Sarah Michelle Herrera is an American punk, rock bassist, singer, and songwriter from the Bronx, New York. She is best known as co-founder and frontwoman of The Tommy Lasorda Experience and for her solo releases on Insurrectionary Records NYC. Recently, Sarah Herrera was interviewed by ‘Fashion Pani’ Magazine and below is the Q&A session we had with her.
How did the band come together, and what inspired you to start the band?
Sarah Herrera: I’ve been in bands since I was 14 when I started vomitsemen. That was at I.S. 95 in the Bronx, I was later in Fentanyl Testers, Exploited Cocks, I was in RAPE! for a while Taking It In The Ass From John Holmes in was in for like a month and a half, that was going nowhere. These were all young bands. In my 20’s, I got to play in some bigger bands, and then we (I) just kind of figured it was time to be a solo artist.
It was pretty natural who to include. Jimmy (Cullen, guitar) and I played together in Pancreatic Cancer, we released the album “Yelling Freebird! At Funerals” which did ok, Miguel (Estrada, drums) and I were together in Exploited Cocks, and Jimmy and Miguel were both in Death By A Thousand Cunts, so it’s kind of a circle, we just naturally connected. Everyone knows everyone else in the NYC scene anyway.
How do you balance being the frontwoman and bassist in a male-heavy band?
Sarah Herrera: How about a male dominated industry? It’s tough. People see the blonde hair and the pretty face and think my music is going to be about daisies and puppy love, and when they hear me singing about gang rape and forcible mutilation, there’s like a mental disconnect. It really comes down to making assumptions – am I judging this person based upon perceptions or reality? It takes a two minute conversation with me to realize I’m not going to be singing about teenage crushes or love in a fucking elevator. Or a two minute drunken car ride with, as my fans call me, the giant pinball going down the road. I can show you some neat stuff behind the wheel after a few drinks. If you’d like to take me up on it, I saw something in a cartoon this morning that I’d like to try.
What’s the most rebellious or punk thing you’ve done recently?
Sarah Herrera: Besides pulling 8 albums and 11 singles from my three bands off of Spotify in protest last month? I’ve been told that’s the most punk thing anyone has ever done. So yeah, I’d say that’s a punk move. I’ll let you be the judge of that.
But I’m not gonna coast off of that. Punk is about pushing boundaries. I wrote what is likely the most profane song in history (“Song For My Niece”, off my EP “I Give To The Poor So I Can Have Something To Steal”). The lyrics I’m sure are online, I’m not going to ask you to print them here, haha. With my previous band, I wrote one of the most offensive songs ever (“Is It Really A Stereotype If It’s Actually True?”). I’ve been topless on stage multiple times (legal in New York State, btw). I’ve played many, many shows where there were riots, rapes, people getting hit with the business end of a claw hammer, kids getting stomped into pit pizza. I played a show two years ago with a bullet in my thigh. Thing missed my femoral artery by half an inch. It’s still in there, I thought it would be funny to just leave it. Punk isn’t always pretty. The show must go on.
Does the whole band contribute? Walk us through your songwriting process.
Sarah Herrera: Should I give an honest or diplomatic answer? Well, either way, the answer is no. This is my show. When I wrote the song “Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine”, off the same EP, it was a joke, but kind of a half-joke. That said, I know how to defer. I can play the guitar, but not like Jimmy does, he’s a pro, so I let him do his thing, and I don’t know anything about drums other than the very basics and how to sync up with them as a rhythm section, so I’m not going to tell Miguel what to do. At the same time, if my ear tells me something is off, I’m going to say so.
My songwriting process has really evolved. When I was younger, it was pretty standard: verse, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, verse, outro. Bang, you’re done. Ultimately, that just wasn’t me. I didn’t like adhering to rules, and now I just sit down and write whatever the fuck I want. Linear sentences, structured songs, a bunch of haikus if I feel like it, or the same single phrase over and over, as I did with “Drunk In The Studio (There May Have Been Others)”. Why should there be rules? Save the rules for orchestras and shit.
How do you handle creative differences within the band?
Sarah Herrera: I’m from the Bronx. We settle it outside. I’m only 5’ 7”, 125 but I am nobody to toy with and most people know that. Usually it’s just a little jawing back and forth, occasionally some pushing and shoving, every once in a while there’s some fisticuffs. I’m not going to pull out a boxcutter over a guitar solo in a key I don’t like. Well, not often. Occasionally we’ll settle it on the pool table, but that always ends up the same way, me giving the 6 or 7 out, playing drunk and still dropping a break and run. I don’t mess around on the table, and if you do, you have no business having a cue in your hand. I’m a punk, I’ve hit people over the head with a lot of stuff. Never with a pool cue.
