Sarah Herrera doesn’t do subtle. As the bass-playing, tequila-drinking, rule-breaking mastermind behind The Tommy Lasorda Experience and Pancreatic Cancer, she’s spent years making music that’s as unpredictable as it is brutally honest. Now, with her solo album Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine and the upcoming Yelling “Freebird!” At Funerals, she’s got even more madness to unleash on the world. Whether she’s crafting songs out of JFK quotes, recording vocals while hammered, or getting booked at non-existent venues by a rogue manager, Herrera embraces the absurd at every turn. In this interview, she talks about her love for VR porn, her hatred for Gmail users, and why she’ll physically fight anyone who calls her “ordinary.” Consider yourself warned.
- You’ve played in several bands with, let’s say, “colorful” names. How does each experience shape your sound and approach to music?
Sarah Herrera: My experience in each band really brought something a little different to the table. When I was in RAPE!, it was all about going in a more hardcore direction. Exploited Cocks really pushed me in the direction of ska and ska-punk. These are two very different styles of musicianship – in RAPE!, I was just basically screaming, whereas in other bands I really had to emote with my vocals and play cleaner bass lines. And in Taking It In The Ass from John Holmes, my first band when I was 14, it was really more about learning not to be terrified playing in front of an audience and trying to remember the actual songs I had written. I had heard in an interview with some musician or other that the trick was to imagine the audience naked. I’m severely dyslexic and get confused often, so instead I started imagining myself naked on stage with everyone pointing and laughing. As I got older and my substance abuse problems became more severe, that did actually happen at shows more than once.
- Pancreatic Cancer is dropping an album soon. What inspired this project, and how does it differ from The Tommy Lasorda Experience?
Sarah Herrera: Well, actually not a huge difference, Pancreatic Cancer was my previous band, and it’s still me and Jimmy, only my brother Matt is on drums. So, the sound is very similar – vocals, guitar, bass – the only difference is that Matt is classically trained in playing Jamaican steel drums. So we’re at shows trying to play some punk and he’s standing there in shorts and a floral shirt playing this huge steel drum and asking for tips. I think he tried to braid some girl’s hair once. I guess that’s why we went with Miguel when we started The Tommy Lasorda Experience. Matt’s my brother, and I love him, but sometimes after I show I could just murder him by running him over with my car when I was drunk when we younger!
- Your solo album ‘Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine’ is coming out soon. What do you hope listeners take away from it?
Sarah Herrera: Oh boy. I want them to feel. I want them to think. I want them to laugh, and to cry. Mostly I want them to soil their pants. Really the excretion of any bodily fluid, preferably onto someone else – that’s my goal with this album
- You mentioned ‘The Ungodly Document’ as a lyrical source for this album. What’s the weirdest or most unexpected line that made it into a song?
Sarah Herrera: Can I have 40 lines tied for first? Haha. So, this document was something I (apparently) wrote during a 3-day blackout. It is nearly 40 pages of single spaced sentences, one after another. For some reason, every single sentence contained the words “paying taxes”, “my lawyer”, “drink and drive”, “rape/molest”, “homosexuals”, or “stealing” So I’ll give you one that follows the rule, and a weird exception that I found. I really love the line “I like paying taxes so they can find out why a grasshopper is green”. That speaks to me. There was also a line in there that said “I am a skinhead because my penis is a skinhead”. When I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, that line is usually in my head.
- Your creative process for ‘Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine’ involved watching movies and pulling lyrics from them. Did any film stand out as particularly inspiring?
Sarah Herrera: All of them! I can’t choose between my seven favorite films, that’s like choosing between punching a cop and punching a firefighter – how do you choose? My one regret is that I had already adapted (stole) lines from A Clockwork Orange for an earlier album, and couldn’t reuse it. That would have been cool. I love TV and movies. Our song What’s Happenin’ (from the album The May Have Been Others) is about the show of the same name, and a much earlier song was basically an endorsement for Shirl from that show for President, and there are an enormous amount of Sanford and Son references in our music. I don’t know, I guess I just want to go back to the 1970’s. And be Black.
- ‘How do you balance writing music for your solo work, The Tommy Lasorda Experience, and Pancreatic Cancer? Do you approach them differently?’
Sarah Herrera: I do. This is a little difficult to talk about, but I suffer from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), what in the bad old days was called multiple personalities. There was some childhood trauma involving circus clowns and the country of Bulgaria, it’s hard to get into. But, for instance, being in the Tommy Lasorda Experience is stressful, we’re a big band, the other ones are pretty small. When I get overly stressed, or scared, sometimes Jessica comes out. This is what they told me at the hospital, it’s not something I’m conscious for. And her style of writing is very different from mine. She writes about sunshine and lollipops, and I have to go back and change sunshine to rape and lollipops to drink and drive.
