Interview: Sarah Jarosz (I’m With Her)

Americana supergroup I’m With Her’s sophomore album Wild and Clear and Blue doesn’t merely check another great album off the trio’s to-do list –– it marks significant growth for artists with seemingly nothing left to prove.

Vocalists, songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists Sarah Jarosz (guitar/banjo/octave mandolin), Sara Watkins (fiddle/guitar/ukulele), and Aoife O’Donovan (guitarist/piano) wrote this album over the course of several years in LA as well as nearby Brevard, North Carolina, crafting 11 originals that showcase a deepening of the band’s identity. 

Prior to heading back to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a Saturday, July 12, co-headlining show at Asheville Yards with Iron & Wine, Jarosz spoke with Asheville Stages about collaborating with her heroes, working seamlessly as a team, and the band’s connections to Western North Carolina. 

Heather Taylor: Your music introduced me to the octave mandolin. What initially drew you to the instrument?

Sarah Jarosz: Yeah! One of my favorite things to talk about.

I guess my first memory of hearing it on a recording was the Tim and Molly O’Brien duo record. Tim’s music early on for me was a big part of why I want to play mandolin in the first place. That duo record, Away Out on the Mountain, has a lot of octave mandolin on it. Also, I listened to a lot of Nickel Creek’s instrumental songs. There’s one called “The Smoothie Song” which features it. Some people call it a bouzouki, some call it an octave mandolin. I’ve always called it an octave mandolin because Fletcher Brock, who built mine, calls it that. I always have mine tuned an octave lower than a mandolin. I think sometimes bouzoukis have alternate tunings. 

Anyway, so I heard it and I always loved the sound. I was so obsessed with the mandolin first, and then I had been saving money in my early teens in case I came across one. Especially at that time, they were really rare — you didn’t see them often. Then in 2007, I was at the [International Bluegrass Music Association] convention and Fletcher Brock had a booth at the trade show. I saw it and played it for about five minutes and just had the feeling, like, “This instrument is going to change my life.” That’s when I started writing a lot of the songs that ended up on my first record. It just kinda unlocked something in me for songwriting. I’ve been loving it and playing it more ever since.

HT: Do you use it as your primary writing tool with I’m With Her? 

SJ: I do wind up writing a lot on the octave mandolin. I think that “aha” moment with that instrument, even when I was 16, was realizing that, even though I had this mandolin technique, and was so obsessive about the mandolin, when it came to writing my own music I was mostly writing instrumental music on the mandolin because I felt like it was the same range as my voice. So when I was trying to sing and play at the same time, it felt like they were competing sonically for the same space.

When I got the octave mandolin, it’s an octave lower and a little more in the same sonic range as a guitar would be, but I could still bring all the techniques over from the mandolin to the octave mandolin. That has continued, especially with I’m With Her. Really, a key part of our sound is how my octave mandolin blends with Aoife’s guitar — I would say maybe the most go-to thing that we do when writing together. But I also write on guitar a ton as well. I would say my songwriting is mostly 50/50 between guitar and octave mandolin, and then occasionally I’ll write with the banjo or with the regular mandolin.

HT: That’s cool and totally makes sense. Maybe working with multiple instruments even inspires harmonies?

SJ: Yeah, for sure! 

HT: I heard you recently got up on stage with Bonnie Raitt and played “Angel From Montgomery” at MerleFest. Was that something you planned on doing?

SJ: It was pretty spontaneous.

HT: Wow, nice!

SJ: Yeah, I mean I’m still not over it! 

HT: I wouldn’t be!

SJ: I don’t know if I ever will be.

I was touring my solo record all last year, and even with I’m With Her, we do these little VIP things where you can come early and you get to do a Q&A with people. And whenever people would ask me, “Who’s your dream musician you could sing or play with?” My answer was always Bonnie Raitt. 

