When I first discovered the one woman project known as Gardening, Not Architecture, it was at the Vans Warped Tour in northern California.  I was completely taken and captivated by the live performance, and I was seriously intrigued with the unique style of music I was hearing.  After I left Warped Tour that day I was left with tons of footage, interviews, and materials.  However, nothing stuck with me more than my experience with Gardening, Not Architecture.  I quickly became not only a huge fan of this music, but I also realized I was completely in awe and total admiration of the woman behind it all.  Sarah Saturday is well known for her musicianship, previous punk rock projects, her work on the other end of the music industry, and her project Earn It Yourself.  She even has the knowledge and balls to create an online storm of angry anarchist and shoot down all their criticisms and school them in their own views on politics and punk rock. However, it is her passion and drive that continues to push forward her success while being a role model and inspiration to anyone who has a dream and is willing to work for it. Sarah recently spoke with Ruldope and allowed me to pick her brain!

For the record, can you state your name and tell us about your music

My name is Sarah Saturday. My solo project is Gardening, Not Architecture.

What inspired you to start Gardening, Not Architecture?

It’s a project I started in 2003/2004 when my old band (Saving Face) was coming to an end in Wisconsin, right before I moved to Los Angeles to take a job working for Kevin Lyman and the Warped Tour. At the time, I was writing pop punk songs for my band, but I had these little dinky piano/acoustic/electronic songs that I was also writing and recording on the side that I couldn’t use for Saving Face, so I decided to do something with them for fun. I recorded some demos with my friend Beau in Madison in 2004 right before I left for LA. I created a Purevolume page for them under the name We The Living. (Fun fact: my brother ended up taking that name and using it for his own band a year later.) I continued to record for fun after I moved to Los Angeles, with my friend Wyatt, for the next couple years. After my brother took the band name, Wyatt and I changed the project name to Alma, and planned to just put up whatever songs we were working on. We recorded five or six songs, three of which were “If You Only Knew”, “Jabberwocky”, and “The Great Unraveling”. In 2007, I returned to Wisconsin to help my parents move out of the house I grew up in, and while I was there I recorded an EP with Beau at Smart Studios in Madison. I changed the name of the project to Gardening, Not Architecture after one of the cards in the Oblique Strategies, and released the EP for free download on gardeningnotarchtiecture.com in 2007. The first website was designed on an old typewriter. It was just one big fun art project to share with my friends and family.

Beau Sorenson of Saosin is the producer on this project which I think catches a lot of people’s attention at first.  How did he get involved?

This is actually a misconception that has come up a lot over the years: he actually ISN’T the same Beau as the Saosin Beau! I haven’t really minded that people think that, because like you said it does catch people’s attention. But no, the Beau who worked on the EP and the first album is an engineer/producer I met through my good friend in Madison. It worked out that he was in recording school looking for projects when I was looking for someone who knew about electronic music to record the first demos. 

Do you like this project better by yourself, as opposed to being in a full band?  It seems like you really have control over what you want to do and how you want to go about things.

As far as the organization, implementation, scheduling, booking, management, and financial aspects of band stuff goes: yes I love doing this project by myself. I was in bands for eight years — the last two years being full-time DIY years where I didn’t have a job or do anything else but work on the band. So I know how complicated and expensive it can get when there are a bunch of people involved. And the songwriting part is fun just because it’s just supposed to be a project that’s an outlet for this very specific type of song that I like to write, that I’ve been writing since I can remember but had never had an outlet before, in my old bands. The purpose for the project was always to just write whatever I wanted, not worrying about if it was going to be a hit single or whether or not anyone would like it, so keeping it a solo project has helped me to stay committed to the project’s purpose. However, after two years of touring and working to get the G,NA music out to the world, the project is in that sensitive place now where I feel the pressure to take it to another level, and record a new album, and figure out how to make it better. So there is some pressure now, both external and internal, that I’m trying to sort out. Like, do I want to try to put a band together? Do I want to bring in another songwriter to help me develop the songs for the next album? Do I want to start touring with a band? Do I want to try a new sound and move away from the electronic stuff? Do I want to add a singer? Should I keep doing the lights? Should I write more upbeat stuff or more mellow stuff? What do I want to ultimately achieve with the next album? Am I even any good? Etc. This is when being a solo project gets tough: when you have to trust your own instincts and judgment.

With Gardening, Not Architecture, you do things in a very honest and ‘organic’ way.  You even sew the EP labels yourself!  Does that make the process and your achievements that much more meaningful?

Absolutely. The more time, energy, thought, and physical effort that I put in to anything I do, the greater the pay-off when the project succeeds in any tiny way. And when something big hits, it’s the best feeling in the world. Like a huge sigh of relief, like “Yes! It was all worth it!” It’s a high that I want to keep experiencing again and again, making me want to work harder and try even crazier ideas the next time. There is no other way to get that feeling. I can’t buy that feeling or borrow that feeling. I can’t even experience it when someone else does the work for me — although that is still a great feeling! But I can only get that “high” when I have done the work myself.

Your live performances are very unique.  How has the response been so far with just you and a laptop or ipod up on stage?

