About That Song: Sarah Larsson of Red Thread
About That Song #68
In our special series, singer-songwriter Sarah Morris interviews artists about the songs that shaped them.
Hi! I’m Sarah Morris. I’m wildly in love with songs and the people who write them. There have been a few songs in my life that have been total gamechangers—songs that made me want to be a songwriter and songs I’ve written that made me feel like I am a songwriter. About That Song is a space where I can learn more about those pivotal songs in other writers’ lives.
For our 68th edition, I was happy to connect with Sarah Larsson of Red Thread! We talked about the songs and experiences that set her on her artistic journey and about the group’s most recent record.
Sarah Larsson. Photo credit: Sammie Jean Cohen / no_aesthetic_stills.
Sarah Morris: Hello Sarah Larsson!! It’s lovely to meet you! As frontwoman of Red Thread, “a harmony-forward ensemble playing original and traditional music rooted in Eastern European, Yiddish, and Americana lineage,” leader of the local nonprofit Folk Will Save Us, and organizer of the annual Klezmer on Ice Festival, you do the wonderful work of bringing people together through music in many ways. Thank you! I think that’s the best work.
Last winter, Red Thread released a gorgeous and moving album, Immigrantke, and this winter, you have a string of shows in utterly cool spaces: St. Mark’s Cathedral last week, Berlin tonight, Northfield next weekend. This feels to me a lovely chance to connect with you around the idea of SONG. Do you remember the song you heard that made you want to be a songwriter? Tell us about that song.
Sarah Larsson: I fell in with a group of amazingly creative people when I first moved to Minneapolis in 2012. Among them were Steven Hobert and Lynn O’Brien, both marvelous songwriters and creative souls. I remember very distinctly that I didn’t feel so much like I wanted to be a songwriter, but rather that I wanted to do what they do. I took myself on walks by the river looking for that kind of voice inside myself, hoping that I could do the kind of storytelling and feelings-capture that these two brilliant friends did in front of me
Sarah M: Oh, I love that! What a thrill to be sparked by the spark of another human. Once you began writing, did you feel like a writer immediately? It took me a few years of writing before I believed it—was there a song that gave you that “a-HA! I AM a songwriter!” moment? If so, tell us about that song.
Sarah L: Not at all! I spent years conjuring up just ditties and little nuggets of songs—things that meant something to me but didn’t have legs to stand on their own. Frankly, I still don’t think of myself as a songwriter as central to my creative life; I feel much more centrally that I’m an interpreter, of traditions and sounds, and that my creative work derives first of all from the curatorial or maybe directorial work of creating a space and an experience for an audience.
Sarah M: That makes a lot of sense to me, considering the work you do with Red Thread—leaning into these beautiful folk traditions and finding new voice for them.
Sarah L: If I had to answer, though, the first fully-baked song I wrote is called “Fair Weather Friends.” I wrote it in a moment of sweet nostalgia for times with music-making pals. That tune is recorded with another former project, The Lacewings. That recording is me, Kat Parent, and Phil Otterness. IMPORTANT! The verses in that song are actually just the same melody as a tune by another now-retired Minneapolis harmony-singing trio, Hummingbirds. (Which includes, dun dun dun, Lynn O’Brien!)
Sarah M: The gift of Lynn O’Brien keeps giving! Also, using the same melody as a previous tune feels, again, fully in line with the tradition of folk music.
“Sailor’s Lullaby,” the opening track of Immigrantke, begins with these words: “I imagine you dreaming. I imagine you light on a sea far away. I picture you rocking and rolling, adrift on the dreams of the world.” You repeat this verse three times, and each time I heard a fresh sense of love and wonderment. Can you tell us about that song?
Sarah L: That song started as just the feel, a sway back and forth, as I was watching the water of Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis. Then the melody followed it—up and down, up and down with the sway. It was a pale-yellow-toned feeling at first, and I tried to just capture the feeling. It quickly became clear to me that I was singing to myself a song for a contemporary sweetheart who was away on some travels, and that it also held in it the older (for my family) story of lovers gone across the ocean. It’s very much the connecting point for me in my exploration of writing and playing songs that echo and speak to my family members’ immigration stories.
Red Thread. Photo credit: Wolfskull Creative.
Sarah M: You walked by the river, and now Bde Maka Ska—it sounds like water is a companion to your creating. I often think of the trees as my co-writers. In that song, I was struck by your use of the phrase “rocking and rolling” in a true folk song. Of course that would be a movement of a boat upon water at times, and also…
Sarah L: Ha! Well there’s also the reference to “rocking and rolling in the room where we stay”—some proper folk slant insinuation of what’s happening there, maybe. It happens later in the song—when we’ve already really been longing for that person for a long time, the longing gets stronger!
