From Wellesley to Somerville: Blacker Finds Her Way 'Through'

UPDATED AT 2:10 p.m.

Never mind dollars and cents; upward mobility is a frame of mind. When we're talking about a musician that grew up in Wellesley feeling much like the central figure in Munch's The Scream, Somerville qualifies as an improvement. Singer-songwriter Sarah Blacker is movin' on up.

True, there's no 'deluxe apartment in the sky' here. On the contrary, when Blacker moves here next month, she's more likely to find herself in a split-level two-family dwelling with a claw-footed bathtub and a rickety, rustic porch.

And she'll take it.

"It's the kind of place I'd always overlooked as a potential living option," she said in a recent interview, sounding like she wonders why. "In high school, I used to take the subway out to  with my best friend, Jessie, to see live music nearly every weekend.  So, Davis Square holds many positive and formative memories, one being the long cement walkway with the somewhat frightening we'd travel along before and after the show."

Of her painful adolescent experience in Wellesley, Blacker said, "I stuck out like a sore thumb; people were downright mean and unaccepting."

Really?  Mean and unaccepting in the affluent suburbs? Shocking. After all, the burbs have always been such an inviting hotbed of individualism. I fondly recall my own experiences as a teen in Scarsdale, NY:  having a juicy beefsteak tomato launched at me one day, being tossed into a nearby brook by overgrown thugs the next… and then there was the flipped garbage can incident wherein discarded bits of lunch multitasked as my new fashion accessories. Good times.

 New CD is under way

Anyhow, for an offbeat kid trudging a rough road in Wellesley, Davis Square must have seemed exotic indeed. Blacker ended up at Berklee studying Music Therapy before stints in New York and Kansas. Somewhere along the way (probably in Kansas) she realized her true identity as a northeasterner and headed back. She'd been diligently writing songs throughout, which resulted in her debut CD, The Only Way Out Is Through. She began this year by releasing the disc and her move to Somerville provides a proper end cap to 2010 as she readies the follow-up collection.  

"I'm definitely working as hard as I possibly can," she said. "No matter how small, each victory keeps me going. That, and the fact that there's really nothing I love more than writing songs and sharing each little story with an audience."

Making it in the DIY indie music age

Blacker is an excellent example of what folk-pop ambition looks like in the new DIY music mess: she's driven. For now, she handles all the work on her own--sending the Facebook notices, booking the shows, mailing the packages, encouraging people to vote for her in various competitions, revisiting the same markets again and again to cultivate real fans… It's not for the half-hearted. But the payoff for her efforts has begun to really show. The placement of her voice in a Boch Subaru ad is a good example. Apparently Blacker had everything the car mogul "was lookin' for"--in a commercial soundtrack.

"The Boch Subaru of New England ad came about thanks to a competition where Ernie Boch Jr. and Radio 92.9 teamed up," she said. "There were thousands of fan votes cast for about 50 different contestants. Apparently my song, Smell of Caramel, made the top five, and then Ernie Boch chose from those. Who knows what the future will bring, but we have since been offered a licensing contract and are currently negotiating with the company."

Licensing deals are now a key revenue stream for indie musicians struggling to make ends meet, but even with luck like Blacker's, recording and releasing music is still financially out of reach--so she's looked to her evolving fan base for assistance. With the help of Kickstarter, she raised $3,500 which is another sure sign her efforts have not been in vain.

"People had been recommending Kickstarter to me, so I thought I'd look into it and see what might be feasible," she said. "I raised a couple hundred beyond my goal, but that ended up paying for the use of the service. It was a highly organized, user-friendly way of raising money. It's a bit more work to create a presentable product with worthwhile incentives, but it's made the difference in getting the new music out in a timely fashion."

"I've just completed my first year as a full-time touring singer-songwriter," she said. "I've definitely learned a lot, and am learning more as I go, but I feel as though I'm still a beginner."

If Blacker is a beginner, just imagine the possibilities once she really gets going.

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At a public meeting tomorrow night to be held at the Somerville High School auditorium, 81 Highland Street, Somerville Cares About Prevention (SCAP) will present the results of its bi-annual Student Health Survey.

The event will be formatted as a game show complete with teams, refreshments, smaller prize drawings and a grand pot of $200.

The forum will run from 6-8pm. For more information contact SCAP at 617-625-6600 ext 2570.