Sarah Shafey
Sarah Shafey is a Renaissance Woman with a capital T. That ‘T’ could stand for ‘Talented.’ Or ‘Thirsty.’ Or ‘Transcendent.’ Each of the three ‘T’s are equally fitting; yet they only begin to describe her jacktress-of-many-trades persona. Sarah Shafey is a producer and engineer who runs her own recording studio called Squeaky Clean Records. She’s a deft interviewee; her “Shafey’s Palace” webisodes are as much entertaining as they are insightful. In many-a-photograph, she’s a chameleon whose ability to constantly reinvent herself will leave you breathless. She helps manage a creative collective, GoodSoundsGood, which is taking the Toronto music scene by storm. Most importantly she’s a singer-songwriter whose full-length debut album, Tiny Music Box, is a myriad of avant-garde magnificence, a sort of sonic flea market that showcases all of the aforementioned aspects that make Sarah Shafey remarkably unique.
Tiny Music Box is no small achievement; defying generalization the way true artists defy having their work pigeonholed to a certain definition. On Tiny Music Box’s 14 tracks you’re taken on a cruise across the radio station dial; pop, jazz, funk, vaudeville, contemporary, electronic– you name it. Tiny Music Box is an experience, a journey, an insight into the creative mind of someone who always has their eyes looking forward, and their ears tuned into whatever is around them.
Sarah Shafey is a classically-trained pianist whose attention lies beyond the periphery, seeking out whatever is available to her in the quest to get the most out of her sound, be it traditional instruments, or that which is produced by a computer program. While so many others choose to ignore the bigger picture politically of what’s going on in the world, the world-traveled Shafey isn’t afraid to say—or sing about—how she filters everything through her eyes. She’s seemingly one of the few nowadays who choose context– listening to CDs on a Sony Discman– versus convenience, like the billions who have their iPods plugged directly into their brain. Yes, Sarah Shafey is unique, and through everything she never loses her sense of humor. Recently Sarah Shafey stopped by Oxyfication to talk shop.
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The obligatory ‘where did it all begin?’ Growing up what was your exposure to music? What types of music did you like/listen to? Who got you into it? And when did you realize that you wanted to do it for a living?
It all began in a back alley…
Kidding.
I guess you can say it began when I first [laid] my hands on a piano when I was 4- years old. I was at my babysitter’s house, and I actually looked forward to it because I got a chance to fiddle away on those sweet ivory keys and ignore everything the babysitter said. I have always enjoyed listening to all genres of music as long as it was catchy to the ear, and it helped that my parents had a great vinyl collection of the Bee-Gees, Elton john, Boney M, Cat Stevens, classic stuff. I was raised in a very education-based atmosphere so after I graduated from University I decided to rebel and give the whole music thing a shot and moved to Toronto. It was less about making a living and more about just living the best and happiest way I knew.
As a person you’re very well traveled, and the influences are very evident and all over the place in your music. Were there any specific places, or people, or experiences that maybe more than others you remember really wowing you, and that maybe now you see in your music now because of it?
I did indeed grow up all over the world and am extremely thankful for it. Not only did I get to see the world for what it really [was] as a whole, but I got to hear music of all sorts. I didn’t realize that I was retaining all this music in my brain until I started producing and it naturally starting coming out. My background is Egyptian and all of my extended family is still there so we often would go spend months over there and its such a different way of life. I love that the people don’t have very much but they are happy as happy can be with family, friends and of course tabla circles all night long. I find Egyptian music from the 30’s-50’s to be the most intriguing and haunting and recently starting delving more into recreating that feeling in my own stuff. I was also in England for a while and the DANCE/POP/JUNGLE scene was crazy and I have always loved a good party song. And of course Toronto is filled with great music of all genres, and meeting and collaborating with these people has obviously had a great influence in my own music.
In 2007 you released a debut five-song E.P. Though stellar it seems, at least in terms of grandiosity, to sound like there’s a singer who is sticking her toes in the water to gauge the temperature so to speak. What was it like recording that E.P.? What did you take from it?
That EP was a blast to make. I had just moved to Toronto and met a wonderful bunch of guys running a studio called 3Bone Audio and quickly they became my family. They were fresh out of University and were all ridiculously talented with production, engineering and mixing, and I felt like the luckiest gal in town to be able to freely go over to the studio and just make some beats and sing to them. It wasn’t calculated at all, and at the time we were all just into making electronic stuff so that’s how that EP came to be. For me it was the greatest lesson in production and computer programs, and I took it all in and have never taken that experience for granted.
2009 brings the release of your first full-length album, Tiny Music Box. How long of a process was the making of it? When you started off recording the songs that would become Tiny Music Box you’ve said that you thought you were just going to make another demo consisting of a few songs. How far along into that process did you know that you wanted to do something more, and did you ever have a specific vision or concept of what you wanted from the songs, or was it more a matter of just recording the songs as they came to you?