And so, you know, I think the world of her, I think she’s as cool as they come, and so the fact that that happened — I had met her before, and I think the girls had crossed paths with her at different times. And she was just so lovely — I mean, couldn’t have been nicer to us and was hanging out backstage. And then, it was just one of those casual things that, when you’re at a festival, everyone's sort of backstage and everyone has their own dressing rooms, but it’s all kinda near each other. And just through the nature of that, she was like, “Hey, would y’all want to hop up on this song?”

We literally, I’m not exaggerating, after we sat in and sang the song with her, we all walked off stage after and burst into tears because it was just so surreal and so powerful. And, obviously, to sing the John Prine song that she really made famous — and John is such a part of this album for us. It just felt full circle and incredibly special. 

HT: Absolutely, so special! And imagine, you could still be singing that song, with these same women, in 30 years to audiences, which is such a cool tradition to carry on. 

Doing something spontaneous like that takes a great team. What else makes I’m With Her work so well as a group, touring, in the studio, and writing together as a band?

SJ:We just kinda noticed, from the beginning, a big part of why we wanted to start this band is that we have a natural workflow together. When it comes to being on the road, traveling together, we also just liked hanging out together. Any touring musician will tell you that’s a huge part of it — enjoying the company of the people that you’re with.

But yeah, when it comes to songwriting and arranging our songs, there’s a very clear sense of communication among the three of us. And I think because it’s not our only project — we all have so many musical things going on outside of the band — it makes for a healthier work environment. When we do come together, if we’re bouncing ideas off each other and someone’s idea doesn’t really work or it’s not landing, it’s very easy to just let it go. Because you think, “Well, maybe it’s not right for this thing, but I can use it somewhere else, like in my solo work.” There’s just not ego. It's with the band’s best intentions at heart.

It’s kinda amazing how our songwriting process has evolved. I feel like with the first record [2018’s See You Around], we were still figuring out what is our vibe as a band. Because we hadn’t toured much or done anything that extensive when we made that record. But I feel like with this record, it feels like we know more of what our sound is as a band. The heart of it is the sound that the three of us can make singing and playing together. And then Josh Kaufman [Bonny Light Horseman] did a great job enhancing that with his production –– not masking it. 

I love making music with them. I think we all think about life and family and relationships and connection in a similar way too. And so that leads to those moments like crying, walking off stage after singing with Bonnie –– I think we all cherish similar things about life.

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

HT: I love that. There was something like seven years between that first album and Wild and Clear and Blue. How do you think that you guys kept I’m With Her alive in the interim? Or was it always alive and it was just waiting for the right time to do the second album?

SJ: Yeah, exactly that latter — I think it has been funny with interviews for this album because a lot of people have said, “Oh, it’s been so long!” But from our perspective, it really hasn’t. And the [COVID-19] pandemic played a role in being as long as it was.

HT: Understandable. 

SJ: Just a bit of a block there in that seven years, but we started writing this really as soon as we could, with the pandemic in mind. We had our first writing session for this record in fall of 2021, and we basically had writing sessions every fall –– ‘22, ‘23, and we recorded the record in 2024.

So, from our perspective it feels like the band didn’t go away –– we ‘ve been working on this music a long time and it really was a combination of, like you said, waiting for the right time that we could tour it, and really focus our energies on it because we are so busy with other things. 

But also, taking our time — like, waiting for the right time and taking our time. Like I said, the first record, the writing process and recording process were very quick; we just didn’t dally. And this time, I think because we’re all so busy and we all have so much going on, after that first session in the fall of ‘21, we were like, “Well, there’s something here but we’re going to need more time to kind of crack the code on what this album is going to look like.” 

So, it was really great to be on the same page about not rushing into it and waiting to make a record until we had something to say collectively as a band and were able to tour it and really focus on the touring aspect as well. It feels like the waiting and really taking time to write has paid off because I just couldn’t be prouder of this album. It feels like it’s resonating with people and just playing these songs live has been incredibly special.

HT: Waiting and developing it was definitely worth it. I think the fans are going to be thankful, too. I loved the record. 

