Sarah Jarosz at Long Beach Fingerprints

I have my Tivo player set to record all episodes of Austin City Limits, and thus I discovered the repeat performance of Sarah Jarosz as the second act following Steve Martin and his banjo. Sarah is an amazing American roots musician just having turned 20 hailing from Texas. She just had "Follow Me Down" her second CD released in May 2011 and the first one ("Song Up in Her Head") released in 2009 by Sugar Hill Records in Santa Monica. This recent Austin City Limits broadcast was a repeat of the original performance from October 2010.

Trying to find out more about Sara Jarosz, I discovered that she was coming to the Los Angeles area in June to play McCabe's Guiter Shop in Santa Monica and the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. However, when I bought the Follow Me Down CD at Fingerprints in Long Beach, they told me that she was also doing an in store appearance after playing San Diego and my purchase entitled me to attend the 50 minute concert (and here is the link to my Sarah Jarosz Fingerprint pictures on flickr).



Now the new and relocated Fingerprints now in the Long Beach Arts District is a great place for an in store concert. Think of Fingerprints as a mini-Amoeba. The setting was up close and personal in the "book room" and Sara Jarosz commented it was just like playing in living room for a room full of friends. Plus being around all of these records at Fingerprints, she was excited to have the chance after the concert to wander the aisles and even buying the new Gillian Welch CD.



Sarah opened with Come Around from the new CD playing on the Mandolin. She was joined for the entire concert by 2009 Nashville Grand Master Fiddle Player Alex Hargreaves (from Oregon and oictured with Sarah in opening picture) whom I suspect she met at the Berklee Music School in Boston. There was suppose to have been a third member also from Berklee, Nathaniel Smith who plays the cello with Sarah, but he had to return to teach at Fiddle Camp back in Boston. Both of these musicians can be seen on the Austin City Limits broadcast, so watch for it to repeat again, or buy it when it comes out on a DVD sometime in the distant future.

Sarah Jarosz in some ways reminds me of another Sara, i.e. Sara Wathkins formerly of Nickel Creek now a solo performer. Several of the songs performed by Sarah Jarosz and Alex definitely had a Nickel Creek sound to them. In fact you can find Chris Thiele, also of Nickel Creek, now of The Punch Brothers (who played at Stagecoach 2011, see picture below) on the cut "The Tourist from the new CD.

Sarah Jarosz writes and composes most of the music that can be found on her CD, but you can also find Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells " which she played at the Fingerprints concert. She also adapted a poem from Edgar Allan Poe for the song "Annabelle Lee" that has a very haunting melody to it.

If you would like to become acquainted with Sarah Jarosz my advice is to check her out on Pandora Internet radio. Just create a Sarah Jarosz station, and you will hear various cuts from her two CDs along with similar artists. In fact it is through Pandora, that Sarah Jarosz introduced me to one of her Berklee music colleagues Sierra Hull. And believe it or not, Sierra played a couple of days before Sarah Jarosz at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. Sierra is another very young talented musician who will remind you of Allison Kraus and Rhonda Vincent who also played Stagecoach 2011 (picture below). As you become a fan, then go out an buy the CD, and help support these young artists.

With all of these great young Berklee bluegrass and American roots musicians wouldn't it be great if this young artists made a group appearance for Stagecoach 2012 which I suspect is the weekend of April 28 and 29, 2012. Maybe we need to make the suggestion to Golden Voice.