With a voice like burnt brown sugar and lyrics as raw as her sound, Sarah Farthing’s roots-tinged folk feels just as deeply as you do. From the ambivalent catharsis of “Aw Hell” to the slightly unhinged “Ghost” to the patient disquiet of “How Will I Know,” Farthing’s music skims the darker edges of human emotion. Her sound nestles into the junction between roots and folk, with a healthy dose of blues to match her heavier thoughts.
Farthing recorded her 2011 debut EP, Uh-Oh, in her living room with Juno Award-winning sound engineer Josh Rob Gwilliam. She toured western Canada solo multiple times and went east with Fransaskois singer-songwriter Vaero (of Young Benjamins fame), playing in big cities and small towns alike. She’s shared the stage with Canadian indie darlings Michael Rault, Colleen Brown, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, The Wooden Sky, and Elliot Brood, as well as expanding beyond her own genre to colaborate with hip hop artists like Gescha of the Intelligentlemen and spoken word artist Isaac Bond.
In February of 2012, CBC Radio took notice of Farthing and recorded a live performance of her and her full band at The Artesian in Regina. The concert was broadcasted in early June 2012 on the CBC Radio program SoundXchange. (this was Farthing’s second CBC live recorded performance; the first aired in December 2010). Over the past two years, Farthing has also been an active member of Saskamusic and a Saskatchewan jury member for a number of significant grants and awards, including the Juno Awards, the Western Canadian Music Awards, FACTOR (the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Recordings), and the Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Awards.
Farthing is currently putting the finishing touches on her first full-length record, “When Your Answer Comes,” which was funded in part by a Commercial Sound Recording Grant through SaskMusic’s Investment Program. The album was produced by Saskatoon’s folk-roots sweetheart Jen Lane and sound engineered by Josh Palmer at The Recording House in Saskatoon. This album is a darker, more mature and rootsier collection of songs than Farthing’s first release. It features the talents of Lane and Palmer, as well as guitar/pedal steel legend John Ellis (Doc Walker, Ridley Bent, Colin James), francophone songstress and multi-instrumentalist Veronique Poulin (Vaero, The Young Benjamins) and Farthing’s own guitar & dobro playing father Fred Farthing.
“When Your Answer Comes” is set for release on October 23rd 2015 with a hometown release party at the Bassment in Saskatoon. With a new clutch of songs and a strong vision, Farthing is ready to give her career as much as she gives her music. That is, everything.
A “smoke and honey voiced songstress” – Kelley Jo Burke, CBC Radio
“Sarah Farthing is a guitar-playing songstress with a voice that can be both heartrendingly fragile and impressively brawny — often at the same time.” – Craig Silliphant, Planet S Magazine