Essential 8: Sophie Sanders

Courtesy of the Artist

Sophie Sanders was born in Nashville the youngest child of a teacher and a songwriter. Despite growing up around the business though, her path to songwriting was a slow one.
She never tried picking up one of the guitars around the house and the self-admittedly shy child had no plans to sing.  She did, however, love writing - poems, prose, and even a book.

In 2011, she graduated from the University of North Carolina with a B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology, and a pending Peace Corps assignment. The next week, she had her wisdom teeth removed; it was then that she picked up one of Dad’s guitars - and the obsession came immediately. While she served as an English Education volunteer in the Peace Corps in Indonesia from 2012-2013, she practiced the guitar in the afternoon after teaching. Soon, she was putting words to music and realized that 10,000 miles of distance had convinced her that she really belonged back home, in Music City. In November, Sophie released her first album, Steep and Shining Spaces, and here she answers her Essential 8 where she shares the story behind the album's title and artwork, discusses writing "horizontal," the humility of heroes, and more.

Is there a story behind your album’s title?
For several months, I was going to call the album Still Waters. It’s the lead track and seemed to fit the overall feeling of the project. When I was living with and listening through the songs though, I was struck by the line in “The Things That Give Me Wings” that says “the steep and shining spaces that the song is sure to reach.”
I wrote that song after two weeks away from writing. I had that all too common sinking feeling that I was devoid of ideas and had probably forgotten how to write a song. Somehow though, I ended up on that melody and the thought that I rise up on the things that give me wings came out. It’s true. Songs give me wings. I can’t reach every steep and shining space, but music can. It’s weightless. It floats. And maybe, if I’m lucky, it will carry me with it. So I thought, what better title for my first collection of songs than Steep and Shining Spaces? Also, I’m a sucker for alliteration, so Sophie Sanders paired with Steep and Shining Spaces makes me extra happy.

Please share the story behind your album’s artwork.
I’m not a big fan of real photo shoots, seeing as they’re expensive and require all this energy and makeup and styling and, honestly, I just feel silly. I’m a writer at heart, not some model, or artist, or public figure who needs to be participating in a photo shoot, so I had known I needed a cover photo for a while but hadn’t planned anything for it. Then one morning when I was about to go for a run, I noticed there was very pretty light coming in through the sliding glass door in my apartment. I literally stood in the light, un-showered, in my long sleeve exercise shirt that I was about to go run in, stuck out my arm and took a few selfies. I took the one with the best light and most fitting expression and played with the saturation and such, and, voila! An album cover.

When and where do you do your best writing?
I like to tell people that I get my best ideas when I’m horizontal. My Dad (a songwriter as well) has always had a habit of lying back down in bed after breakfast. For years I thought it was strange, then I started writing and I realized that it allows all those early morning thoughts to settle. Oftentimes in the settling, I find a song idea. There’s something about that relaxed, just before drifting back to sleep state that lets little light bulbs go off in the mind. I also find that if I’m in the middle of a song it can be useful to lie down and let the lines roll around in my head. Sometimes I’ll write the rest of the song just lying there!

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​Please choose one song and tell the story behind it.
Sometimes I get in phases where I seem to always play the same thing when I sit down at my keyboard. In an effort to do something different, I put the keyboard in strings mode and let myself float off on the sounds of a symphony. I wasn’t doing anything terribly unique chord-wise, but everything adopted a heavenly feel. It was in that little heavenly feeling that I found “Sky Blue Sky,” an ode to earth and sky and sun and dirt. I actually finished that song on Easter morning, which seemed fitting. I wasn’t at church, but I was definitely at some kind of church. The church of song.

What’s the best advice you have ever gotten from another musician?
Most of my best advice comes from my Dad, since he is a songwriter and has lived, breathed, and risen to the top of this business.  He’s told me a hundred times that "how you feel on any given day is not a reflection of your career as a whole.” I have to remind myself of that on those days when I feel like I’m without song. It’s crazy. I can write four songs one week, then wake up two days later and feel like I’m not a songwriter, have nothing to show for anything, and am definitely going nowhere. He’s the same way. He’s gotten all kinds of accolades and is in the Hall of Fame, yet still has times when he thinks himself unaccomplished and irrelevant.  I can’t even say how helpful it is to have someone who’s made of the same blood and thinks the same thoughts to keep me anchored as I navigate this business.

Have you met any of your heroes? If so, how did it go?
I am lucky to have met several of my songwriting heroes. Lori McKenna, Tom Douglas, Mike Reid, Don Schlitz, Shane McAnally. Obviously they are all very different people, but one thing I find they all have in common is how incredibly humble they are. I think songwriters are so used to being in the background, and really not knowing if what they write is going to go anywhere or not, that none of them have a “look at me and all my accomplishments” attitude.
I have even been lucky enough to get to have a writing session with a few of those heroes (Lori Mckenna, Tom Douglas, Mike Reid.) I of course was nervous, but they are all such down to earth people that the nerves settle quickly. They just look at you like you’re a writer on a level playing field, with equally as worthwhile ideas, which is so nice.

Is there a professional “bucket list” item you would like to check off?
I don’t like to aim for things like Grammy’s and shiny awards because I think music should be made for a deeper purpose than those. But, that being said, I would love to make it back to the Grammy’s one day. I went with my parents and brother when I was in the sixth grade and my Dad’s song, “I Hope You Dance,” won country song of the year. I just think it would be cool to have a full circle moment. My little sixth grade self was a million miles from thinking that I would ever step into this business too. But now that I have, I can’t help but want to live up to what my Dad has done.

If you weren’t a musician/songwriter, where would we find you?
I would probably be a therapist, sitting and listening, holding a cup of tea and helping people feel better.  I do have a degree in psychology, after all. What I love is that songwriting, especially co-writing, is a lot like therapy. You listen to someone’s thoughts and feelings (or your own), sift through them, and find an idea in them with which to make something.  That act of making is always healing somehow, so a songwriter becomes a therapist, in a sense.

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