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Short version
This is an interview with Sarah Sands from Perth six-piece The Stumblers. Watch/listen especially if you want to feel inspired to live a full creative life and find opportunities for joy. The band’s latest single is ‘Rhyolite’.
Long version
The Stumblers are a six-piece band from Perth, WA, with members Sarah Sands (vocals, banjo, guitar, dobro), Dan Durack (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Becky Lodge (fiddle, accordion, vocals), Kirsty Ploeg (keyboard, vocals), Fiona Kanters (bass, fiddle) and Steven Rea (drums, vocals). It was Sands who joined me for a chat about the band, which formed not in primary school but because of a primary school – the one their children went to. The school wanted some parents to form a band, and Sands discovered that amongst the other parents there were some classically trained musicians. So they grouped together and had so much fun that The Stumblers was born.
Sands grew up in a musical household: her father was in a band that played regularly around Perth, and he was a country music fan. Sands says she came to listen to country more in her twenties, drawn by the storytelling, and it’s been a natural progression for her as a songwriter to write in the country genre.
Sands says that after becoming a mother she thought that she might have retired from being a musician, having been in bands and played with Durack in a duo for several years. But now it’s come back into her life and, as she says, ‘You find the time’, even if it’s writing a song in the middle of the night – or as she says, she once wrote a whole song while riding her motorbike to work, singing to herself then recording it on her phone once she could.
‘If the creativity is there and the energy is there, you’ll squeeze it in somewhere,’ she says. ‘It’s like a muscle … you get back into the rhythm of doing it and open your mind up to doing it and looking for stories everywhere.’
This was an inspiring chat to have – Sands also creates opportunities for The Stumblers and other acts to play in and around Perth, so she’s something of an impresario (or, rather, a dynamo). We did also talk about The Stumblers’ latest single, ‘Rhyolite’! And the band is working towards releasing an album.
Listen to The Stumblers on Apple Music
Listen to The Stumblers on YouTube
