Q & A with Sarah Teitel
So now that you know who dominated the last five years, it’s time to meet the artist who’ll dominate the next five years. Meet Toronto’s own Sarah Teitel, a vivacious, intelligent, multi-talented young woman who’s warm and soft-spoken on the outside but passionate and determined on the inside. I met her after a talent showcase in western Toronto and I was hooked from the minute I first heard her voice, that rare feeling only a handful of artists will ever give you in your entire lifetime. What struck me initially was the passion that is evoked from her singing, but what captivated me further was her smart, creative poetry that’s sprinkled throughout her lyrics. Nowhere is this better evidenced than on “Belly Of The Rock”- on the charts at #92- which is about New York but also comes across as a scathing rebuke of excess. She may be a relative newcomer to the music scene herself, but judging by her abilities, she’s got the most promise. Below is the complete interview I had with her at the Engine Gallery Distillery in Toronto’s Distillery District where Sarah now works.
(Originally Recorded May
4, 2007)
DG: Let’s get this show on the road!
Sarah Teitel:
All right.
DG: As I understand you picked up music rather recently and
it’s worked out rather well for you. What inspired you to pick up the guitar
and start writing songs?
ST: I had always wrote poems and stories, actually my first
songs I wrote were for part of a musical. I went to school for acting in North
Carolina for acting and we had one teacher who was a very charismatic Turkish
woman, they called her the “Turkish Meryl Streep” and she was teaching us a
class and one of the featured text was Sophocles’ Oedipus. To impress
this teacher I was so taken by this teacher that I decided I would write a
musical adaptation of Oedipus. It was titled Oedipus! with an
exclamation mark and it was a spoof on the play and on the school and our
class. Those were the first songs I wrote and then I decided to pick up the
guitar and write songs that had more relevance to my own life. Then I moved
into a house where one of my neighbours was a drummer and a sound engineer and
he saw me carrying my guitar case one day and he said, “why don’t you play me a
song?” So I did, I had written a couple of songs at that point. He said, “I
want to record you”, so he did and once we started working together, we knew we
had something together.
DG: So how long ago was this?
ST: A little over three years ago.
DG: Did you write the musical from anyone’s perspective?
ST: It wasn’t from anyone’s perspective. It was a satire.
DG: There’s a lot of angles you could cover with Oedipus.
ST: For sure. It was very short, it was only half an hour
long so the story had to move along very quickly. There was a lot of people
running in different directions.
DG: I wonder if it had anything to do with Oedipus’
blindness…
ST: (laughs) Yeah.
DG: Who would you say was your biggest musical influence?
ST: Definitely Leonard Cohen, without a doubt. All through my childhood I’ve always loved him- I’ve loved his lyrics, his melodies, his poetry, I read his novels. He’s a fabulous poet, a poet of words and a poet of music. His music is as poetic as his lyrics; And he also likes waltzes. The minor key waltz is one of my favourite songs.
DG: Have you ever met him?
ST: No, but I would love to. Although when he got caught in a scandal when he got ripped off by his manager when he was at a Buddhist monastery, I made a “Save Leonard” T-Shirt.
DG: You don’t have it
here, do you?
ST: No, it’s on my web site- there’s a picture of me in it.
DG: What are your other influences?
ST: Joni Mitchell I
like a lot, Carly Simon, Willie Nelson…I’m really into Emmylou Harris right
now…a lot of classical musicians, when I was growing up I was really into
classical music. When I was in high school I listened to a lot of Baroque-
Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven…he’s not Baroque but I listened to him a lot then as
well.
DG: You have a wide array of talents- singing, acting, art, fashion sense…do you see yourself working on one specific area or will you continue to work on everything?
ST: I think of myself
as primarily a writer, songwriting is my favourite kind of writing, poetry as
well, so I would say first and foremost I’m a songwriter; but lately I’ve been
feeling the urge to act again. I saw a friend of mine in a Tennessee Williams
play and when I see people act in really great shows it makes me want to do it.
Tonight I’m doing a recital of Shakespeare for some people; and as far as the
fashion goes, I see it as more of a hobby- I’m not as passionate about it as I
am about writing music.
DG: So do you want to
write a musical one day?
ST: Absolutely, I want to write a musical. I want to write one once I’m done with my album- the next thing I want to do is write a musical.
DG: Do you know what
it’s going to be on yet?
ST: I don’t know, but I
imagine some classic epic- I want to adapt some of those myths and old stories.
DG: The Odyssey,
maybe?
ST: Maybe The
Odyssey, yeah.
DG: One of your songs
was about- or at least I think it was about- The Odyssey.
ST: Yeah, my song
“Ithaca”.
DG: Using the Roman
name, Ulysses.
ST: It is, when I was
younger I was obsessed with Greek myth and the young me would be very disappointed
in me of today for using the Roman name. I was a stickler for details and I
just thought the Greek names were better- they came up with them and the Romans
stole the stories. As I child I would have insisted on using Odysseus instead
of Ulysses (laughs).
DG: I guess as you grow
older you shake off the things that held you back as a child.
ST: (laughs)
That’s right, plus “Ulysses” worked better in the meter of the song.
DG: Poetic license.
ST: Exactly.
DG: I’m not sure what
the Latin name is for Ithaca.
ST: I think it’s the
same.
DG: I wouldn’t know. (both
laugh)
ST: I don’t know.
DG: So are we going to see a Sarah Teitel Empire one day with all your talents?
ST: (enthusiastically)
I certainly hope so.
DG: (approvingly) Good
answer!
