Maine-based singer-songwriter Sara Trunzo isn’t a born and bred Mainer, but it’s her adopted home: its timeless coastal setting and the vibrant characters that inhabit it feature heavily in her new EP, Cabin Fever Dream.
Sara originally hails from working-class New Jersey, a daughter of an English teacher and a machine designer who attended Catholic school and sang in the church choir. Her childhood radio often showcased 1940s-era easy listening, jazz and American standards. Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole were her parents’ favorites — seemingly a world away from the songwriters whose influence she would eventually chase across the country. She’s the youngest of four daughters, and much of her current setting can, in some ways, be traced back to memories from childhood summers spent at a small family lakeside outpost — often called a camp by local New Englanders — in northeastern Pennsylvania. “We were the only family I knew back in New Jersey who heated with a wood stove, but I felt like I fit better at the lake.”
“It’s where I acquired my taste for rural, small town life,” she continues. “Everybody fished and fixed their own car. We spent a lot of time swimming, gathering salamanders and tadpoles, and watering marigolds. My mom is and was the best angler in the family.”
Sara moved for college and spent most of her 20s developing and working as the director of a food bank farm and food security program in rural Maine, called Veggies For All, spending close to a decade getting local, organic food into the hands of her neighbors experiencing poverty. The program fed roughly 1,200 people per month through a network of local food pantries. Trunzo highlighted this work in her song “Food & Medicine& off her 2019 EP Dirigo Attitude. The video premiered on Adobe & Teardrops.
“I Work Saturdays” was written during Sara’s 2019 Joseph A. Fiore Fellowship, hosted by Maine Farmland Trust. Taking its inspiration directly from an overheard conversation at Moody’s Diner, a midcoast Maine landmark and tourist destination, the song’s narrator finds herself lamenting the shortcomings of parenting-while-working class, social isolation, and making a life in a seasonal tourism-based economy. “She’s not bitter, though, and not willing to feel like a victim,” Sara is quick to point out. “She can affirm herself without being all rose-colored-glasses about it and without perpetuating the myth that she’d be doing better if only she’d just pull on her bootstraps. She’s pulling, her life is still tough, but she’s not giving up her joy without a fight.”
Trunzo’s voice delivers this complex mix of emotions with tenderness and joy, a sense of empathy that few songwriters can attain. In our interview, Trunzo advises us to songwrite “by appointment” and why country radio should be a working-class “megaphone.”
Name a perfect song and tell us why you feel that way.
“You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” is possibly the best song ever written. Its beauty (imagery, melody, fit for voice) is matched by the empathy listeners will feel as they are lead through Darrell Scott’s real family story. The dynamic rise of the chorus and the lyrical dips into dark valleys exemplify the interplay of light and shadow that Darrell masters in so many of his songs. For me personally— it strikes the perfect notes of lifting up un-romanticized, often-exploited rural stories with dignity and with the specificity of a particular geography/bioregion/community. His writing convinced me to take the leap into songwriting, truly changing my life.
Explain the title of your album.
‘Cabin fever dream’ is a line from the lead single, “Liberty Tool.” A friend suggested that was a good title for the EP, back in the end of 2019, and I held onto the idea. In the song it means that, what the narrator is feeling isn’t just a delusion rooted in staying cooped up all dark winter in Maine. It’s like, no matter the weather or circumstance or weather, she’s depressed right now; this relationship is dying a slow death that can’t be stopped. With the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lock-downs, social isolation, etc. it sort of means something new now. And it’s always interesting when meanings change along the way.
Does the EP have an overarching theme?
This EP encapsulates some stories, places, and voices of the last chapter of my life, between the time I left Maine and farming for Nashville and songwriting — and when I came back north during the pandemic. I’ve been somewhat migratory between the north and south, a rural community and Music City, new rivers and old familiar coastlines. So it’s not one cohesive theme, but sense of place (specifically Maine and Nashville) and shifting relationships figure largely. My producer Rachael Moore (T Bone Burnett, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss) and I worked intentionally to keep the sound ‘timeless but not placeless.’
Do you have any songwriting tips you can share?
Generally, I feel like I can’t give more tips except to pay attention to what the idea wants to be and deliver it as real as possible. On a technical side…some songs from this EP, Cabin Fever Dream, and song cycle were written ‘by appointment’. For instance, I had the melodic and lyrical idea for ‘Nashville Time’ and one of the tunes in my voice memos and notebook over a year before I made anything of it. I made myself keep a 30 minute appointment daily and it came right together as soon as I gave it the dedicated space. I’d not used that method before, but recommend it if you’re wrestling with a song you are avoiding despite its promise.
How are you using your platform to support marginalized people?
Before pursuing songwriting— and then again once the pandemic hit and my 2020 tours folded— I was a full time community organizer working in food security. My food systems work has always worked hand-in-glove with my creative work; I’d love for music to one day be lucrative enough to support my community work financially. Rural voices— lifted up without varnish, romanticism, or commodification— are the center of the target for my writing and what I believe is missing so sorely from mainstream country music. Country radio could be a populist megaphone for progressive social change, but it misses the mark again and again. Songs like “Food and Medicine” (from my 2019 LP Dirigo Attitude) and this one, “I Work Saturdays”, squarely address issues like minimum wage, food access, and socioeconomic challenges of rural life.