A brief chat with Sick of Sarah

Minneapolis punky all-girl rockers Sick of Sarah made an international noise when the 2205 album was given away, automatically downloaded with BitTorrent software. Fast-forward five years, and the band is playing the Sidewinder in Denver in support of a forthcoming new EP, so we chatted with bassist Jessie Farmer and drummer Jessica Forsythe about it all.M

Yellow Scene: The band is about ten years old now – how do you think it’s changed and evolved in that decade?

Jessie Farmer: Well, since the conception we’ve had a lineup change. Jessica has been with us for five or six years. When we originally started I played bass, and then we just got a new bass player. Over the years, the music has matured, our songwriting has matured a lot, so we’ve just grown up I guess.

YS: You had that situation with the BitTorrent thing and the free download – do you think that helped in the long run?

Jessica Forsythe: As I recall, we got an email from our manager. Someone had asked if we’d be interested in giving a free download of our album just to make a run of it and see how it goes. Within a week or so, we had 1.5 million downloads. No one made money but it was really cool for us. It was great exposure, and we got introduced to a lot of people worldwide via the internet. More people know about our band because of it, so I absolutely think it was worth it. It was really cool to be a part of that.

Jessie: We were also the first band to put an entire record on the Torrent site. We actually did an interview with Billboard Magazine about it.

YS: Do you guys get a good reception in Colorado?

Jessie: We haven’t been to Denver in a minute, but we’ve been there several times and we always have a good time, so we’re looking forward to it.

Jessica: Yeah, I think we played the Lion’s Lair last time. We played that one a few times, and this time we’re playing the Sidewinder. That’ll be a new venue for us, so we’re pretty pumped about that.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

Jessie: We’re playing six new songs, and then six old ones. We’re promoting our new record on this tour that we’re going to be releasing in the summer, so we’ll be playing everything off of that.

Jessica: Right now, we have a tentative June 30 release date for the EP, and then we’re going to try to release a single soon, while we’re on tour. That’s in the works.

YS: What’s next, after this tour?

Jessie: There’s the June 30 release date. We’ve got some one-offs and then hopefully, in the Fall, we’ll have a supporting tour for the new album.