Now, I want to get to “Belly Of The Rock”, which is on the chart. Describe the songwriting process.
ST: That song I wrote
after I was in New York City, where my uncle is a real estate developer. He
took me to a site he was working on up in Harlem and he said “to build this
building we had to blow a hole out the rock of the island”; and it had never
occurred to me that Manhattan was a rock. I had really strong feelings about
New York, especially Manhattan, I loved going around. I felt so excited and
turned on by the sights but also so overwhelmed. That’s what I was trying to
get across in that song- the glut of being alive, how it had everything you
could possibly want and it’s all on this piece of stone (laughs).
DG: Could the song also
cover the greater theme of excess, because that’s thing I picked up the most
on.
ST: I hope so. When I write, my songs are about something specific or triggered by something specific- but I think if it’s a good song it should be about more than just “what it’s about” and I’m glad it resonates with you in a larger way because that’s the sign of a good song- so yes, it can also be about excess in general.
DG: So what about New
York made you think about excess as a theme for the song?
ST: It’s so rich and
packed with so many types of people and things; and it’s so small- you have so
many people in such a tiny area. I was inspired to write in New York where a
lot of the allusions of the song comes from- “the ten ton Christmas tree”- but
I feel you could get that same sensation in Toronto or any big city that
there’s just an overwhelming amount of choice that it can be a “non-choice”-
there’s a million varieties of the same thing and it’s very dazzling but in New
York I do notice it where you go to the corner store where there’s a hundred
kinds of Snapple. (laughs)
DG: There’s one hundred
kinds of Snapple?
ST: In Manhattan they
do!
DG: Could it also be a
little bit about the contrast between the different areas of Manhattan? Because
I imagine Harlem is more run down than the rest of Manhattan.
ST: It is, definitely,
although now everything’s getting a little more diversified down there. I guess
it’s similar to what’s going on in Toronto- I mean it’s not like Harlem is a
wealthy neighbourhood but it seems like all of Manhattan will be for the rich.
DG: Out of my price range.
ST: (chuckles)
Yeah, yeah. That also exists- the divide between the rich and the poor and you
do see that because of the small size of that island, the extremes between
poverty and wealth.
DG: It’s very visible in that area of New York.
ST: Definitely, I mean
Harlem touches the Upper East and West Sides, which are very wealthy
neighbourhoods; but you walk ten blocks and you’re in the ghetto.
DG: Don’t think you could get the same effect going from Bloor to Jane & Finch.
ST: They’re not- Toronto’s a bit more spread out
I guess, but you could get the same effect going from Rosedale to Jamestown-
those two neighbourhoods are pretty close together, although I think in
Canadian cities there’s a bit more mingling, although in New York it gets mixed
up too. That’s one of the nice things about Toronto- how mixed up the
neighbourhoods are.
DG: Can that also lead
to problems, you think?
ST: Maybe, but I think
the division is worse. I think the segregation is worse than the mixing up. I
don’t know a lot about it, but that’s just my sense.
DG: I see your side. It
seems to be working out better in Toronto than it is in New York.
ST: Yeah, yeah,
although they’ve been cracking down in New York too; but it seems to be more
dangerous in New York where things are segregated according to class or race,
whereas when people mix up more I notice more people…(thinks, pauses)
DG:…are working together.
ST: Yeah, yeah.
DG: I do want to get to- I hope I get the lyrics right- there was one that stuck out in my head: I think it’s “Saints and Moors bashing heads at the battle of the block?” Did I get it right?
ST: It’s “Saints and the Boors”
DG: (acknowledges)
“Saints and Boors”.
ST: Yeah, yeah.
DG: What’s a boor? [Editor’s
note: I had come across the Boers in reading history, but I never knew how to
pronounce the name]
ST: There’s two kinds-
they were the fighters in the war in South Africa [Editor’s Note: the
1899-1900 and 1902 Boer Wars won by the British that re-conquered breakaway
Boer Republics in South Africa]-
DG: (realizes)
Oh yeah!
ST: -those weren’t the
boors I meant in the song. I meant the “heathens”, the brutes that want to
fight for the sake of fighting.
DG: So what were you
trying to say in that specific lyric?
ST: I think I wanted to have the idea a two-sided battle…to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure what I mean by “the Saints and the Boors”- I mean I know what Saints are and I know what Boors are, I don’t want to invent something that’s not there, it seems like two groups that might be fighting each other. The Saints are paragons of goodness and the Boors…not all of them but some of them can be slobs…just this idea that everything is this battle.
DG: More in the
context-
ST: -the Boor-
DG:-yeah, of two groups
fighting each other that are completely different or can be completely
different. They’re fighting for space I guess?
ST: Definitely the idea of a turf war, the “battle of the
block”.
DG: Finally, your upcoming album: how far along are you and what can we expect on it?
ST: I’m about halfway done and it’s going to be a
full-length album called “On The Wing”. It’ll be all original material. It’s
happier than my last album [Stories and Music for the Mildly Suicidal],
more hopeful I think.
DG: I got that sense.
ST: Yeah, more up-tempo I think. The reason why I called it
“On The Wing” is that I noticed after I had written most of the songs on it
that there were a lot of images of flight and ascension and I think it’s fairly
reflective of where I am in my life. I feel like I’m beaming towards a
different spot and gone up a bit (laughs)- I can see a bit more of the
ground. I think that’s just it- getting older and having more experience.
DG: Thank you for your time.
ST: You’re welcome.
The
Top 100: No. 60-41
Q&A with Sarah Teitel
-DG