Sage Redman

"Sage Redman -- a buzzing songstress freshly graduated from high school and well on her way to your iPod --" - Huffington Post

Wednesday, November 2nd marks the launch party for the latest issue of Esopus magazine, a non-profit arts publication out twice annually since 2003. The name is etymologically Lenape, but the Esopus Creek, which flows out of the Catskills and meets the Hudson at Saugerties, is the tributary of inspiration to the title -- if not the whole curatorial force -- of the Manhattan-based Esopus Foundation. Alone at the helm, founder Tod Lippy has reared Esopus to showcase artists in an ad-free context -- a superheroic feat in these dire times of hi-fi printed matter.

As lavish in its material reality as in its content, reading this magazine is more akin to thumbing through artifacts in an on-paper museum: you'll want to spend some time exploring. Esopus 17, in particular, is the second largest issue in the magazine's eight-year history, brimming with artwork, fiction, poetry, film stills, a thorough history lesson on 1877, Victorian-era rebus puzzles (the solving of all 32 could earn readers a free subscription), found objects celebrated, art commentary by museum guards, and never-before-published archive material co-presented by such media beacons as the MoMA Archives and Magnum Foundation.

As if its multi-textured pages, plentiful inserts, and print charisma weren't enough, a compact disc of music on a theme sticks to the inside of Esopus's back cover. Lippy's compilation CD canon has, in the past, included songs on the themes of Craigslist's Missed Connections (issue #2), subscribers' imaginary friends (#4), and spam e-mails (#8) by contributors such as Stephin Merritt, Neko Case and Carl Newman, The Mountain Goats, Kimya Dawson, Grizzly Bear, Low, and Dirty Projectors, to name a small handful. Issue 17's theme is "Fear Itself." A list of subscriber-submitted "irrational fears" range from your typical creep factors (spiders, dark basements, sociopaths), to less conventional aversions (lava, unlucky circumstances in reincarnation, public vomiting), all of which were collected by Lippy and then bent by bands he selected into 13 original tracks: Bishop Allen takes on a reader's phobia of buttons, We Are Augustines sing of sudden numbness, Sage Redman -- a buzzing songstress freshly graduated from high school and well on her way to your iPod -- croons about a house being overtaken by lions, and a collaborative track, "Redback Strike," by Will Johnson (Centro-Matic), Bubba and Matt Kadane (Bedhead, The New Year), and David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) represents the public debut of the four musicians' new project.

?An exceedingly special facet of Esopus 17 -- other than its [internal] record-breaking number of inserts (124 to be exact) -- is the inauguration of the magazine's newest serial feature "Analog Recovery." Edited by Magnum Photo agency's John Jacob, it will showcase recovered portfolios from acclaimed photographers who worked with the Magnum analog distribution system. This first installment presents work by Inge Morath, contemporary of Ernst Haas, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Capa, who invited her into the Magnum agency in its early years. Morath often covered opening nights, exhibitions, inaugurations, and other high-society fanfare, and in the winter of 1955 she visited Paris to shoot Bal D'Hiver, a dance on ice for charity, performed by European royalty. The costumes were donated by illustrious couturiers of the era, including Hubert de Givenchy and Christian Dior, and the affair was attended by, in Morath's words, "some of the most distinguished names in Europe," from the Countess d'Paris to Charlie Chaplin. Sixteen images from Bal D'Hiver, never before published nor exhibited, comprise this "Analog Recovery," and 14 of them will be on display as 23" x 35" prints at the Esopus gallery space, opening in conjunction with the issue's launch. - The Huffington Post

"One of the most exciting up and coming singer/songwriters I've heard in years, the young Sage Redman's music and live show continue to take huge steps forward. This is someone to keep an eye and ear on for years to come." - John Richards, John In The Morning DJ @ KEXP Seattle
- KEXP Radio

When I was a kid, I worked my shit out by skulking down to the basement in my parents’ house and banging away for hours at the piano we inherited from my grandfather. Every so often I could sense a presence come down the stairs behind me and just settle in while I perambulated across the keyboard. Eventually people started talking - they said I had something special. I didn’t care and I wouldn’t have known any different if they hadn’t said anything. But it took me another ten years to figure out how to begin to capture that essence onto a recording.