- Your band has recorded songs backwards because of your dyslexia, and then had your producer reverse them in the studio. How insane is that? Have you ever considered just releasing an entire album in reverse for the hell of it?
Sarah Herrera: It’s something I thought about very briefly, but the only problem is that very few people would be able to listen to it other than myself and the others in the support group. But yes, it’s challenging. I do the cover art, and then our record label has to reverse it because I did it backwards, and then if I’m wearing a t-shirt with a band’s name on it or my Dispoze-A-Bowl t-shirt, that comes out reversed because of reversing a backwards image is like triple backwards or something. It’s an adjustment. Oddly, I signal the wrong way when I’m driving sober, and then correctly when I’m hammered. It’s weird.
- If you could resurrect one of your old bands for a one-night-only show, which one would it be and why?
Sarah Herrera: probably Taking It In The Ass From John Holmes, just because I would love to be 14 again. For multiple reasons – life was more carefree, everything was simpler, and my alcohol tolerance was much lower. Could get a nice buzz off three six packs instead of the intake I need today. Also coke was way cheaper.
- You’ve written and performed in multiple languages—kind of. How did Google Translate influence your Spanish songs, and have native speakers ever corrected your lyrics?
Sarah Herrera: Oh, haha. Yes, English, Spanish and German. The English and German are fluent, the Spanish is non-existent. I did take singing lessons with Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban salsa singer (salsa is kind of my jam, by the way) and he taught me how to roll my r’s properly and all that. Do I know what I’m singing? Not in the least. It’s all phonetic. And backwards. One neat thing, there’s a line in one song that was taken from you can probably guess where, “I am not a prostitute because I am only a slut”. That doesn’t rhyme. When you translate it into Spanish, prostituta and puta actually rhyme. Kind of a neat accident.
- The track list for the album ‘Yelling “Freebird!” At Funerals’ is wild. Which song are you most excited for people to hear, and why?
Sarah Herrera: Wow, you’re asking me to choose between punching a meter maid and a priest again – how to decide? I’ll give a few answers. “Aloha Spicoli” is probably the best song musically. “Eat Your Sacred Cows” I am most proud of lyrically. I am very much not excited for people to hear “No Anesthesia (bass solo)”, that’s just me playing bass in the studio and swearing and yelling at myself, and it was recorded and released without my knowledge. But on balance, the song I’m excited for people to hear is “It’s Time To Get Serious About Drunk Driving”. So many people are just not taking drunk driving seriously, they need to know the basic rules I have outlined in the song so as to not get caught or hit too many people, and just relax and enjoy being a giant pinball going down the road.
- You grew up with a Colombian father but didn’t speak Spanish at home. Has this influenced your identity as an artist in unexpected ways?
Sarah Herrera: It has and it hasn’t. I’m greatly interested in the culture and the language. But Miguel (Estrada, the drummer) is Latin, and I hate him for the way he treats me. Maybe that makes me Anti Semitic, I don’t know. You should see the video for Full Disclosure (I Am A Stalker) that we just did, it’s up to like 20,000 views on YouTube already. The videographer asked me to just walk around and try to be sexy. I’ve got the goods, so I did as he asked, all the stripper moves I learned as a child, et cetera. The video premiered, and spliced in between footage of me being sexy were clips of the guys in the band sitting on couch laughing at me. Welcome to being a chick in a male dominated genre. I should have just made music like Taylor Swift or some other shitty pop singer.
- You have a song called ‘I Like To Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road’. What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened on the road?
Sarah Herrera: My lawyer has told me to never answer that, and my lawyer is three lawyers.
- You’ve toured in some questionable ways. What’s the most absurd fake gig your manager has ever tried to book?
Sarah Herrera: Want a list? Cemeteries. Crematoriums. The Museum of Saliva. The Bronx Psychiatric Center. A yarn store. A NAMBLA chapter meeting. The Museum of Saliva. Homeless Shelters. Dunkin’ Donuts, Archie Bunker’s House, dialysis centers, train platforms, the men’s room at Meadowlands Arena, the list goes on. There’s something very wrong with the guy. The opening night of our tour, he scheduled a show in front of my apartment building, so of course there are tickets on sale right now that literally list my home address on it. I’m not coming out of the building that’s for sure, I don’t want my neighbors knowing what I do for a living – they think I’m adult film star, and I prefer it stay that way. Maybe I’ll do a Mardi Gras out the window if there’s a demand.
