock.
CTO: Who inspired you to play music?
SD: Team Dresch was very influential for me in terms of playing music. They as people encouraged me a lot when I moved back to Portland from Texas. As a band they were very powerful performers and very exciting.
CTO: How did you decide to cover "Take it to the Limit."
SD: I sang it at Karaoke once and was really overwhelmed at what a beautiful song it is and how sad the lyrics are. I came home and tried to figure it out on the piano but I figured I had to change it a lot to make it my own song.
CTO: What do you enjoy most about all the different types of activities in your life?
SD: I like my job because it lets me do mainstream cultural work. It fulfills an ideal I have of wanting to make education available to as many people as want it. With teaching I really like being in a classroom with younger people, and as younger people I mean freshman, 18, 19 year olds. To really take them seriously and to teach them how to take themselves seriously as thinkers, as people who can express their thoughts with grace and clarity. I love to do that. I love to teach. But playing music is my favorite thing in my life.
CTO: Would you like to increase the amount of time you spend on music?
SD: Yes I wish I could. If I could make my living playing music I would love it. It would mean I would do all those other things in a different way. But if I could just sit around and write songs all day I would love it.
CTO: Do you find it frustrating dealing with the mentality that a lot of the followers and fans of independent bands seem to have? Fans of like say, Sleater-Kinney, seem to try to distance themselves from a band just because they had their video played on MTV twice, at 2 a.m. Fans seem to have a big backlash against Indie bands when they get any type of popularity. And here you are talking about just trying to make a living at playing music. Do you find yourself at odds with that type of thinking and those types of fans?
SD: When people criticize musicians for being able to make a living playing music they really are not taking on the full consequences of that criticism. People who have a really rigid ideology of what constitutes independent music, or mainstream versus underground music, fanatics in any form are unwise. Indie fanatics, mainstream fanatics. A person might say to me, "I don't understand why you put your music out on K when you could put your music out on some label that could make you some money," not that anyone has said that to me (laughs). That would be just as fanatical as "Your video is on MTV, you sell out," Well, fuck that, you know, I want as many people to hear my music as possible. The way that the economic system of the music industry works right now is fucked up and that is the thing you should criticize, not bands or artists who are trying to figure out how to negotiate it in a real way, and being straightforward about the choices they are making. Trying not to be exploited and also trying not to exploit.
CTO: How do you picture your next album being different from this one?
SD: I have already started thinking about this. I think I would collaborate with more different people. Jon (Reuter, who played guitar on much of Day One) and I have already started writing some songs together. I think I would work some with Heather Dunn. It's really exciting to collaborate with other people. Ideally I would like to do that.
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