Well, on Warped Tour I could only pull off the iPod thing because of time/weather/location/stage constraints. I tried to make it seem creative by using an oscilloscope as the carrying case for all my cables and pedals and stuff. But usually my live show is much more involved, with an LED “light wall” made from shower curtains, duct tape, and a garment rack — and it’s synched to the music through a program on my laptop, which is also playing my backing tracks, and I play in the dark so you can’t even see me. Very different from Warped Tour, haha! I feel better about the club show because I make up for not having a band by having this other crazy complicated stuff going on, and it becomes more like an art installation or a performance than just me standing there hitting play on an iPod. I always felt guilty about that when I was playing Warped — but just I reminded myself that I was there to get the music out to people, first and foremost.

For those who don’t know, you were in the band Saving Face.  Did you do things a lot differently with that band compared to what you are doing now with Gardening, Not Architecture?

Not really, actually. The lessons I learned from running that band and being involved in my local DIY/punk scene are still totally being applied with G,NA. The only difference is my perspective on reality, I guess. When I was in Saving Face, I was in my early 20s and had a somewhat naive perspective on the reality of the music industry. Also, I think people are just naturally more self-absorbed when they are younger, and I definitely had that “I’m special, I’m going to be a rockstar someday” outlook about myself and the band. At the same time, I think I was too hard on myself and the band — and that might be the same today with G,NA. My obsession with doing everything myself, never asking for favors, never piggy-backing on other people’s success or trying to force-feed my music to anyone has probably actually worked against me. I have turned down opportunities that I thought were shady, that probably could have resulted in getting shows, tours, managers, record labels, etc. But I didn’t want to pay to play, pay to get signed, pay to get on the radio, or pay sleazy people to do shady stuff to get that stuff for me. Unfortunately, bands do these things every day in order to get famous. And it works, but only for a short while before the band disappears into obscurity and debt, hanging on to the memory of their glory days and still dressing like they are 25 until they are in their 50s (we’ve all seen these guys; it’s depressing). That isn’t to say that it’s one or the other: you don’t have to do shady stuff to succeed in a band. You can totally succeed on a million different levels, especially if you are a truly good band, creating unique music that people haven’t necessarily heard before. I think when I was younger, I didn’t focus so much on whether or not I was writing the types of songs that could actually break new ground. I was writing decent pop songs and then backing them up with a lot of hard work and really great live shows. But, looking back, I think I ran myself into the ground trying to work on the band and didn’t conserve any energy for cultivating the art that my band was producing. Now, I probably care way more about trying to do something that is interesting, new, and different. I care more about contributing something of value to the art world — not just doing what I have to do to qualify, so that I can hurry up and try to “make it.” I’m still too hard on myself when it comes to accepting and asking for help — but I’m trying to get better about that.

I’ve read that with your previous projects you felt like you were “trying to be famous,” and if nothing huge ever came from Gardening, Not Architecture you would still be satisfied.  Do you hold any expectations or goals as far as this project goes?

This sort of goes along with what I was saying before, about questioning my goals and the next steps I want to take with G,NA. I’m definitely at a crossroads. I want to get some kind of return on the investment I’ve put in, of course, because I’ve spent thousands of dollars and totally overturned my life to do G,NA these past couple years. And I still owe people money for G,NA stuff that I need to pay back! But more than that, I feel a sense of responsibility to all the people who have invested in me and G,NA since I started touring. So many people have given me so much — money, time, love, food, help, energy — that I care more about giving THEM a return on THEIR investment than I do about making my money back or any of that. I feel like I owe it to all the people who believe in me, to do something great and make G,NA a success. Personally, I could quit right now and be totally happy with what I was able to create and build with this project. But there are so many people involved in it now, who tell me all the time that they see big things for G,NA, who are pushing me to keep going and keep making music. I know I would be letting them down if I stopped. I don’t really know what my ultimate goals or expectations are, but I don’t think all these people would be stepping in to help push me along if there wasn’t something worth pursuing with G,NA. So my only goal is to make those people proud, I guess.

You started working for Kevin Lyman and the Vans Warped Tour years ago, what was that experience like when you began?

I met Kevin when I was touring for a short time with a band from LA, filling in on bass. They knew him and that’s how I met him. I was 22 and in LA with nothing to do between rehearsals with that band, so I asked if I could come into his office for a few days to volunteer. It’s so crazy because in those two days I unknowingly started working on what would become my biggest pet project with the Warped Tour (the Kevin Says Stage), and I met people who would end up becoming some of my best friends. I kept in touch with Kevin after I went back to Wisconsin to my own band, and when things started to get rocky with Saving Face, I turned to Kevin for advice and he offered me a job. When I first started working for him I was wide-eyed and naive. I must have seemed like a lost puppy those first couple years. But, just like when I first got into my local punk scene, Kevin and everyone in his office and the Warped Tour family took me under their wing and showed me the ropes of the industry. I am really grateful to them for teaching me so much in the two years I was working full time in his office. Kevin encouraged me to start my own consulting company in 2005, and was my first client with Taste Of Chaos. He also let me continue to work on the Kevin Says Stage with him, and continued to mentor me and offer me the chance to try out my ideas. Getting the job in Kevin’s office was one of those breaks that you get when you put yourself out there and remain open to everything — I was working so hard all those years thinking my break would come in the form of a record label deal or something, but as it turned out I was also leaving a good enough impression on the people I met that when I met the right person at the right time, I got my big break — and it wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.

