Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Marie Young.
Sarah Marie, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have been singing and writing songs since I can remember. My father was a bassist and songwriter, and my mother sang in church. They fostered a love for all styles of music within our household, and my father was the key support in my artistic pursuits. I was fortunate to study music at a performing arts high school in Indianapolis, continuing on to Indiana University for classical voice, and then studying jazz at Columbia College Chicago.
During my studies, I was always involved in some kind of performing, whether singing at church, playing in bands, or just recreationally writing music on the piano or the baritone ukulele my father gave me. After I finished college, I tried my craft at music competitions, representing Chicago as a semifinalist in the 2010 Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition, and as the winner of the 2011 Montreux Jazz Vocal Competition, judged by Quincy Jones. Those competitions opened some doors for me, and over the past few years I have performed on the jazz, indie, and soul scene here in Chicago, nationally and internationally, and recorded four albums, both record label and independently released.
As of now I’m still hustling, writing new music and performing, and taking on a brand new role in my life as a mother!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think many times people, myself included, see an artist as having one trajectory upwards or downwards. Little did I know, for me at least, that it ebbs and flows with many large and small successes and failures. Right after I won the Montreux Jazz Competition, I was courted by Blue Note Records, making trips out to New York for artist development meetings for my first full-length album. I was sure that I would be signed, which didn’t happen. At that time I believed that getting “signed” was the break I needed. The way artists record, release, and people buy and listen to music now is so much different!
My first album was mostly originals, steeped in my main influences of folk, R&B, and lastly, jazz. Although I came to the jazz genre late in my musical journey, it was the style I broke out onto the Chicago music scene with. That record, which was developed in part with Blue Note’s previous CEO Bruce Lundvall, did not fit in the traditional, straight ahead Chicago jazz “world” that I was mostly a part of, and I had absolutely no idea how to market myself.
Trying to identify with a specific style has always been a struggle, and sometimes I wish I just embraced the musical diversity and owned it much earlier in my career! I was searching for some clarity. That next year I was signed by a Dutch record label, released another album and toured in Europe that didn’t do as well financially as we all hoped. That was in 2014. I kind of fell into a slump, unmotivated to relentlessly push myself, which is something you have to do as an artist. I still played locally and continued to write, finally releasing an EP in 2016.
Now I am a bit more relaxed, and just try to do what feels right. Of course, I still want to keep moving up, experience exciting opportunities and continue to grow as an artist and human being, but I have a much better feel for balancing what I know I want and what I can handle. Right now I am very much enjoying writing music and singing with two of my best friends in an all female acoustic group called The Oh Yeahs. At the end of the day, I love my husband, our daughter, friends and family, and Martin, our dog. And the simple constant in my life is: I just love singing. I try to savor every musical moment for what it is without worrying what other people think, or where it may or may not lead.
Personally, throughout those years, my father was living with a long illness. He had a stroke in 2009, and the loss of his facilities was devastating to all of us. He passed away a year ago. Since I was 9 years old, my dad raised my brother, sister and me, with a fierce love for life and music. He left us with such rich memories and invaluable knowledge. The impact of us siblings trying our best to take care of him those years while managing our budding families and careers, along with the challenges that come along with long illnesses, profoundly affected all of us in different ways.
Please tell us about Sarah Marie Young.
I specialize in telling a story through song. Whether it’s someone else’s or my own, no matter the style, people can hear my voice and hopefully enjoy my craft and emotional delivery of a song. It is therapeutic to tell an audience of strangers how I am feeling, or how I felt about an experience through music, hopefully making them feel something.
On the technical side, I can enjoy the reward of taking a nervous feeling about performing and relying on my countless hours of practicing, learning new music, and performance experience to let me actually enjoy giving my gift to an audience. By no means am I perfect- the great thing about being an artist is ever growing and learning, and the exciting musical risk-taking that results in the occasional hilarious gaffe, shared with a roomful of people. Music has a way of making sure you stay humble!
I am grateful for the well-rounded music background I have, and the mixed style that comes from this: Baptist church hymnal childhood -> Motown, 60’s R&B, classic 70’s rock, funk at home via dad -> musical theatre -> writing folk songs -> gospel all-female group -> classical voice training -> indie rock bands -> jazz ->. Because of my life experiences, I feel confident that my voice and musical style is uniquely mine.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Right now, my favorite memory from childhood is my dad laying a bunch of blankets on the living room floor, and the whole family watching the Sound of Music. This would become an annual tradition, and this particular memory was in the early years when I was little.
My dad would let us eat Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream before putting the movie on. I would methodically portion out the bites until almost all the chocolate chips were left in the bottom of the bowl with a little-melted ice cream, and then enjoy each bite of my chocolate chip soup. When the movie started, I remember cocooning myself in a pink comforter with my favorite stuffed animal, a little blue dog with a brown nose that I named Soft Puppy, and rubbing my little-cocooned feet against my dad’s legs in contentment while Julie Andrews ran up a hill singing in full Technicolor.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarahmarieyoung.com
- Email: sarahyoungmusic@gmail.com
- Instagram: sarahmarieyoungmusic
- Facebook: sarahmarieyoung
- Twitter: smymuse
- Other: https://soundcloud.com/sarah-marie-young-music
Image Credit:
Maria Meade, Joey Delisi, Carlos James, Chris Nightengale
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