Sarah Kervin on Her Seven Year Hiatus & Renaissance of Self
In marriage, the seven year itch is the theory that one gets restless at the seven year mark. For Sarah Kervin, her seven year itch was a restlessness to get back on stage.
The NYC-based singer, songwriter, and pianist known for her soulful vocals, and ebullient spirit hadn’t performed live since taking a hiatus back in 2017. Rather than involving any type of rest, Kervin’s hiatus included getting married, earning a second master’s degree, and starting a new career as a speech pathologist.
Making a Harry Potter reference, she jokes, “If I could just be Hermione Granger with a time turner, and double live every single day, I think I could have done music, and gotten a second degree, and second career going at the same time.”
With that desire in mind, it’s no surprise the stage still called to her, and on March 13th she finally answered that call, gathering her band, and performing back to back sets at Rockwood Music Hall.
Her first set was all original music, and her second set was covers. As she performed, all the nights she hadn’t been on stage slipped away, and it was like she’d never left.
With her triumphant return to the stage, I caught up with Kervin to find out more about her seven year hiatus, and how she’s helping singers in her new career. She also opened up about what brought her back to music, and in what ways she feels it’s kicked off a “renaissance of self.” First, however, we talked about a monumental event that came before her hiatus, when she won a trip to record in a castle in Ireland.
We have a really interesting history, because I interviewed you for an article for Sonicbids way back in 2015, and then two years later, completely unrelated, a contest on Sonicbids sent you to Ireland. Tell me about that travel experience.
It was the wildest thing, I think, that’s happened in my life. One of the most singular, and interesting experiences I’ve ever had.
I remember scrolling through Sonicbids, as one does sometimes, to enter festivals, and things like that, and I saw this ad for a contest called the Recording Festival. It was like $15 to enter, some very nominal amount, and the prize was you’d get to go to this residential recording studio, and they would bring in engineers, and it all just sounded too good to be true. So I entered. I sent in my EPK from Sonicbids, and I said, we’ll see what happens.
I got an email, and it said, like you’re in the semi, semi, semi, quarter, semi, quadra final round of this thing with 87 other bands. I was like, yeah, OK, whatever. Then I kept getting emails like that, and it kept advancing to like, oh, you’re in the quarter final round, and then the semi final round.
I remember it was kind of a gloomy day like it is today. At the time I was living in New York, and I was teaching at Berklee College of Music, so I was driving back and forth to Boston every week. I would spend half the week in Boston, and half the week in New York. So I was on my way to Boston, it was like a Monday morning, super early. You try not to look at your phone as you’re driving, but the email notification popped up, and it was like – Recording Festival. You’re a winner.
I pulled over to the side of the road. I’m on I-90, or something, and I was like, I need to read this email right now.
Myself, and two other bands were the winners.
(The Recording Festival) was like – we’ll be in touch. We’re gonna fly you to Ireland.
I was like, what in the what?
Wow!
My bass player, Julia (Pederson) – who unfortunately wasn’t at the Rockwood show because, casually, she is out on tour with Sam Smith right now – and her husband, who was playing drums, Ross Pederson, both happened to be in Europe, and swung by Ireland (while I was there) because they were on a different tour. It was insane.
The Grouse Lodge Studios is amazing. It is basically this 300 year old … I can only describe it as a castle.
You drive through all of these roads that are in the middle of hills, and go out to these places that are farmland, and just tucked away is this castle. In the middle of the castle is a courtyard, and set up along the courtyard are all of these small stone buildings that have little recording studios set up in them.
One of the big buildings is a huge live room, where they have a beautiful piano, and this gorgeous, huge new console, and they flew in a video crew that made a music video for one of the songs that we did there. It was absolutely insane.
Paddy and Claire (Dunning) own the place. Paddy just loves music, and his wife Claire was a chef. You would get up, they would make breakfast, and you would go sit with an engineer and make music.
We would start in the morning. We would drink a billion cups of black tea, and we would just track, and create. I had a few songs that we had been playing that I had planned to record, and I wrote a whole song while I was there.
It was absolutely unbelievable.
A song you recorded there has bird sounds that were recorded while you were in Ireland. So a very important question here – have the birds come to you about royalties? Based on a certain Hitchcock movie, you may not want to anger them.
That’s really fair. It’s kind of a long way for them to go to find me.
So, you know, if you hear from any bird lawyers, don’t give them my number.
From what I know of Angry Birds they’ll just slingshot each other into things.
I did see a bird fly into a window of my building today. Even though that’s sort of dark, maybe it’s a sign.
That song was one that I completely wrote start to finish on the old upright in the big stone dining room. One of the videographers, Lucy (FX Jones), was there, and they made a whole music video.
It’s called “What I Always Do,” and they made (the video) in the room that I was staying in, and put a light in the window so it looks like morning light.
The birds were from the courtyard.
It was just so amazing, because it was like the place was really infused in the music. I feel like all of the songs that we recorded there just have this really specific sound.
You did all that, then you came home, and took a break from music. How soon after you arrived home did you take that break, and what inspired it? From an outsider's perspective it would seem like you were right on the precipice of something huge.
Well, what’s funny is while I was in Ireland was when I started taking my first leveling courses. So I was literally in Ireland having this singular incredible life experience, and was also on my laptop with a textbook, studying, and taking an online course back in the States in audiology and phonetics.
That was a leveling course for my speech language pathology degree.
You were busy.
Yeah. I think that there had been a shift.
I’m a firm believer – and I talk about this with a lot of my students when I teach – I don’t know that this resonates with people, pun intended, when they listen to music, but I think folks connect with rhythm, and then melody before they ever hear a lyric for a lot of music.
It takes a second listen, (or) it takes a third listen to really connect with a lyric, especially for a medium, or an uptempo song. For a ballad, I’ll give it to you, you usually hear a lyric first, but I feel like that’s not usually the very first thing somebody’s hearing, the nuance of your poetry. I feel like that’s the deeper thing people get to sort of like unwrap, like the gift you give them later on their deeper listen.
If you listen to my lyrics, a lot of the tone is about the struggle of being in the music industry. Not to sugarcoat it, but even though it seems like I was on the precipice of something amazing, I was also driving to Boston every week, and hustling, and on the end of having my own struggles with a voice disorder.
I’d gone to voice therapy, and recovered through that, and was like – this is amazing. I want to do this for a career, and help other people.
This was when I did a master’s in speech language pathology. (Now) I provide voice therapy. I rehabilitate singers who are injured, so I do a lot of research to that effect. I do a lot of work looking into voice science, and how the voice works, and how we can better work with our voices, and serve people who have problems with their voices. It’s fascinating.
It also has to be rewarding to give people their voices back.
Yes. I also do a lot of work in the trans community, which I think is really rewarding. We do a lot of work with voice modification, and gender affirming voice work.
So what ultimately brought you back to music?
It felt important to come back to music.
It had been a long time. A lot of the folks in my band, a lot of the folks in my life, were always like – when is the band going to come back? So it was long overdue.
I have a lot of creative people in my life, and a little bit more flexibility in my position to have the time, and the space to do some creative work on the side, outside of my job.
How would you say your goals have changed from when you originally began your career in music, versus this recent restart?
Just giving it a little more space.
I think one of the things I really struggled with as a young musician coming into the field was that the music became this art you had to make that was a product you had to sell. I think a lot of musicians kind of fall into that trap.
Now it really feels like I’ve been able to give it this space, and this life, to treasure it in a really different way, and to give it this attention in a really different way, because it’s not meant to be a product. I’m doing it for me, in a way. I’m doing it to put music out there in the world. I’m doing it because this music has been sitting on a hard drive somewhere, and I think it deserves to be heard.
I was at your comeback show at Rockwood Music Hall last month, and you closed your set with a new song titled “Better Late Than Never.” Is anything about that title a wink and a nod to your seven year absence from the stage?
What gives you that idea? {laughs}
Yeah, so a little apropos.
What’s funny is the chorus of that song has been a voice memo on my phone since 2015 or ’16.
Wow!
I think a lot of my songs end up that way, sort of ruminating as little nuggets of a song that’s in a voice memo for years, and then they end up going – ah, here it is!
It was this like piece that was sort of like this seed that was waiting to grow.
But yes, it absolutely has to do with the waiting, but it also has to do with getting older, because I think there’s something to be said for being a 35 year old woman coming back into playing all of the singer-songwriter spaces, which feels like a young person’s thing, and being okay with not being as youthful, and the difference and the depth that brings.
It’s funny, more people said something to me about that song than any of the other music.
I really think that moving forward, thinking about what’s next, is probably going to be a release of all of the Ireland music by itself, because it’s such a distinct sound, but going in another direction with some of this new stuff.
“Better Late Than Never” kicked off … I’m calling it the renaissance of self, because the whole week after the show I felt so creative. I started to write so many songs, and they’ve gone in this other direction. I don’t even really know how to describe it, but it’s exciting.
Speaking of exciting, seven years ago you proposed to your now husband in the middle of one of your sets. That has to rank as the greatest thing to happen at one of your shows. How did it all go down, and how nervous were you right before the moment came?
Oh, my God, I was so nervous. Also, of course, I got sick. I got a cold that week.
I forgot the words (to the song). I’m like patting my chest with the time. I was like – I think I’m gonna have a heart attack.
We did this song out in the audience. Tim (Basom), my guitarist, came out into the audience with an acoustic guitar, and we had everybody humming.
It’s funny, because my husband George is very quiet. He doesn’t love the attention on him, so I think he was extremely surprised.
He said yes, of course.
It was pretty unforgettable.
For more Sarah Kervin check out sarahkervin.com, and follow her new Instagram, instagram.com/s.k.b.a.n.d.
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