Sarah Jarosz and The Milk Carton Kids Triumph at Gruene Hall

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Two days before the show I had the chance to speak with her by phone while she was still in Dallas. If Gruene Hall is a heaven for those who wish to sense what was and always will be great about Texas, Dallas is, well, a little south of there, so I confined the conversation to her thoughts about playing nearer to home. “For me,” she said, “Gruene Hall symbolizes the best of Texas. My parents always took me to see live music. I was always surrounded by it. The jam [at Charlie’s] is where much of it began for me and Gruene is where I saw James McMurtry and sat in with The Greencards for the first time. It was inspiring and since then I have never really considered doing anything else.”

That she remains on the same path is no surprise either. My recollection of her at the jam does not include what she sang, but I remember as she finished her number turning to my friend and saying, “I wonder what she’s gonna do for a living?” It didn’t take a prophet to figure that one out. Her exceptional gift was more than obvious and since then she has polished that gift with experience and education. Already, at the age of 23, she has put out three albums, toured extensively, played the Newport Folk Festival and Telluride, to name but two, and recently completed a degree in Contemporary Improvisation at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied poetics to strengthen her writing and trained under the renowned ethnomusicologist and musician, Hankus Netsky.

Of her latest album, Build Me Up From Bones, she says, “It is the first for the classical training to fully infiltrate my work as an artist. Hankus Netsky and I worked on how you allow a trio to reach its full sonic potential but leave space as well.” The work has definitely paid its dividends. The new album has reached a new plane of sophistication that has many chroniclers describing it as classical bluegrass. I don’t know what to call it, but it is brilliant, and I salute her at what is still the beginning of a career that will undoubtedly leave a serious mark on American music.

The praise here is not only because she has already done so much. It is the way she has done it that I find significant. A long way from Charlie’s, the girl has remained true to her roots while going on to travel widely and study deeply, writing songs whose themes often involve asking genuine questions of meaning and identity. Yet still she says emphatically, “I love coming home. It’s a reminder of why I play music. Normally when I play near home, my old friends come out and that’s not something that happens at every show. It’s a reminder that, after being gone and being turned on to new things, it’s always good to be reminded of your roots. When the road gets tough it is good to be reminded of why I am doing this in the first place. At times I have struggled balancing it all, but I have never wanted to rest on anything. I want to keep pushing and growing as a person and as an artist.” In the end, she says, “the human experience is one of the most important elements to reach. My point [as an artist] is to be a good listener and incorporate those experiences.”

For the young lady who says that what she loves in performing is the chance to “be personal within [her] songs and very outward on stage,” this must be true. In the course of our conversation I discovered that “Edge Of A Dream,” a song from her first album I pointed out as having identified the questions one probably should be asking at the time and place in life she was in when it was recorded was inspired by her mother, who writes songs as a hobby. “It comes from a song she began in her thirties, but never finished,” Sarah told me. All I could think to say was, “That’s beautiful.”

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