Sarah Clanton visits Sundilla for the first time on Friday, February 21. Advance tickets are just $15 and can be found at Spicer’s Music, Ross House Coffee, and online at www.sundillamusic.com; admission at the door will be $20. Free coffee, tea, water and food will be available, and attendees are welcome to bring their own favorite food or beverage.
Sarah Clanton is bringing people together and building a feel-good machine. The Nashville singer-songwriter, who has brought the classical and pop worlds together with her use of a cello, rather than a guitar, to front one of Music City’s most unique bands, has been on a feel-good mission since long before she plucked her way into town.
With flashes of the classically-trained pop sensibility of Regina Spektor, and the sultry jazzitude of Amy Winehouse, Clanton finds herself in good company. A classically-trained musician who began playing cello age 9, Clanton grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist household, where MTV and certain radio and tv shows were off-limits. Then, her life changed in college, when she discovered holistic alternatives to calm her life-long anxiety, and the new sounds of the Greenville, South Carolina open mic scene. “It opened up this whole world to me,” she said. It was a world which Clanton ultimately traveled to Bonaroo, where in 2008, she saw someone doing something unheard of: “I saw this guy plucking cello and playing Fiona Apple and Gnarles Barkley, and I was like, ‘Oh my God’… I’d never thought about singing and playing cello at the same time.”
Things moved quickly from there. She attended The Swannanoa Gathering, a folk music and songwriting workshop near Asheville, NC, where she was taught how to strum chords on a cello and hone her songwriting. She found herself performing more frequently, and even organizing a couple festivals of her own like Music in the Woods – a weekly solar powered festival at Paris Mountain State Park in Greenville, South Carolina.. And by the time she left Greenville for Music City in 2014, she had already recorded her first album, and was doing 200 dates a year, playing bars, weddings, “Anything I could do,” she says. Things have progressed nicely; in the Spring of 2017, Sarah was selected as an Official Showcase Artist at the South Eastern Regional Folk Alliance in Montreat, North Carolina. Then, in late 2017, No Depression and Elmore Magazine premiered her single “Silver Lining” (co-written with Mary Bragg), the first single from Here We Are.
And at long last, she comes to Sundilla. It will be a concert that no one wants to miss!
“Artists of Sarah Clanton’s caliber come around only once in a generation, and if we don’t give her music the platform that it truly deserves we could be robbing ourselves of the opportunity to experience of our era’s most gifted performers… “I Can See You” actually took my breath away the first time I listened to it. ”— GasHouse Radio
“Sarah Clanton is one of the most unique and intriguing artists and songwriters in the Nashville scene these days. Her wit and whimsical charm shine through in the various styles she employs, and her instrument-of-choice being a cello certainly helps her stand out from the pack.”— ET Brown – Manager, Creative Services SESAC – Nashville, TN
“Armed with a voice as big and powerful as her cello, SC commands the stage. I’m truly inspired by her infectious songs and engaging performance.”— David Mayfield – The David Mayfield Parade, Artist, Singer-Songwriter, Producer
“The idea of going to see someone play the cello might conjure thoughts of a stuffy classical recital, but a performance by Sarah Clanton is anything but formal.”— Vincent Harris – Writer, Greenville Journal
“Sarah is full of surprises. Her demeanor is demure, her music is dark-edged with a satirical bite. She has imagination, bravado, and the technical chops to turn you into a believer.”— Peter Himmelman – Award Winning Artist, Singer Songwriter