Sarah Sample: Singing into sweetness
Some people are just attracted to the spotlight.
California grown Sarah Sample is just such a person.
“Even when I was young, I performed whenever I could,” Sample said. “Performing the music is just as important to me as writing the music, they both need to happen for the music to be completed.”
Playing to an audience that filled the bottom level of the Ellen Eccles Theater Friday night, she continued the tradition she began many years before.
“My mom gave me her Yamaha nylon string guitar when I was in sixth grade,” Sample said. “I guess it began there, but music was always a part of me.
Though she has opened shows for other performers which had 2,000 people in the audience, Sample said that Friday’s concert was the biggest show of her life.
“To have a theater full of people there for my show, to see Sarah Sample’s show, was truly an elevating moment,” she said.
Russ Dixon, a fellow performer and guest singer at Friday’s performance, has known Sample since a “Guitars Unplugged” session on Utah State University campus two years ago.
“Sarah’s songwriting is well beyond both her age and her audience,” Dixon said. “She writes songs that would shine in any circle of professional songwriters, even though her audience is most often the college-age crowd.”
Members of Friday night’s ‘college-age crowd’ included many first timers like Liz Frost, a junior majoring in speech pathology.
“[Sample’s] so cute and adorable when she gets up there and kicks her legs.,” Frost said. “She took some of the simple, very sweet things of life and she just put them to music.”
Planning to take her music as far as she can, Sample attended a songwriting school in Colorado over the summer where she said she learned something essential to any songwriter:
“Writers write,” she said. “The challenge I was given this summer was to write three songs a week. If you make songwriting a priority, and you allow yourself to be not as good or creative as you sometimes like to think you are, then you are making progress because the good material will naturally appear.”
Compared to performers ranging from Sara McLaughlin to Martina McBride, Dixon felt there would be a lot more of Sample both locally and throughout the state.
“Sarah’s tremendous vocal control and surprising skill on the guitar make her stand out among other local performers,” Dixon said. “She manages to somehow deliver even the softest, most intimate notes with confidence and clarity.”
In addition to her music, Amber Rands, a junior majoring in speech pathology, enjoyed the showmanship Sample brought to the stage.
“I really liked how in the middle of a song she’d be strumming her guitar or something and talking about some old boyfriend’s car that you hate now and every time you see the car you think of him,” Rands said. “I think that she was funny, made some jokes and stuff and her music was pretty sweet.”
“Sometimes Sarah will do little dances while she plays on stage – I think the crowd really enjoys that spunky part of her personality and feels her sincerity when she is on stage,” Dixon said. “There is never a performance that doesn’t include stories about the songs themselves and commentary about ‘real life’ as it relates to her music. I think her charming and witty mannerisms are contagious to the audience and become a favorite element of every concert.”
Benjamin Cummings, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering, enjoyed the song ‘Dancing in the Kitchen’ most of all. Just as the name implies, the song details a romantic meeting between a couple in the kitchen.
“Someday, I hope to dance in the kitchen,” Cummings said.
More information on Sara Sample and her music can be found at her Web site, www.sarahsample.com.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu