Photo credit: David E. Jackson
Dead Horses
It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that singer-songwriter Sarah Vos has a vivid fascination with the moon. It’s prominent on all three albums released by her folk band, Dead Horses, including the band’s new album, My Mother the Moon. If that wasn’t enough, they recorded that album and its predecessor, Cartoon Moon, at Cartoon Moon Studio in Nashville, Tenn., with Wilco veteran Ken Coomer producing.
My Mother the Moon by Dead Horses. Out: April 6, 2018
Last year, Vos was one of many people who made the journey to see the total solar eclipse. She finds a lot of meaning in the moon as a symbol in daily life. “I believe things are circular and connected,” Vos says. “This is our third record, and they all have a circular theme on the front. How things are interconnected and how we’re all the same.”
My Mother features some of Vos’ most personal and introspective lyrics to date. It finds her reflecting on her past and present life issues and struggles—a process she called therapeutic. Some songs find her trying to come to terms with a rocky childhood, while others were written after last year’s presidential election and detail life on the road.
Vos grew up as a pastor’s daughter in what she described as a “very sheltered community.” When she was in high school, the church asked her family to leave. She suspects it was because two of her brothers have severe mental illness. Her schizophrenic older brother, who was previously a straight-A student, started getting into trouble and acting more aggressively.
“The cops would get called to our house,” she says. “And that made the church look really bad. The church’s reasoning was, ‘If you can’t shepherd your family, how can you shepherd the church?’”
It was very traumatic for her when her family had to scramble to find a new place to live. “Everything around me got pulled out from underneath my feet in a time for my family that was already chaotic,” Vos says. They eventually got an offer from another church for a place to stay. She says that “there was a lot of compassion shown from the religious community” but also “a lot of judgement.”
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When she went to college at UW-Milwaukee, she started to struggle with bouts of depression. She felt helpless watching her loved ones struggle. “I had swept a lot of that pain and repressed feeling under the rug, and when I was in school in college in Milwaukee I thought I was great,” she says. “And, all of a sudden, I couldn’t do it anymore. So, I moved to Oshkosh.” It was there where she met bass player Dan Wolff and formed the band.
“When I met Dan Wolff and other guys, that was something I was eager to do immediately,” she says. “The band has been the most stable thing in my life for coming on eight years now. It’s something I’m committed to working hard to make sustainable, because it does bring so many blessings.” She used her songwriting to find the silver lining of those experiences.
“Part of the record is me talking to my younger self and saying, ‘Hey, it’s OK to be happy, and everything is going to be OK,’” she says. “It’s hard for young people who don’t have that tool box to cope with things. Situations like that can seem like the end of the world. “Now I just turned 30, and I have a pretty large tool box in terms of how I can cope with things that come at me,” she continues. “It makes me look forward to the future because you can keep getting wiser and grow is your discernment and become a better person.”
Sonically, My Mother the Moon is all acoustic based. It features stripped-down songs that don’t go all out and shoot for the moon but fit the mantra that “less is more.” “You have to have enough wisdom and security and even perhaps confidence to sometimes let these songs breathe,” Vos says.
Vos is glad she took this full-circle journey. “I’m happy that time is over, but it’s important to cope with stuff from your past,” she says. “It doesn’t go away. I’m still working on some of those things, but the record helps. Any way that you can express yourself often times is great therapy.”
Dead Horses play an album release show Thursday, April 5 at the Back Room at Colectivo at 8 p.m. with opener Benjamin Jaffe.
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