You recorded your debut solo album, Sarah Rose Project, in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. What impact did these cities have on the recording process?

I hadn’t spent a lot of time in Chicago before I started recording the record. We had toured through Chicago but when you tour you’re in and out really quickly. This was the first time I’d really been to that city and lived in it for a minute and gotten to know it. I think it had a huge impact on how I approached the record. I was in a different place than I had ever been before; it was very foreign-feeling at the time and kinda alien. I was working with people that I had never worked with. It was a big creative exercise and stepping out of my comfort zone which I think I needed. I needed it to feel like a new experience.

It was similar for New York in a lot of ways. I worked with Mike Abiuso, who used to play in a band called The Venetia Fair which is a badass totally great band that I’ve admired since I was a kid. We worked on two songs with him. It was a new experience for me there too because I was working with someone who I had never worked with. Atlanta was nice. We did some touch-up stuff and some editing back home. It all worked out really well. It was a bunch of new experiences all under one roof.

You also self-produced the album except for two tracks which you co-produced with Mike. How was that process?

Scary. I didn’t really intend to go into the record being so in the driver’s seat but as I started recording I realized that I had kind of put myself in that seat. [laughs] I realized I had a very specific vision of where I wanted the record to go the more I worked on it. It was nice to be able to make my own calls and make my own decisions. It was scary because there’s no second opinion on this thing but as we got through the making of the record, it felt very liberating to be the one who had the creative vision of where the record was gonna go.

It must be such a difference when you’re used to being in a band environment and you’re not in that environment.

Yeah, it’s really weird! Normally with Sarah and the Safe Word, there’s so many people doing so many different things. We all play a different role in the band; we all play different instruments and we all have multiple musical talents. There’s no shortage of different perspectives and different opinions which is awesome for Sarah and the Safe Word.

If you can imagine going from that to being the only person in the room who makes the final call on anything, that’s very intimidating at first. It was a lot to get used to. I’ve never made a solo project, ever. I’ve never, in any capacity, worked on anything just by myself. I’m very late in the game to making something individually. It was a very different process.

You’ve said that the album was 3 years in the making. What did you learn about yourself as a person and as a songwriter during this time?

When I started making the record, I really thought we’d be making this industrial, goth, electronic record. If you’ve heard the record, you know that’s not how it ended up. What I learned was that I can go into a record with the presumption of the kind of music that I want to try to make but you can’t force something, you have to make something that comes from your heart. I think we ended up making exactly the kind of record that we needed to make.

The cover photos for this album were taken at a bar and former brothel in Brooklyn. What drew you to this location?

[laughs] Yeah! I had the idea that I really wanted to do the album cover in a bar. It felt like a dirty jazz-rock record and I wanted it to feel like a spooky, crazy, fun night out. A bar seemed like a good way to summarize that feeling. I looked around a little bit in New York and I found this bar that had a hidden brothel in the back. The owners of the bar restored the brothel and incorporated it into the way the bar is now. I was like, “Oh, this is perfect!” If there was one thing that you had to do to summarize my record, I feel like a bar and a brothel in one building is a really good way to do it. When we got the photos back I was like, “I think we nailed it!”

You have a song on the record called “Bar in Hell” that has the line, “If the holy book spelled our certain doom / Then there’s nothing we can do except enjoy the ride”. What were you thinking about when you wrote that line?

I actually didn’t write that line. That’s a line that Taffeite wrote for the song. I had an idea that I wanted Taffeite on the song - I love their music and I think more people should check them out - so I sent it to them and was like, “Hey, if you think you can do something on this let me know. I have this space in the song that I think you’d be great on.” They literally sent it back to me the same day with that verse. They completely locked into what I think the song was about. I was so impressed with what they did. I think the feature is perfect.

Along with Taffeite you also have guest spots by Shayfer James, Ratwyfe, Jamee Cornelia, Cecil Baldwin, and Park. How did those come about? What do these collaborations mean to you?

