The Bandleader: Sarah Bandy

Sarah Bandy has been a Nashvillian for only about three years, but as executive director of Youth Empowerment Through Arts & Humanities (YEAH!), she’s already made a huge impact in the future of our city, by giving the next generation of music makers access to instruments, skills and confidence through Southern Girls Rock Camp, the Tennessee Teens Rock Camp (for both boys and girls) and Rock Block, an eight-week program that helps kids start bands by providing practice space, gear and guidance.

Even when she’s off the clock, Bandy approaches life with a contagious positive attitude and enviable hunger to do and learn everything she can. She’s an accomplished jazz singer, she plays drums, harp, banjo, guitar and bass, and last year she went to Morocco because she loves North African blues so much — “It’s really hypnotic and rhythmic, kinda like psychedelic in this way, really meditative.” She’s always looking to learn and experience more, a rare trait in the age of know-it-alls — and it’s the young people of Nashville who are constantly inspiring her to do and be even better.

What are some of the things that kids have taught you? Flexibility. As self-absorbed as it sounds, it has been really transformative for me to be around kids in their obsessively self-aware state, and see how that still plays into my everyday life, and how it’s not very useful. I feel like it inspires me to shed that, and talk to them about shedding it a little bit.

Like focusing on self-confidence over being self-conscious, you mean? Yeah. There’s a rule we have at camp. Inherently, when you try something new, you’re going to mess up. That’s a big part of it. I don’t know how much you do this, but I do it all the time: You always say, “I’m sorry.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” or like, I’m playing a D and then you accidentally play an A, “Oh, I’m sorry.” You just say, “I’m sorry,” you apologize for yourself, especially women and people that identify as women, like taking up space feels like we’re already overstepping our bounds, which is total bullshit.

It’s true. If I bump into somebody who was technically in my way, I’m going around them, but I bump into them, I say, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Inherently we apologize for taking up space all the time. At camp we have this thing where if you say “I’m sorry,” and you weren’t hitting someone or being mean, if you just made an honest mistake, or you’re learning that you’re on a process, or you bump into someone or whatever, you don’t have to say “I’m sorry.” If you say “I’m sorry,” you have to replace it with an “I rock.” If I’m in band practice, even right now in my band, if I play a wrong note, I’m like, “I’m sorry,” and then I’m like, “I rock!” And then you go forward. The weeks after Rock Camp, I am like a superstar. I’m like, “Yeah! Everything’s great!”

You have learned to play musical instruments along with the kids in Rock Camp. Just watching the kids do it, is that something that inspired you to be like, “I wanna do this too?” Yeah. The first time I saw Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” played by a 10-year-old, that was like, “They can do that!” A big part about Rock Camp for me is killing the “cool” of making music. I just wanna kill the cool. Not only your heroes and people you put up on these pedestals make music. It’s really important to be like, “It’s for everyone.” Seeing that and seeing their tiny little hands make the chord shapes, I was like, “I feel like I want to do that.”

So if their little hands can make this chord spread, then I should be able to do that, too. Yeah. Totally. The first time I saw that, and I saw the change in some girls that week, I was like, “I deserve to give myself the gift of trusting myself enough to say, ‘Yes, I can make something.’ ”

I like that you put it that way. I like how you say, “allow yourself to do that,” as opposed to challenging yourself. I feel like new things are always presented as a challenge, and you’re basically setting yourself up for defeat by declaring a fight against this experience or this thing. But to be able to present it as a gift to yourself, I think that’s a very powerful way to package a new experience. I feel like it’s an important part about playing music for me, because I’m also in Nashville where everybody’s like a total BA in everything. I try to remember this phrase that my mom taught me, which is “Practice makes better.” Not “Practice makes perfect.” I play a lot of instruments pretty poorly, but it’s fun. I have a drum kit, and I play drums every day just for five minutes, but it’s fun. ’Cause of Ladies’ Rock Camp, I took drums, and that was cool. I also have a harp and I play harp stuff, but I’m pretty bad. I just make up my own thing. I play banjo and guitar and bass, all at second-grade level, but it’s cool. I know that carving out space for self-care, whatever that looks like, is a gift that you give yourself, and that’s like loving yourself enough to say, “Hey, you can take 20 minutes out of your day.” I’m privileged enough to have that opportunity, so I should take it and be grateful for it. So here’s 20 minutes where I can noodle around on my harp and be silly. That is the thing that is really cool and powerful. That journey, Rock Camp’s the only reason of, “Cool, I can do that.” ’Cause I was like, “Patti Smith, I’m never gonna be as cool as Patti Smith.” Of course I’m not! That’s a ridiculous benchmark.