Seattle, Washington-based Sage Redman figured it out though - she figured out how to do it at sixteen. From within a boarding school. She sounds a lot older, but I am not sure what that means; I think I knew a lot more, felt a lot more, understood and saw a lot more when I was her age - before the dregs of life overwhelmed me, like it does so many of us. So if you didn’t know she is still half a decade from twenty, you probably wouldn’t guess it. Maybe it is the open-hearted, unfiltered nature that makes her sound so wizened. Maybe it’s that she cites Benjamin Britten and Daft Punk as influences in the same breath. At fifteen she opened for Martha Wainwright to critical acclaim.

All this to say - I never thought I would be one of those writers about music that made the distinction about an artist’s capabilities via their age. I sure resented it when I was a kid. So I apologize to Sage for being that guy. But kid, the future will be yours if you can hack the rigors of the road ahead, because you are amazing. And don’t let them beetles ever get you down.

Here is what Ms. Redman had to say between homework assignments when pressed with MusicZeitgeist.com’s notoriously incisive queries:

MZ: Who?
I’m 16 and when I first sat down to write a chord progression on my old moss green chipped upright piano four years ago, music composition engulfed my life. I live in Seattle but go to boarding school outside of Boston. I can’t really talk you through who I am, because I’m only just starting, but I think that my songs do the question more justice than any explanation I can write here. Music fills a silence, on stage and everyday. I won’t tell you a funny narrative in the middle of my set because I can’t think of one. So be ready for the next song.

MZ: What?
I have many memories of how music has influenced me. There is no anecdote or formula of how it all happened, just bits and pieces of things that lead to other things that lead to the next things. It’s really just a beginning. Last I remember it was Elvis Presley, then The Beatles, then Coldplay, then Sigur Ros, then Radiohead and here I find myself in somewhat of a new wave stage. My attempts at the Thom Yorke side of life amuse me and I don’t hide the fact that I draw influence from 80’s cheesed up hits, Spacehog’s bass lines and choral music. I got the first four descending notes of a new melody from a Britten Magnificat I’m pretty sure….

The first time I heard Hound Dog, it was blaring from the old phonograph in my best friends living room, late at night, humming the melody that would forever be the base of my early musical knowledge. I didn’t know it at the time but it felt like 1956. Better yet was waking up still humming it and realizing that Presley and I shared the same birthday. As a six year old, how could I not come back for more? I have been influenced by different sounds in different eras: listening to Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! all the way through and picking Is She Really Going Out With Him as my cover in my first show; spending half my summer inside KEXP radio station; and studying Pink Floyd’s The Wall in seventh grade. We’re talking Edith Piaf to Daft Punk.

MZ: Why?
Growing up in Seattle has no doubt had an affect on my musical roots and point of view. Pearl Jam’s Ten was practically on a constant repeat for the first years of my life, and I had a childhood obsession with the album paintings on the walls of Tower Records. I’ve opened at the Triple Door, Chop Suey, and other local venues in Seattle; places I’d drive by and only imagine playing growing up.

MZ: Until When?
From 6 to 16, from 16 on to forever.

MZ: Where?
Music is a water in which you don’t need to surface for air. I’m in and I’m staying.

- Music Zeitgeist

"Opening for Wainwright was 15-year-old wunderkind Sage Redman, a singer and pianist of immense potential whose sure, husky voice belies her relative youth. Yet only when Redman covered Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him" and "Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates did she distinguish herself from any number of female vocalists whose songs have appeared on Grey's Anatomy. But the young lady's obviously got time, and a helluva base to build on."

- Seattle Weekly