The whole reason the record was even recorded in Chicago initially was because I told myself years ago that if I ever got the chance to collaborate with Park I would take it. That was my bucket list collaboration. They’re one of my favourite bands of all time and their discography is fucking perfect. I had a mutual friend with them and on a whim, thinking that they would never be down to do this - because they were broken up at the time - I reached out and said, “Hey, you don’t know me but I’m working on this record. Would you possibly be interested in playing on it and writing some music with me?” It was a crazy ask and very much to my surprise they came to Chicago from Springfield - which is a little south of Chicago - and spent two days in the studio with me and we wrote a bunch of stuff. One of the songs ended up on the record.

Initially, that was going to be all the time I spent in Chicago. I was just going to do those songs with Park. Then I ended up liking Gravity Studios in Chicago so much that I decided to do the entire rest of the record there, for the most part. It was a very crazy happenstance fates-aligning kind of thing. Through going to Gravity and working with Park there, I met Ben who ended up doing a lot more of the record. It all worked out. Park was sort of the catalyst for it.

Shayfer and I were on the Will Wood tour together and became friends. Later on, Sarah and the Safe Word and Shayfer toured together as well. We always really admired Shayfer for his songwriting and his talent. I think he’s such a great songwriter. When we were done our tour with them, I had a demo for “Sparrow County Line” and I kept hearing his voice on it so I asked him if he would hop on it and he did. He very graciously was into doing the song with me and added a really cool feeling to that song by being on it.

Ratwyfe was recommended to me by Adam from Say-10 Records. I knew that I wanted another voice on “Bar In Hell” and Adam was like, “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Ratwyfe, but you should check them out.” I knew of Ratwyfe but I didn’t know a lot of their discography until Adam recommended it to me. I fell in love with their music immediately and asked Jasper if they would hop on the song and they did. I think their harmony makes “Bar in Hell” so cool.

We’ve collaborated with Jamee Cornelia before in Sarah and the Safe Word. They were on the song “All the Rage” on Book of Broken Glass. I just think Jamee is such a fucking awesome, queer MC. Whenever I have the opportunity for Jamee to rap on anything and it feels like the right space for it, I’ll do it because I love Jamee’s music.

Cecil Baldwin was a fucking crazy one because I love Welcome to Night Vale so much! I’m such a nerd about that podcast. My friend Kayla is an actress and I was telling her, “I need someone to do the preacher part at the end of ‘Devil’ and I don’t have anyone right now.” She was like, “Well, my friend Cecil might do it.” Then I put two and two together and was like, “Wait, are you fucking talking about Cecil Baldwin of Welcome to Night Vale? How do you know that person??” We ended up getting connected and I was giving him direction on how to deliver the lines on a Zoom call. It was a very surreal moment in my life. It was really badass! It’s a very crazy 360 moment for me to have him on the record.

You’ve said “Devil” was originally written and recorded with one of your very early bands. What was it like to revisit the song and give it new life?

It was originally a Go, Robo! Go! song. I think we recorded it in probably 2011. [laughs] I always really liked the song. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written. It was in my old band and it wasn’t recorded very well. I always wanted it to have a little bit more attention than it ever got. I figured, “Well, it doesn’t feel right to make it a Sarah and the Safe Word song, but if I’m doing a solo record it feels like there’s a place for it here” because it’s a very personal song to me. I’m really, really happy that it finally sounds like how I wanted it to sound when I wrote it years ago. This is how it sounded in my head when I wrote it and it’s finally there.

It sounds so big, so expansive.

Big shoutout to David Caplinger! He mixed the record. He was very patient with me. I had a lot of notes and a lot of ideas on a lot of these songs and he really helped get it across the finish line and sound like that. It’s definitely a big checkmark in my book to have that song completed in a way that I’m proud of. Not that I wasn’t proud of the original version, but this feels exactly how I want it to be now.

“God of the Woods” is my favourite song on the album. What’s the story behind it?

That one’s crazy! [laughs] This is another weird story. For this record, a lot of really random coincidences happened that made everything come together. I got introduced to a band called Bullpup through our booking agent so we ended up taking them on a tour. They were working on a record with Mike and I think Mike made a joke on social media that one of our promo photos looked like an old Venetia Fair promo photo and we unintentionally ripped his band off. I was like, “Oh my god, is that Mike from The Venetia Fair? That’s crazy! I love that band.” I ended up DMing him like, “Hey man, holy shit, I love your band!” Then we talked more and I realized he was in Brooklyn. I went over to his studio and we started talking and hung out for a day and then we made a plan to make a song together.

