Sarah Beatty

Short Bio

Eclectic and captivating, songwriter and scientist Sarah Beatty might be best described as a clandestine drink of conversation between Joni Mitchell, Julie Andrews and Albert Einstein. With a voice as sharp as a silver-spur and dangerous as a diamond-backed sidewinder (Raw Ramp), she's a curious observer and constant inquirer of life's offerings. Bandit Queen, her latest release, chronicles women at the leading edge of social norms, graces, and allowances. It peaked at #1 on Canada's Roots charts, became a staple in Top 30 charts across the country, appeared in the Earshot Top 20, and planted her songs and insights square in the ears and hearts of bloggers and industry insiders. Far beyond the mainstream, it landed on international playlists all the way from Nashville to The Netherlands and as a live performer, she's known for enchanting audiences with warmth, wit, and messages that make people think.

Long Bio

With a voice that skips and soars, Hamilton, ON based Sarah Beatty is one hard artist to pin. Consumable by firelight, hers is a show and tell for the perpetually curious and equally incredulous. Thoughtfully confrontational, a spoonful of honey sweet syrup is all that accompanies the idiosyncratic insights, hard won sentiments, and possible sage advice she’s been working into song over the last 10 years. Her debut solo record Black Gramophone came 11 years later after a varietal bunch of Southern Ontario collaborations - as did the record’s Hamilton Music Award nomination and Top 10 roots charting. Now, with Bandit Queen, fact, fable, fiction, folklore and make-you-wanna-move-grooves get soaked in subconscious landscapes. Stones get turned over. Answers get questioned. And more gets revealed...

Bandit Queen (February, 2017), offers anchor to an exceptionally difficult time. “The recording began at a transitional time for me and my place was basically empty. Literally and figuratively. Important people that had been in my life were moving on or passing on, so I leaned on music and my music community. I figured it would be a good idea to fill the place up with music rather than with furniture. ” The critically acclaimed album is a genre-defying 13 track cinematic adventure that recounts tales of truck drivers, religious figures, prehistoric geology, upside down turned around folk tales, millennial graduates, and other characters Beatty’s met or made up along the way. But the root line is one woman’s stories, vitality, and wisdoms passed on in the most musical ways she could bring to bear, with friends and musical allies.

Snaked wires ran throughout her near-empty abode during a snowy December when Justine Fischer (upright bass), Matty Simpson (electric guitar), Dave Clark (drums), and Joe Lapinski (general wizardry) parked on Beatty’s snow covered lawn. All with notable and fabled music histories of their own (which include The Fred Eaglesmith Band, Rheostatics, The Woodshed Orchestra, Bronx Cheerleeder), the crew hunkered down with Beatty’s songs at the centre, recording 12 live off the floor songs in two days.

In the months that followed, some of Hamilton’s most active players got involved, including Greg Brisco, Steve Deeps, Troy Dowding, Sal Roselli, Steve Collette, Bob Doidge, Ross Wooldridge, Michel Dequevedo, Chris Skrzek, and Mary Simon for horns, keys, and background vocals. And what began as an intuitive transition reappeared as a mythological supersonic expansion machine calling “for all to dance upon the everyday mythologies that bind us to our perceived identities and to be whoever the hell we want to be” (A Journal of Musical Things). Written and produced by Beatty, it is through her own telling and guiding hand that Bandit Queen, the folk-fabled, “striking mashup of psychroots left-field countryfolk” (Cashbox Canada) shines a light on looking deeply at what has come before, and quite bodaciously looking ahead. 

Born in Canada and raised by an American Mom and Canadian Dad, Sarah had home towns on both sides of the border. Feeling at home in both and neither country quite entirely, it’s rumoured that a wayfarer’s notch was written into her DNA. It wasn’t until she decided to study science, however, that she began to really understand the often unscientific and nebulous worlds of writing songs and doing science. Little did she realize the respective rabbit holes of either of those things, but ultimately earned a PhD in Environmental Science from McMaster University, presenting her works at international conferences, publishing in peer reviewed journals, and touring extensively in Canada, Europe, and the US.

Along the way, she’s played world famous clubs (The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, Molotow in Hamburg, Lido in Berlin, and Ani Difranco's very own Babeville in Buffalo, NY), cafes, living rooms, and festival stages (Falcon Ridge, Summerfolk, Mariposa Folk Festival, Eaglewood Folk Festival, Festival of Friends), dropping jaws and invoking smiles in those who go lightly or fearlessly with her. Known for engaging and inspiring live performances, she takes audiences to new places, exploring and examining life’s soemtimes difficult offerings with warmth and curiosity. She’s opened for and shared stages with big time troubadours including Bruce Cockburn and Ani Difanco, up and comers My Son The Hurricane and Sean Rowe, and small time artists living and singing below the poverty line. All working to help make this especially strange spaceship a more hospitable place for all.