So my baby, Tiny Music Box, was also an experience that was just plain fun to make. I went through writers block for a year, and instead of dwelling on that I decided to lock myself away in my apartment, buy a load of gear, rip a bunch of programs—yeah I said it—and teach myself how to produce, and do it well. After a few months of just writing stuff I realized songs were coming into fruition and decided to just record without a deadline until I had a bunch of tracks on hand. I eventually ended up after two years with a ridiculous amount of songs ranging from rock, hip-hop, electronic, classical, jungle, pop, you name it, and decided to take the songs that were piano based and turn them into an album.
Tiny Music Box has a little bit of everything. To someone who hasn’t heard it yet how would you classify, or describe the album to them?
It’s a soundtrack to space, time, consciousness, life, people-watching, memories, the id, alter-egos, superheroes, stupid people, hands-on-hands-off, human interaction or lack-thereof, lightening, politics, children laughing, people clapping, why are we here, alternate dimensions, black holes, the monetary system, and piano melodies on fire.
Where did “Five Min To Go” come from?
[Laughs] This song makes me laugh. I serve tables to survive and one day during the last five minutes of work I started writing this song in my head and heard a muted horn as well. It’s simply about how I feel during those last five minutes that drag on to feel like an eternity.
In your bio it says, “She quickly became hungry to learn more about computer programs and how to infuse new technology with classic live instrumentation.” With your classically trained background is there ever an internal conflict going on between the use of traditional instruments versus what’s produced by a computer—i.e. a naturalistic sort of wanting to remain true to your training/roots—or is it all simply matter of wanting to get the most of out whatever is available to you?
I seem to get asked this question quite a lot, which is interesting to me because I read a lot about people who are either specifically pro-digital or pro-analog. I am all about intertwining live stuff with computerized sounds. I think it’s a blessing to be able to have the ability to use both and I don’t feel conflicted at all about combining the two. It’s a fun game to me, and I try my best to stay on top of new technologies and programs available. What do they call that…ummm FUN!!!
To that point, from your debut E.P. to Tiny Music Box, your sound has grown exponentially, incorporating so many more instruments to the fold, creating more luscious landscapes within the songs. Was this something you set out to do, was it a natural evolution or growth, or was it maybe something else? If the E.P. sounded like a singer feeling out the pool it seems like with Tiny Music Box you’ve jumped right in.
You couldn’t have been more eloquent with this question. The EP was exactly that; I had no idea what I was doing at the time and just went for it. With [Tiny Music Box] I was much more comfortable with my skills, with mixing and producing, and decided to use any and every instrument on hand or available to me via other musicians. I have always been a fan of using vocals and harmonies as another instrument—Radiohead—and love layers upon layers of pads, strings, anything really. A lot of the instruments used were literally stuff I would find at bargain stores, or even recording chopsticks banging on each other as part of a beat. I am sure my next album will be completely different according to whatever other weird instruments [I] have found in the meantime.
The melody in “Trouble With The Rain” sounds like it could be an outtake from Bill Conti’s score from Rocky. Though I’m pretty sure Rocky wasn’t the inspiration for that song, the point is that many of your songs seem tailor-made for film. With Squeaky Clean Records your focus is on commercial and soundtrack music. In terms of your own music—specifically the songs of the E.P. and Tiny Music Box—when you’re writing those types of songs do you see or imagine them in film, or do you separate that sort of writing from your commercial writing?
Yes, Boss!! My dream in life is to score for film, and you’d better believe that I am going to do it. Cocky maybe; [it] doesn’t faze me. I think that there is still a lot to learn, but every time I write a song I imagine a scene from a movie and definitely make them as potential soundtrack songs. Sometimes I am so nerdy as to take clips from YouTube, put them on mute, and write stuff to them. Squeaky Clean Records is all about composition for film, games, anime, web, and it’s mostly instrumental music. I have sound banks just overloaded with songs that could be used for movies by Tarantino, Jean Pierre Jeunet, Tim Burton; just give me an orchestra and I am ready to go.
Through posts on your blog, or in songs of yours such as “War Crimes” it’s pretty evident that you’re politically aware of what’s going on in the world. First, how do you feel about the state of things, and second do you see a song—songs in general, but more specifically your own songs—as being anything more than an artists outlet to state their side of things? Or do you feel as an artist that artists have a responsibility if they so feel compelled to spread the word so to speak on the political events going on in the world?
I believe that we are extremely apathetic beings who are lazy and sit around wasting time thinking about having more, more, more, I need more, give me more. Yuck! I think everyone has a responsibility to speak his or her mind about the sad state of affairs in this world. I am not entirely educated on everything that is going on, and I am definitely not the most eloquent of speakers on these matters, but I know what I feel in my heart and gut and it’s mostly a sense of sadness for the lack of community, values, and acceptance of difference. Instead we sit around and Twitter our lives away, which I think is one of the greatest ploys created to distract us from the reality of things. I write my songs exactly how I converse so I’m literally having a conversation with my listeners and myself. Obviously I think we can do more as a whole, myself included, and that needs to start with new ideologies that combine all schools of thought; Capitalism, Marxism, Communism, Liberalism, and possibly something new that I am not smart enough to conjure up. We cannot just sit around and wait for our government to create our rules because folks it’s not really working very well.
