Des Moines singer-songwriter Sara Routh lives her life with a passion, anchored by her love of music, family and making music with family. She also performs a rad acoustic cover of “Killing in the Name.”
Routh shared her story with Little Village with a trademark candor also found in her songwriting and live shows.
Talk about your music roots, those origins.
I feel like it definitely started with my parents. My dad is a drummer, and at 81, I’m still playing shows with him. That’s really a treat to be on stage with him when he’s playing drums. My mom is a singer. They met in the Don Hoy Dance Band. My mom was very pregnant with me when she was still singing and doing her thing [chuckles]. My desire to be part of the creative musical world started when I was in the womb.
When did you realize that music was going to become the dominant part of your life?
I graduated from Simpson College with a degree in music education, studying mostly classic music and performing onstage with the opera. I enjoyed learning the technique and practice, but the lifestyle wasn’t for me. In my senior year in college I decided to pick up my guitar again and started writing my own music. I found that was really fulfilling — it was my living journal, my musical journal.
After college, I [decided to] move to a bigger city. I flipped a quarter [between] San Francisco or New York City. I ended up in New York City for a couple of years.
The music that I do now didn’t come into full view until I took another leap and moved to Los Angeles and just kind of hustled, put a band together. That was back in the day when you put an EP together and went to the venue’s office and said “I’d love to play here, here’s my EP.” I would staple my show posters to the light posts all up and down Sunset Boulevard. It’s very different now. That was 20 years ago.
What brought you back to Iowa?
There are two things. In Los Angeles, the traffic was turning me into a very unhappy person. It was filling my body with anger. I’d realized that this city was not feeding me anymore. I was in my upper 30s, I had been married. I had to do something more, be something more. I was going to move home, inseminate myself somehow and live in my parents’ basement and have a child because that was for my heart, that was the next step for me.
How does the maternal phase of your life impact your music?
It’s always including our daughter, whether I know it is or not. Also, being able to gift my knowledge to other children, through Girls Rock! Des Moines, Central Iowa Music Lab, City Voices or my private lessons — it’s important for us to have music in our lives. As a mom, it was important to invite my daughter to be a part of my life, to come to the shows or sing a song with me. She sang on one of my tracks in the last record I put out, Brian Doesn’t Like Jazz Vol. 1. I also have two beautiful bonus boys from [my marriage], and Maddox sings in a couple of songs and our middle boy plays viola on our Rage Against the Machine song. Any way I can bring our family into the studio and be part of the process is an experience that they can take, if they choose, to their next adventure throughout life.
Being a mom is hard because sometimes I’m away a lot, and that’s difficult. But, I’m able to find a balance between motherhood and my passion for music. That’s what I’m supposed to do. To share my story musically.
What’s in the future for Sara Routh and friends?
I started a monthly project, the Record Store Roundup, that will continue in May at Vinyl Cup Records in Beaverdale. The program features an artist and an open mic segment. I will be presenting the Sara Routh Songwriting Retreat in September. And shows whenever I can.
There’s an evolution to my music and an evolution to what I sound like and how the production sounds. Some artists put out a lot of material and a lot of it sounds similar to the last record. For me, each record is a little better, a little more rich. I’ve really enjoyed making music with so many different people. Everybody does things a little bit differently, and I think it’s just another way of building community. The listener gets to hear a different side of that musician or that artist. It’s been a fun ride.
Upcoming event:
Sara Routh w/ Wally Neal, Thursday, May 7, 7 p.m., Alluvial Brewing Company, Ames
