When I caught up with Aussie singer/songwriter Sarah Blasko, she’d just walked her son to kindergarten and was in her inner-west Sydney terrace home, sitting at her laptop preparing to loop some music together for her show.
This may sound very suburban for a three-time ARIA award-winner, but Sarah’s loving “just being present” and seeing life through her five-year-old son’s eyes — something she missed in her own religious upbringing.
As a Pentecostal kid, Sarah said she was preoccupied with the afterlife and “those little moments is what I feel like I missed out on”.
Since leaving the church, Sarah is now acutely aware of her son Charlie’s wonder and awe at a tree’s leaves or a puff of car exhaust smoke polluting the air.
“I just took a moment, I was like, oh, wow, that was quite a spiritual experience for me this morning, for like a split second,” she said.
“To me, that feels spiritual to be in contact with everyday life. I think my childhood was focused on thinking about the afterlife or all these things that are beyond what’s here… I missed out on a little bit from church because I was listening to people tell these sermons that were, in a sense, geared at adults.”
Sarah’s playing in Canberra on Friday 10 October, on the back of her seventh album, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain, which is a self-explanatory title about being a “recovering Christian”.
Her album was largely funded thanks to that Colourbond ad, you know the one, gorgeous cinematography accompanied by Sarah’s ethereal cover of Sounds of Then (This is Australia). As an independent artist, that advertisement paycheque was a godsend.
When Sarah’s tour stops in town, no doubt her Canberra-based father (a former missionary) and sister Kate will be in the audience.
Sarah admitted there were some robust conversations on theology when she visited her dad in Canberra.
Actually, Canberra was also a holiday destination for Sarah’s family, which has become a bit of a running joke in the family.
“The joke with us with Canberra is that my parents a couple of times tried to take us to Canberra for holidays, but they used to take us camping in Canberra, which is not what I think of as Canberra now,” she said.
“We were camping right in the town, like in the city, and then we would go bike riding. My parents just took us there to do that. We thought that was so embarrassing because we were teenagers. I don’t even know if it was like Lyneham or something like that, but it wasn’t bushy.”
What, no Questacon?
Her concert at Canberra Theatre will be a far cry from the Hillsong rallies or “conversions” (her first-ever rock concert) she used to attend near Redfern as a child. At her Canberra show, Sarah will be performing her debut album, The Overture & The Underscore, in full, along with her second album, What the Sea Wants the Sea Will Have.
Sarah Blasko plays at Canberra Theatre on Friday, 10 October at 7:30pm. Tickets: canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/sarah-blasko-double-feature-tour