- If you could force one of your songs onto the Billboard charts just to confuse the general public, which one would it be?
Sarah Herrera: Funny you should ask, I was just thinking about that. We discussed my new album Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine, and it’s actually a track that got cut from the album that I would select. It’s called “Song For My Niece”, it’s a song I wrote for my sister’s 3 year old daughter. What happened was, the guys in the band spent a few nights writing down every piece of profanity I yelled at them when I was drunk, and they typed them all up and the song is basically me just singing them, or actually screaming them. And I must have been pretty hammered, because the song starts off with the lines “cockholster syphillis spreader motherfuckwagon shitmonger cuntzilla vomitbucket assbasket jizzmopper thundercunt fuckmustard” and just goes on like that for a really long time. I seem to be more creative when I’m drunk. I certainly drive more creatively.
- You take offense at being called ‘ordinary.’ What’s the most un-ordinary thing about you that people don’t realize right away?
Sarah Herrera: probably that I’m in the Nation of Islam, I’m a hardcore five percenter. I converted after a 2 to 4 bit I did a few years ago (it was knocked down to 18 months with good behavior). So I adhere pretty strictly to the teachings of the Elijah Muhammad (peace be unto him). When you see those guys yelling on 42nd Street, if you see a white girl with blonde hair ranting about “white devils”, that’s me. The N.O.I. forbids alcohol consumption, of course, so I admit I cheat a little there. Also smoking, drugs, eating haram (pork) and sleeping around are prohibited, I may not adhere completely to those, to be honest.
- Aerosmith turning into a ‘Celine Dion cover band’ inspired Love Me Anywhere (Except In An Elevator). What other bands have let you down in this way?
Sarah Herrera: Oh. There’s one band, but they’re my close friends and I would get killed! So let me look at my music library in alphabetical order. Okay, I’m seeing Aerosmith first, that’s not helpful. I’ll start with Z and go backwards. There it is – ZZ Top! Wow, did they fall off the cliff with that synthesizer shit and songs about legs. I LOVE Wesley Willis, he really let me down by dying. Van Halen. Still going backwards. DEFINITELY not Sha Na Na, that’s the one band that has never let me down, we are actually trying to collaborate with Bowzer and it’s just a scheduling issue, but it’ll happen. Scorpions. Ozzy (don’t print that, he’s got a huge legal team). No Doubt. Motley Crue. Metallica, what a shitshow they turned into after Master of Puppets. Okay, I’m bored with this.
- What’s the worst drunk text you’ve ever sent—if you dare to share?
Sarah Herrera: I have no idea. I have to use an app that deletes all my texts immediately after I send them, it’s in our record contract. But I’m sure it’s pretty horrible. I have a lot of friends in law enforcement, and I often text them while drunk driving, and I can only imagine what some of those messages are like. My car doesn’t have support for Android Auto, so I have to pull out my phone and steer with my knees.
- You’ve mentioned your love of VR porn. Hypothetically speaking, if you wrote a song about it, what would it be called?
Sarah Herrera: It’s not hypothetical. We have a song called “Goddamn, I Watch A Lot Of VR Porn”. It’s actually up on Bandcamp, because when we started out, we thought Spotify and Apple Music actually had standards. Once we realized they didn’t and we started getting onto the streaming services, we kind of abandoned those crappy sites that nobody listens to and are really more geared toward housewives shrieking their grocery lists into a microphone or whatever.
- If someone made a biopic about your life, what would be the title, and who would play you?
Sarah Herrera: I hate to steal from my own song titles, but I’m gonna – it would be called “I Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road”. Who would play me? Would love to see it go to James Earl Jones, but he might be dead. Slappy White is probably dead. So maybe Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, one of those two. Maybe Woody Allen, I dunno. Is he out of jail?
- What’s the weirdest or most unhinged piece of fan mail or interaction you’ve ever received?
Sarah Herrera: A human foot. No return address, and I’m surprised they delivered it, because the box was totally dripping blood. I often don’t get my mail, junkies break in and steal it all the time looking for AARP discounts or whatever, but they wanted no part of this. I use it as an ashtray, its kind of a good conversation piece.
OFFICIAL LINKS:
www.tommylasordaexperience.com
https://www.facebook.com/sarahherreramusic
https://www.facebook.com/tommylasordaexperience
Instagram @tommylasordaexperience
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