July 24 | 4 p.m.
Commons Beach | Tahoe City
July 31 | 7 p.m.
Guitarfish Music Festival | Cisco Grove
When Sarah Clarke was a young girl growing up in Portland, Ore., she dreamed of being a soul singer.
“When I was a kid that’s all I wanted to do,” she says. “I can’t even remember wanting to do anything else.”
She listened extensively to female powerhouses such as Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Chaka Khan and Leontyne Price. When birthdays or holidays came around, her family and friends bought her new records.
“I had a lot of people in my life pushing me towards the diva-esque,” she says. “I had dreams of making music my life. But I had given up on the idea a long time ago.”
Although Clarke sang in the choir during her years at Grant High School, she went straight to work afterwards.
“These people are so good at music, it’s ridiculous. I think our destinies are intertwined. The sky is the limit.” -Sarah Clarke
“There were a lot of realities for me when I graduated in 2001,” she says. “The music people wanted to listen to, I didn’t feel a connection with. The Britney Spears and Christina Aguileras of the world; I didn’t relate to that. But I was convinced people didn’t want to see anything else. For some reason, I let that get to me when I was younger.”
Throughout a series of retail and service jobs she continued to sing karaoke with friends, but never allowed herself to go beyond that. Then, five years ago she gave birth to her son, Donovan. She was raising him with a network of support from friends, her mom and Donovan’s father’s family. She’d finally landed a steady job with insurance benefits and flexible hours. Everything seemed to be OK, but something was missing.
One day, Clarke happened to reconnect with an old friend from Grant High, drummer Terry Drysdale. He asked her if she’d like to sing with him. She decided it was time to give her old fantasy a shot.
“All those weird body-image things telling you your not good enough — at some point, I just stopped listening to that,” she says. “I just stopped feeling like that was the only thing. I stopped focusing on all that internal negativity.”
In fact, reconnecting to music gave her a newfound sense of confidence and joy that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
“I didn’t realize how valuable it was to perform and write and sing,” she says. “It’s not what I wanted be doing, it’s what I needed to be doing. It’s part of who I am.”
Now, Clarke is in awe of the multi-talented musicians she’s somehow found herself surrounded by.
“These people are so good at music, it’s ridiculous,” she says. “I think our destinies are intertwined. The sky is the limit.”
She moved back in with her mother to give Donovan a more consistent home environment while she hit the road and the studio with the band. Dirty Revival’s self-titled debut album was released to a sold-out crowd at Portland’s Mississippi Studios in September 2015. Clarke describes the group’s sound as “soulful music that encompasses real life.”
“We talk a lot about real topics on our album,” she explains. “It’s hard to write about things you face every day. I think our reality is what most people deal with on a regular basic.”
For Clarke, having the chance to share her stories and music with people around the country is the manifestation of a once-forgotten dream. And, there’s this thing about dreams: once you start really believing in them, they have a tendency to come true.
“We don’t know how we are going to make it happen,” Clarke says. “But we will. We have made everything else happen, too.”
Dirty Revival performs on July 24 at Commons Beach in Tahoe City and on July 31 at Guitarfish Festival in Cisco Grove.
For more information, visit dirtyrevival.com.