Besides being a musician, you run something called Earn It Yourself.  Can you give us a description of what that is all about and how people can get involved?

Earn It Yourself is a philosophy that I started developing when I was in Saving Face. It’s based on the Do It Yourself movement from the early 80s, but is a little bit more open-ended and applies to a wider range of musical styles and people — not just punk music, not just bands. It started out as a print zine where I would interview my friends who were doing cool stuff in music, working their way up, starting their own companies, and applying the DIY method in their approach. I would review bands and include mix CDs with each issue of really good unsigned bands that I had discovered through touring or submissions for the Warped Tour. In 2006 I teamed up with a couple friends to build a website that offered tools, resources, and advice to unsigned, DIY bands like show-trading, how-to articles, and zip code specific networking. The site went through a lot of upgrades and additions and changes over the years, but eventually got to be way too big of a project for us to be able to focus in any tangible way. But all the while, I was traveling around talking to people and bands about this idea of earning your success, working your way to your goals by a hands-on DIY approach, and taking pleasure in the journey rather than focusing so much on the destination. So I was getting the word out about the philosophy and it was resonating with a lot of people. The website became a place for bands to find other like-minded people to team up with on projects and shows. I started re-evaluating the purpose of the website while I was on the road in 2010, especially after conducting the Scene Meet-Ups on Warped Tour all summer, and then doing a solo two-month tour at the end of 2010 for G,NA where I really got a feel for the state of the underground music community and network in North America. At the end of 2010 I finally figured out how the EIY philosophy and website fit in to the changing music industry, and how people could get involved in a tangible way — how they could start applying the EIY philosophy in their own daily lives. I want people to be able to hear about the EIY philosophy and then go online to start working with other like-minded people on rebuilding their local music scenes. The new website which is slowly being rolled out is going to focus on staying local, getting really involved in your own community, throwing shows, learning about proper show and scene etiquette, being proud of all the bands in your scene, working together instead of competing with each other, and putting your city or your region on the map so we can create a strong network of venues, promoters, bands, and music supporters around the world, and not have to rely on the mainstream music industry to make it possible for good artists to have a career. None of these ideas or new — this is exactly what the punk bands in the early 80s were doing. They started it! I just think the torch got dropped somewhere along the line, and it’s time for today’s bands to pick the torch back up and continue passing it on.

It seems like a lot of bands are doing things for the wrong reasons or thinking they need to go about their success in the wrong ways.  I spent time with bands on Warped that just had been handed things without doing much at all it seems like.  In your opinion, what is the benefit of really staying true and doing things the Earn It Yourself way?

The benefit is that you get to live each day being at peace with yourself. When you go against your values, when you do something for the sake of attention or easy money, you create friction in your heart and mind that prevents you from finding true happiness. Happiness is what we are all after. It’s about asking yourself why you do what you do. Why do you live your life the way you do? Why do you make the choices you make on a daily basis? If you continue to question yourself, you will get to the truth behind your motives. Ask yourself, “What do I want?” Then ask yourself, “Why do I want that?” And when you answer that question, ask yourself why again. And again. This is how you discover the core truths about who you are. You might find that you are a good person at the core, but you might find that you aren’t as good a person as you thought, once you start discovering the motives behind your actions. I think when bands are too self-absorbed, or start thinking they are above other bands, or get obsessed with fame and money, they stop asking themselves questions about who they are as people. They start acting on impulse, doing whatever they have to in order to get that immediate false high that comes from instant gratification and sudden fame or sudden money. When you do something for the right reasons, and it’s part of developing yourself and bettering yourself, it becomes part of a life-long process. When you are honest with yourself, you find joy. You know inside when something is right or wrong. Applying the EIY philosophy means always doing what you know is right, even in the face of temptation. Staying true to your philosophy is about learning to love the process, and not focusing so much on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It doesn’t matter if you ever get to the gold, if you are enjoying every step you take towards it and you are always at peace with yourself.

Your Tumblr blog is full of baby animals, care to explain!?

I’m a huge dork. tumblr has started to get way too serious so I decided that I would only reblog things that make me happy. This usually means baby animals and pictures of food.

What are your future plans as far as Gardening, Not Architecture go and Earn It Yourself?

Stay honest. Help people. Make good art that is worthy of the space it takes up in the world.

Anything else you would like to leave us with or you want fans to know?

I wish I could hug every single person who has invested in G,NA and EIY and really make them understand how much they mean to me. They inspire me more than I could ever inspire them, and I’m excited to keep meeting new like-minded people so we can all work together on new projects and ideas.

I’d like to thank Sarah Saturday for taking the time to talk with Ruldope and I strongly encourage everyone to check out Gardening, Not Architecture as well as Earn It Yourself.

-rooka