You wear so many hats—singer, songwriter, producer, engineer—that your thumbprint is on every process of the recording. Is this a desire to control the entire canvas so to speak; is it more a natural bi-product of using your varying talents on your own music, or maybe something else? Is it ever difficult to separate or step back from one aspect to focus on another?
This is a tasty question. I have always been interested in doing the most I can for my own projects. I enjoy wearing all of these hats equally, and it is not about control. It is more about using whatever skills I may have and applying them to my own work and still understanding when to step back. I know that if I tried to master my own music it would sound like garbage because I don’t do that. I know that if I tried to do the artwork, it would look like paper-mâché rotting. I know not to try playing a horn instrument because it would probably break, etc.
Tiny Music Box has initially been released in a pay-for-download only format, forgoing the traditional hard-copy route. You’ve stated your intention is to hopefully generate enough capital through the current download structure to be able to produce physical CDs in the near future. Are there any advantages perhaps though to what you’re doing now considering that so many people nowadays have shied away from the traditional route and get their music from iTunes type download sources, and would you be happy if Tiny Music Box remains a download only album?
I am just happy it’s out in any form possible. I spend a great deal of time on the internet and find a digital format to be extremely convenient, but I also still use a Discman over and iPod any day, so a hard copy version would be nice. The quality of a .wav file over an .mp3 is not even worth discussing, and I have always found that the EQ settings on Discmans sound way better than the tinny sound of an iPod. Don’t get me wrong, I do have an iPod, but honestly I use it more as an external hard drive. [At] the end of the day quite frankly it’s about what I can afford and rent comes first.
What are some of the goals you have for Tiny Music Box?
To use it as a mind control tool, become a crazy dictator and make school children recite my songs in unison during recess.
You’ve got a remix that you did of Radiohead’s song “Nude” posted on your MySpace page and you’ve completely re-imagined the song to the point where if you didn’t know it was Radiohead to begin with–at least until towards the end–you’d be hard-pressed to guess it was them. What was remixing that song like? How was the reaction you received for your version?
Radiohead are like Gods. I just had so much fun doing that remix and thought it was genius of them to put the stems up for public use on their website; what a grand gesture. I had a friend of mine, Zaki Ibrahim, sing on it as well as my buddy Mike Celia play guitar. It was purely for the sake of doing it because I could. People have liked it, but that wasn’t my concern. Now if they could only post the stems from The Bends my life would be complete.
You’ve been photographed a good deal and if these were to be a collection it would seem fitting that it would called something along the lines of The Many Faces Of Sarah Shafey. Is being photographed something you enjoy, and do you see it as another extension of your vision as an artist?
A guilty pleasure, I must say, that I think is mostly based on narcissistic thoughts. I am Aquarian for God’s sake; I get bored really easily with whatever image I am projecting into the world, and according to my mood I feel the need to keep a photographic diary of it all. I also really enjoy working with these different local photographers because they always provide their own unique vision and I appreciate their talent. [Singing] “SHE’S SOOOOO VAIN, I GUESS YOU THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT YOU.”
You’re part of the very talented Toronto-based creative collective GoodSoundsGood. Tell us a bit about how being a part of it has been for you, and how you see where you all are now versus when you started it in 2007?
Yay, GOODSOUNDSGOOD! I love the fact that I am a part of something so amazing in this city, and I feel lucky. It’s funny how it started out. Two wonderful musicians by the name of Emma-Lee and Emer thought up the idea to start a mostly female collective of musicians of varied genres. I got an email a few years ago randomly asking me to come to a potluck to discuss what would later be known as “GoodSoundsGood”. Although one wouldn’t know it, I am extremely shy when it comes to certain social settings, and I lied and said I was sick or some lame nonsense like that. I luckily got a second email—thank God— and decided to suck it up and went, and boy am I ever glad I did that. I walked into a room full of intelligent, talented, friendly, smart, and HOT people who were ready to get together and take over the world. We have all grown exponentially over the years, and root each other on in every aspect of our musical careers. We share resources; play shows together, learn together, eat together, and I have made some of the greatest friends through GSG.
Another hat that you wear is interviewer. What’s Shafey’s Palace all about? When are you bringing it back and who is up next?
“Shafey’s Palace” fills me with joy. I was watching Wayne’s World and thought, “I am going to do that.” So I ventured towards Yonge Street, bought a piece of shit camera, and starting calling friends and asking them to come along for the experiment I called “Shafey’s Palace”. It is an online interview, live music show that caters to local indie talent, and a touch of humor. I knew I had the skills to built a decent website, and also do audio production, and I thought it would be cool to record them doing a live song and mix it to sound like a professional studio recording. My intention was to come back with more in the New Year but my own album’s release took over my life for a minute there and I had to focus my energy on that, which was a priority. Now that it all said and done with, get ready for Round Two. Next up is blueVenus, and I am pretty sure it’s coming at you in March ‘09.
What’s 2009 going to bring for Sarah Shafey?
[Singing] Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King/Queen; Let every heart prepare Him/Her room, And Heaven and nature sing, And Heaven and nature sing, And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing…And Justin Holt is cool!!
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