Sarah M: Sometimes it does! Speaking of longing, the song “Tzeitel and the Tailor” begins with an incredibly inviting drumbeat, before describing an intimate story of two lovers. The beat remains throughout, while the layers of instrumentation builds in surprising ways. Can you tell us about that song?
Sarah L: I was up on a hill in Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis when I realized this song wanted to be in 7/8 meter. I’d been singing it to myself in a straight 4 time signature up to that point, but something about that moment, maybe the late afternoon summer light, maybe the music I’d been listening to that day, made it click. The instrumental riff is a common one used in various Balkan folk tunes, maybe most recognizably the tune “Jovano Jovanke.” I tagged that melody onto the verses I’d written just because it kept happening—every time I’d be singing one of my verses, I’d get to the end of it and then want to sing that riff.
There’s another reference to a Balkan folk song inside this song—it’s the song “Zaspo Janko,” one that a lot of folkies from the Cold War-era Balkan folk music scene know. That song describes two lovers sitting underneath a tree, and one of them says “My darling, with your dark eyes; look at me, I’ve broken off a golden branch.”
So both of those references are in there, and then it’s a little glimpse of a real-life scene I’ve experienced: that special feeling of going camping and sleeping in the woods with a sweetie. There’s seeing that person differently in the experience of being out of normal city life, and there’s that feeling of waking up in the morning with cool skin on your faces outside your sleeping bag.
Ope! And one more reference—the specific ex of mine, a person I loved and still love very much, I think he’s a wonderful person—I frequently thought of him and me as like the sweet best-friends-turned-couple of Tzeitel and Motel in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. No one quite took us seriously as adults who were in a real relationship with each other, not to mention none of our parents thought either of us had any prospects for earning a sufficient living. But yep, there we were, falling for each other, camping in the woods.
Sarah M: I read the title and immediately journeyed back to my high school production of Fiddler!
You lead the nonprofit Folk Will Save Us, which works to bring Minnesota communities together around the experience of learning and leaning into roots, and build power and resources for culturally rooted artists doing this important work on behalf of their communities. I wonder—is there a song that you think could save us?
Sarah L: I think that song is whatever song for any particular person opens up a window to understanding/experiencing people’s lived experience outside of their own. For me that’s frequently songs that give me glimpses into real life for people in my own lineage in the past. Whatever human experience is depicted in the lyrics of a folk song, there are people at some point in time who related to that experience: that’s why they sang that song, that’s why it was carried forward. So I’m frequently using songs as historical documents for ordinary people’s lived experiences—and then there’s a further deeper aspect that comes when you sing that song yourself, out of your own mouth and your own body. It’s a totally deeper way of relating to people from the past or from an experience not your own.
Here’s one for me:
“Eyder Ikh Leg Mikh Shlofn” (Ruth Rubin, 1948 / My version)
No sooner do I lay down to sleep,
I have to get up with painful bones to return to work.
To God I will cry with a huge sob,
why I was born to be a seamstress.
Should I arrive late to work,
(I live quite far away)
they dock me for half a day’s pay.
The needles break every fifteen minutes,
fingers get pricked, the blood runs from them.
I suffer hunger constantly, there is nothing to eat,
I want to ask for my wages but I am invisible to them.
Sarah M: Thank you so much for sharing that. In my experience, music is such a way into FEELING for listeners and performers alike, but the idea that it’s also a way to access that history is deeply lovely to me. Do you have any upcoming Midwest shows where we might hear you sing that song (or any song for that matter!)?
Sarah L: Yes!
Tonight, Wednesday 1/29, at Berlin!
Saturday 2/1 at Superior Sauna, part of Klezmer on Ice!
Friday 2/7 at Hot Spot Music in Northfield
Listen to “Tzeitel and the Tailor”
Immigrantke Album Credits
released February 23, 2024
Music and lyrics by: Sarah Larsson & Traditional
Copyright ℗ Red Thread Sings
Engineered, Mixed & Produced by Dex Wolfe
Mastered by Dave Vettraino
Album art by Sarah Hedlund
Lead vocals, banjo, percussion: Sarah Larsson
Harmony vocals: Julia Hobart, Sophie Javna
Upright Bass: Jason Wells, Robbie Weisshaar
Guitar: Ilan Blanck
Clarinet: Pat O'Keefe
Classical Guitar, Bowed Guitar & Prophet: Dex Wolfe
Support and advising from: Jim Parker, Ethel Raim, Erika Lantz, Sarina Partridge, Efim Chorny, Michael Alpert, Diana Yefanova, Bojana Djordjevic, Maja Radovanlija, Colleen Bertsch
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Morris. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
Sarah Morris is a superfan of songs and the people who write them, and a believer that certain songs can change your life. A singer-songwriter / mama / bread maker / coffee drinker who recently released her fifth album of original material, she’s been known to joyfully sing with people in her Big Green Bathroom.
