Sarah Humphreys

Episode 11: Catching Ideas

“You can have amazing ideas while you’re scrubbing the dishes. We don’t have to be in this pristine environment to create music.”

Sarah and I launched straight in because, as so often happens when we get together, we just started chatting and all of a sudden we were off and running - tuning into each others ideas and experiences and making sense of it all together.

One of the millions of things I love about Sarah is she has an incredible calm and gentle energy - with a fiery and powerful core. She tells it like it is, with kindness. She doesn’t take shit, but she doesn’t dish it out either. She owns her magic and she owns her struggles. She’s a beautiful artwork of opposites - balancing herself, and anyone who she graces with her presence.

We talked about the difference between being independent and being interdependent and how we can learn almost anything if we want (or need) it enough. The idea of limitation breeding creativity came up, which is a conversation I love to have and feel like I could dedicate an entire episode to. Maybe one day!

I told Sarah that, in my experience writing with her and also hearing so much of her work, it seems like she’s a bottomless well of songs (I can’t remember if those were my exact words… but it was something along those lines). What was really cool is that Sarah didn’t play coy about this. She was like “yeah. I feel like all these ideas and songs are all there for me, and I just have to get still enough to catch them.” She owned the fact that she’s tapped into what so many people seek desperately for….. a creativity that feels alive and infinite.

Sarah talked about how co-writing helped her tap into this space and how things don’t have to be perfect in order to create. We talked about making money in the music industry, combating loneliness, issues that come up as a parent and touring artist and why she made the decision to leave her record label, publishing company AND distributor.

Aside from being one of my favourite songwriters, Sarah Humphreys is one of my dearest friends and having this chat with her reminded me just how important it is to find the people that just “get” you. They don’t have to be the same as you, live the same as you, or agree with you all the time…. but they have to get you. Sarah and I get each other, and this conversation felt like a big warm hug. I hope you feel that too.