The next time I went over to his studio, we had no game plan and I had not written any part of that song. I would say we wrote 90% of that song and recorded it the first day we started working together. The vocals you hear on that song are the vocals I did initially and they were supposed to be scratch vocals. Everything came together so well that we kept most of what we initially tracked in our first writing session on the first day we started working together on that song. It’s really crazy! It came together the way it was supposed to come together, for sure.

“Wicker Park” takes its name from a park in Chicago. Why did you decide to name the song after this place?

It does! Gravity Studios, where I recorded the record, is actually right in Wicker Park. Of all the songs on the record, that one feels the most Chicago to me. I brought in local Chicagoan musicians to play on it so it’s all Chicago folks on the song. The day we were making it we were hanging out in the neighbourhood around there. I wanted to pay tribute to that part of Chicago and the impact it had on the sound of the record.

You’ve said that the inspiration for “No Money” came from growing up around jazz bands and “rock n’ roll gremlins.” Did you have a story from that time that you drew the most inspiration from or did the inspiration come from the experience as a whole?

“No Money” was such a fun one to make! That was another one where we were just jamming and I came up with, “Got no money / Got that face” and the more we were doing it we realized that’s a fucking great chorus! The whole record is inspired by my love of jazz, blues, and old-school rock ’n’ roll. I don’t mean Weather Channel jazz, I mean barnburner New Orleans jazz band kind of jazz - Preservation Hall kind of jazz. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to tap into. I love that shit. Real old-school jazz is so rock ’n’ roll! It’s so punk rock in the way that it approaches creation and artistry and I really wanted to tap into that.

I think when a lot of people hear jazz if they’re not with it, they think of the Local on the 8s Weather Channel soundtrack and stuff like that. That’s just so not the vibe. If you ever spend a weekend in New Orleans you know that’s not how jazz rolls. I always wanted to do more horns and jazz drums on a record. I wanted you to feel like you were listening to a rock record even if there were no guitars on a song. I want it to feel like a party record.

“Five People in a Two Person Room” ends with someone talking through a megaphone, what’s the story there?

This is a crazy story too. [laughs] Daniel - who was one of the engineers on the record and played a bunch of guitar on it - just started doing this voice of a sheriff while we were recording this. I was like, “You have to do that on the song!” He’s actually talking through a megaphone in the booth. There’s probably 50 unused takes of him just doing different bits as the sheriff. We spliced together the best things he ad-libbed into one thing. [laughs] It was so funny! We just let him go and do that character for like 30 minutes and kept taking the best parts of it.

Is that an actual law?

No, it just worked great.

You’ll be touring the US with Ratwyfe this summer. What are you looking forward to about these shows?

It’s the first time I’ve ever done a tour solo so that’s crazy. It’s a full band tour so I’m going to have a full band backing me up. This is the first time I’ve played a lot of these songs live so I’m really excited about that. It feels like the culmination of three years of work and now we get to celebrate the record being out. I won’t lie, I’m terrified about touring by myself for the first time but I’m also really excited for the challenge. I think it’ll be cool. Also touring with Ratwyfe is awesome! I love Ratwyfe and the fact that we get to link up and do some shows together is so cool and overdue. I’m just really excited.

Do you have a song that you’re really excited to give its live debut?

“Send Flowers” I’m really excited to play live and I’m really excited to do “God of the Woods”.

Which part of Sarah Rose Project, the album, are you proudest of?

It’s a corny answer, but I think just that we did it and it got completed. It was three years of work. I’ve never made anything on my own so it feels like a whole body of work. I really want people to listen to it from front to back. I really overthought the sequencing of the record a lot. I wanted it to flow really well so we tried a bunch of different tracklistings and I feel like the one we landed on works really well.

As a whole, I’m really happy with the process of where we started to where we got and how the album sounds now. I’m really proud of it as a piece of work in itself. I’m glad we got through with it and I’m glad it’s out now.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you’d like to add?

Trans rights are human rights. Fuck the Trump administration. Folks should know their rights when it comes to ICE arrests and if you don’t you should read up and make sure you know yours. (You can read up here or here.) Both me and Sarah and the Safe Word are united around the people of Los Angeles right now.