Living in Asheville, my ears perked up early in “Rhododendron,” whose hook keeps on playing in my head. Looking at the lyric, “Staring at the French Broad, clear eyed” — where did that image come from?

SJ: I’m so glad you brought up this song! Knowing this is for Asheville, I wanted to talk about that.

So, our last writing session was near Brevard, in a little Airbnb. We did the first two writing sessions in LA where Sarah lives, and then the last one we decided we all wanted to meet somewhere where none of us lived. And the most central and inspiring location that we could think of was North Carolina.

We weren't actually on the river. The first little idea for the song when I knew we were going to be writing in North Carolina, I had those first few lines. And initially, the lyric was, “Staring into the Asheville midnight.” And then when we got there –– we weren’t staying on the river; we were very secluded in the middle of the woods –– but we have so many friends in the Asheville area and we wanted it to be a river in the song, and so that’s when we decided to switch it from just Asheville to French Broad.

So many of the songs on this record were about journeys and seeking and kind of finding your way, and so I think there was that element of “in the pre-dawn lamp light” and kind of walking down to the water. 

So, I was inspired to write that first little nugget of that song when I knew we were going to be in North Carolina. And then when we got there, it was this crazy thing where I think I had maybe googled, “What’s a common plant in North Carolina,” and rhododendron was one of them.  And then we were taking these hikes every day on that writing trip, and we realized that basically the only plant we were seeing was rhododendrons. It was just one of those really almost spooky, “Wow! This is so cool that we wrote this.” And we didn’t know it would be one of the only plants we were seeing all around us in the woods. And that song was really emotional to write that together. I’m glad you noticed that in the lyrics. 

HT: I was curious, does the song take on a different meaning for you after Tropical Storm Helene and the flooding? And you wrote it before the flooding, right?

SJ: Yeah, it was written before. It definitely took on a very heavy — it’s crazy how songs do that.It was the same with another song on our record,  “Standing on the Fault Line,” which, like I said, the first two writing sessions were in LA, and actually the very first Airbnb that we wrote at was in Altadena, and it’s no longer there. 

It’s weird to have two of these songs on this record –– both LA and North Carolina, pre- fires and Helene –– kind of take on these other meanings. 

Songs have almost a spooky way of predicting the future or something. But it’s also the beautiful thing about songs when they do take on another sort of symbolism, and I hope it can bring some comfort for people who were affected by those things. 

HT: Your music definitely brings comfort. That you can check that off the list. 

SJ: Awe. Thank you.

HT: Last question. I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, and I want to end on a positive note. We talked about Bonnie Raitt, but having such a large combined network as a band, are there other opportunities or moments that stand out to you from this latest chapter with I’m With Her?

SJ: I think so much of our life as a band is just getting to experience cool stuff together. And it’s not from any one person’s connection or anything. It’s just kind of the collective spirit of the band and just the nature of being a musician and crossing paths with other musicians and collaborating.

For instance, we had such a magical time — we were just at Telluride Bluegrass Festival this weekend. We played –– that’s where our band started in 2014. We got to sit in with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and they wound up sitting in on our late-night show. And the Bonnie Raitt thing, we’re very fortunate to have created these connections with these hero musicians who have become friends. 

And even just our band. When I think back –– Sarah with Nickel Creek and Aoife O'Donovan with Crooked Still, their bands were a huge reason why I wanted to start playing music. There’s a lot of full circle spirit in this band and we have so many beloved collaborations with people. And even Josh Kaufman, who produced the record, who’s in Bonny Light Horseman. We’re just open-hearted, open-eared, and just grateful for all of it. 

HT: Well, that’s so special, I love that for all of you. Congrats on the album and I’m looking forward to the show.

SJ: Thank you! We can’t wait to be back in Asheville. It’s going to be fun.

IF YOU GO

Who: Iron & Wine and I’m With Her with Ken Pomeroy
When: Saturday, July 12, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Asheville Yards, 75 Coxe Ave., ashevilleyards.com
Tickets: $49.50

(Photo by Alysse Gafkjen)