FFWD Weekly
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Cover Story by Mary-Lynn McEwen Sarah Harmer Friday, November 3 Quincy’s Poor Sarah Harmer. While driving through a reservation near Seneca, New York, after playing in Buffalo, she admits that she misses domestic duties. Not exactly cleaning toilets, but, you know, the Zen of vacuuming. Hell, she’d even trade with anyone who was willing to fulfill her duties by sitting in a van for six more hours. And while the other members of Harmer’s cut-to-the-chase band, Weeping Tile, are perfecting a 27-track bluegrass recording of Pink Floyd’s The Wall as Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Harmer herself has chosen the yin to that yang, going solo and putting out a breathtaking album, You Were Here, that couldn’t sound more personal or less alienated. "Although it doesn’t always come across in my songs, my overall take on relationships is pretty calm. I think in my own personal relationships, the power dynamic is pretty even," says Harmer. "There’s a lot of relationship songs but they’re not all boy-girl things. There are a lot that are just like friendships kind of lost." On the road since spring – and she’s only had two days off since the start of September with all the touring, media stops, and appearances on Mike Bullard (the show, not the man) – one can imagine why Harmer might have cause to write about friendships lost. However, the singer stretches to keep her relationships intact, even going so far as to write and sing a wedding song for an old friend she’d barely seen since high school. "I do sit down sometimes trying to write a song like Tin Pan Alley. I sat down to write (‘Open Window’) feeling like a hired gun. Okay, I’m going to write this song for a purpose, and I felt like I’d been commissioned, and I didn’t have very long to do it." Originally, the plan was for Harmer to sing a Frank Sinatra song. "I thought, ‘I can’t stand up in front of this church and sing a Sinatra tune.’ It’s a little bit too showy and not quite suited. It didn’t have to be my song in any way, just a song for the occasion, so it’s easier to write because it didn’t have any personal attachment." Other songs, such as the title track, were also urged along by changes in relationships, but this time in a darker direction as the song grew from the suicide of Harmer’s friend, Joe. "I decided to call the album You Were Here because there’s a lot of ‘yous’ – there’s a lot of second persons or whatever the actual term is, a lot of sentiment directed at another. It also was a dedication to my friend Joe." Admitting that most relationships in her life revolve around music and musicians, Harmer says that drifting along the highway from gig to gig is a natural extension of the fact that she never made a life list of 50 things to do before her date with the grave. "I don’t really plan, my life hasn’t really been that far planned beyond a couple of months in the future. I wanted to move to Kingston, to go to school there, ’cause I always loved Kingston, but I’m pretty much living in the moment. I do like risks, but it’s kind of wise to take stock, too – I want to do this, I want to write, have children, or get my cardiovascular fitness up. But I’m not much of a planner. Still, you have to plan to go to Europe, or record, or tour, or the time will come and you’ll just be sitting there." Despite the freedom of being on the road with just a guitar – a freedom Harmer first experienced while doing the small SOS tour with Oh Susanna! and Sarah Slean – Harmer will re-join Weeping Tile for their fifth annual Salvation Army gig at Christmas. She insists, however, on jamming with them first. "Then we’ll have some new tunes and it’s not, like, the oldies. We’ll probably make a jam inspired record where we come up with songs together. I miss the rock ’n’ roll." After all, being solo wasn’t something she’d planned, either, even after two albums with Weeping Tile, 1995’s Cold Snap and 1997’s hyperactive Valentino. "It was just the right time for me to get back a little bit to just representing myself and playing my acoustic guitar. I just felt like I needed to go back and just focus a little more."

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