Sara Thompson talks more like a girl next door than a funky blues chanteuse. But don’t let that fool you. This girl know what she is doing. Her career as a blues singer, which started less than two years ago, is on a mighty roll. Blues fans can’t go too far without running into her at yet another room.
Thompson grew up in a small town southeast of Boston. A high school jock, Thompson got into Stonehill College on a Volleyball scholarship. But she always loved music and singing, growing up with her blues musician father, loving blues and oldies. She thought that was the only music out there. She sang in school chorus, but she had never done anything serious with her music. When she couldn’t figure out what to do with her degrees in Spanish and International Studies, she knew it was time to major in blues
It was actually a painful experience that yanked her into her local music scene. A back injury pulled Thompson out of volleyball, and that left her free to get back into music. She went to an open mike two summers ago, intending to support a friend, and she ended up singing herself. The host asked her if she had a band. Blown away that he thought she was a working singer, Thompson knew what to do.
“I was really encouraged by everybody in my family and my friends to try and get a gig myself,” she said. “I went to a local bar, like this shitty dive bar, near me. I ended up getting a gig there. We had our first gig January of last year.”
“I hustle man,” she exclaimed. “I try. I don’t come from the school of just, ‘This is music and let’s just fuck off and let’s be a stereotype.’ I have a schedule, and I’m a professional, and I really want to make it work.”
Thompson is drawn to blues and oldies because of the music’s simplicity and its universal themes. She also grew up with it.
“I had this old clock radio next to my bed,” she said, “and it was set on the oldies station. I really thought that was like the only station that existed. I never understood why the other kids didn’t know that music.” It helped that her dad plays harmonic. She grew up listening to all of the blues greats, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo, Eric Clapton, Big Mama Thornton, and Etta James.”
Thompson, who could pass for a model with her finely drawn facial features and tall, Amazonian goddess physique, was a childhood nerd.
“I was tedious. I was picked on,” she said. “Probably because I was so different, I was always kind of older, maturity wise for my age. I never listened to the pop stuff. I never had posters of the Backstreet Boys in my room. I was listening to Aretha Franklin.”
Thompson is now busy writing her own original music. “I went into writing kicking and screaming,” she said. “It’s something that’s way outside my comfort zone. But it’s also the only way to move up in the music world, to get good gigs, better venues, better players. You have to write. I draw from the influences, but they’re by no means straight blues or straight standards.”
When recruiting new players, Thompson looks for professionalism, people who will show up on time, sober. She also looks for people who can play a variety of roots music and people who have energy.
“I can’t carry the entire band straight on performing,” she said. “I need people who are talented musically as well, the crowd can relate to. So, somebody may love the piano player. Somebody may love the drummer. Somebody may love the way somebody plays guitar. I like to have variety that way.”
Thompson does not know yet who she will use to record her CD. “You can probably get anybody you want to do a recording with you,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot of money if you want the right people and you have to have somebody who’s going to match your style. I have four or five original songs right now. They’re all a little bit different. I’m not sure who fits them best.”
Thompson will be ready to go into the studio in another month. “I’ve got to get it done,” she said. The quietly ambition woman likes to fly under the radar. “I’m not here to compete with anybody, I’m just here to do my own thing, and do it the right way, and do it professionally, the way I feel comfortable with.”
Thompson, for a newcomer on the scene, has been able to work with numerous big names in the biz. Thompson has sat in with the James Montgomery band and with the Philip Pemberton Band. She sang with Sleepy LaBeef at Johnny D’s in Somerville. “He ended up coming over my house for a barbeque. He’s a really good guy,” she said.
Anybody who has seen Thompson in person knows she could pass for a model. She had heard from an agency after a friend sent them her name and picture, but she turned them down. “There’s already a lot of pressure,” she said. “Pressure when you’re in front of people. Pressure to look a certain way. I am how I am.”
Thompson will tackle a new bar in Lowell called Brookside Kelly’s, a party room where she will play a lot of covers. “It’s just a really fun night,” she said. “People dance and people go crazy, and it’s a chance for us to do some alternative stuff, more classic rock stuff; get out of the box a little bit.”
Aside from being in rotation at Smoken’ Joe’s in Brighton, Thompson has spread her presence all around greater-Boston. She plays Maine, Plymouth, Foxboro, Medway, Holliston, Hingham, and many other cities. That’s a hell of a circuit for someone who started out in January 2010.
“I work really hard,” she said. “I put my time in. It’s hard when bookers hire you, and they hire you based on what they hear.”
Thompson said it blows her mind that she is doing something well that she, just over two years ago, wouldn’t have thought she’d be doing. She started out trying to sound like her idol Susan Tedeschi, and when people started to tell her to sound like herself, she found herself asking, “They want to hear me.”
“It’s so interesting but at the same time, it feels right. It feels right to keep pushing through this and to keep doing this and trying new things and going to bigger places, and it just feels right, and it’s really cool,” she said. “It opened my world a lot. It brought me into this whole different world, this whole different people, and this is the first time in my life where I felt like I fit in. It’s just so cool.”
Nice interview, that’s my girl Sara. I worked with her at Burberry where she would occasionally grace us with her gorgeous voice…since her and my departure from there, I have kept up with her career and our friendship and try to catch her shows as much as possible. I can’t wait to be able to pop in one of her CD’s when gets her songs recorded!!
You Go Girl!!!