Well, not my own certainly. I did stab someone in the eye once, but that was my massé cue, you’re allowed to do that. Encouraged, really.
Punk has always been political—how do your lyrics reflect your views on social issues?
Sarah Herrera: Some punk is political, some is just goofy. I like it all. Personally, I prefer to lean towards making a political statement, but I don’t want to shove my politics down anyone’s throat. A lot of people are coming out to have a good time, you know, maybe punch someone in the face for absolutely no reason, and they don’t want to hear my socialist manifestos set to music. So, I’ve written songs highly critical of American imperialism (“Support The Troops … Except …”). I’ve written songs that were simply horrible, real quotes from people who are revered, like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln (“Eat Your Sacred Cows”). Everyone in my neighborhood knows that if you say something transphobic and I hear it, you may get your throat cut. I have strongly held beliefs, and they come out in the music. But … at the same time, I’ve written four songs about how much fun drunk driving is. So, where’s the line? You tell me.
How has your approach to music changed over the years?
Sarah Herrera: From the time I was young, it was hardcore punk. That’s it. Straight ahead, three people on stage, thirty max in the crowd, distortion up the ass, loud and screaming and beer flying and ambulances outside and getting groped and broken bones and washing blood out of your hair the next morning. That was what I did, because that was all I knew. But you have to grow as an artist, and I started delving into the ska-punk of the early 90’s and I fell in love, and my sound kind of correspondingly changed. So when we had the opportunity to connect with Carl Horneaux, I jumped at it. You want to talk about a horny sound, this guy brings it. Originally we just had him come in for studio work, but when we went out on tour after “A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road”, we asked him, and he was like “I’m game. Just prepare for a seriously horny audience”. He wasn’t joking. One listen to this guy and you’re ready to set up a secret Instagram page or two for him that he has no idea about just out of admiration, he’s that good.
What’s your favorite song to perform live, and why?
Sarah Herrera: Wow, I love performing pretty much all of them, that’s like asking me to choose which player on the Knicks I’d like to punch in the face – how am I supposed to choose? There are some I don’t like to play live. I don’t like playing “Claude”, that song makes me cry, and I don’t want to cry on stage, that’s not very punk. It’s about my cat, and we loved each other, and did everything together, and then one day I decided to start taking Ritalin just out of curiosity, wasn’t hard to get. It changed my thinking for a few hours, and then for a week I just felt sick, and then I had a vision that he was going to die. I tossed the pills, and the next day he died.
I don’t like to play “My First Visit To A Whorehouse Didn’t Go So Well”. I love the song, but it’s very sad. I’m sure the lyrics are online, I don’t want to get into a whole story, but I was friends with a gang member, and he was a lunatic, driving drunk and screaming, doing 95 on the BQE passing people on the shoulder. He took me to a whorehouse in Jackson Heights, and while he was in the backroom putting his sting down low into some poor girl, I sat there chatting with a young woman in Spanish, getting to know her, her story, what circumstances let to her having to do this. I asked if I could pay her for the conversation, she said ok, and I gave her every single cent I had on me. And it was a lot that night because I had taken the over on the Celtics the night before. And then I went home and cried myself to sleep. José was killed a few months later. So that song brings up a lot for me.
What’s one thing you want your fans to always remember about your music and message?
Sarah Herrera: I put everything, and I mean everything, I had into every song, every performance, every last note. I left nothing on the table. Yeah, I’ve passed out on stage. I’ve gone on 20-minute rants about Bulgarians between songs. I’ve played drunk (actually, I rarely play sober), I’ve played tripping on LSD and I’m sure that was not a fantastic performance, I was probably ducking imaginary beer bottles instead of the usual real ones. But you still got your money’s worth. So write that on my headstone. Authentic. Real. Living. Breathing. Sarah.
Sometimes I think I’ll never die. I’m not religious, I’m not spiritual either, but what if there is a creator out there? And what if that creator wants me around? What if he decides “hey, I can make a lot of people, but I’ll never be able to make another Sarah Herrera, so I think I’ll let this one hang around for a while?” I’ll just live forever, and always be 25, and the world will keep moving while I’m standing still. I think about that a lot. If there is a creator out there, thanks, man. I’ve had a lot of fun so far. Hope I made you proud.
