Sarah Johns is a throwback to the era when women with firm country roots brought passionate vocals and world-class songwriting talent to bear on careers they pursued with laser intensity. The cream of that era—Loretta, Tammy, Dolly—are, as might be expected, the foundation of Sarah's love of country music. They are also the touchstones for the dream she has pursued so fervently and so well, and they are the names that have come up as critics and reviewers discuss her music.
Sarah's is a voice with both power and subtlety, singing songs in the classic country mold amid crisp 21st-century production. Given her background, her natural gifts, her clear-eyed vision and her undeniable work ethic, it's not surprising that she has burst seemingly fully formed onto the country scene. What is perhaps incredible is the fact that five years ago the thought of singing country music in Nashville was a distant dream.
About that time, she was singing in her local church, something she had done since she was not much more than a toddler, when the man who ran the sound system approached her.
"You're really good,” he told her. "You need to do something with this."
It doesn’t get much more country than Sarah. She grew up in Pollard, Kentucky, a town so small it doesn't even appear on a map. There were few kids around, and she and her brothers spent plenty of time outdoors, "playing with rocks and sticks and making mud pies."
Sarah wasn't allowed to listen to country music at home, but by 12 she was sneaking Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette into her cassette to listen through headphones while mowing the grass.
"I remember when I first heard Tammy," she says. "I would think, 'My God, that woman sounds like she’s crying when she sings,' and I thought, 'This is incredible.'"
At 16, she got a car and was finally able to listen to what she wanted when she wanted, which meant her diet of country music increased.
While attending the University of Kentucky, she sang for about a year in a Lexington-area seafood restaurant called Regatta. Backed by a guitarist, she sang classic country and the likes of Etta James to crowds that included college friends, her father, and plenty of rowdy regulars.
"Lots of times they'd all get snookered out there," she says, "and one night somebody jumped right into the pond behind me while I was singing, so it was an experience. But I would make two or three hundred dollars a night in tips. I'd wear a really nice dress and those men in there would tip me really good. It was fun, and people seemed to like me."
"People should really hear conviction in a singer's voice," she adds. "That's why I love someone like Tammy Wynette, because when you heard her sing it was like her soul was crying out to you, and if some of that doesn’t come across, I don’t even want to hear it. I think when you hear a song, it should really move you."
