March has been busy for bassist birthdays at the illustrious Capitol Theater in Port Chester, a sign of New York’s thriving jam scene. The month opened with an 84 birthday celebration and a five-show residency for rock legend and Grateful Dead founding bassist Phil Lesh and will close out with a show honoring jam scene newcomer Sarah Elaz.
The March 27 performance will put Elaz’s eponymous “Sarah Elaz’s Almost Phish” in high company, reaching a venue she has worked hard to reach. Off the stage, Sarah is a double threat working behind the scenes as a booker and promoter. On International Women’s Day, we spoke with Sarah about her journey.
Sarah Elaz has accepted certain realities about the music industry and has found a rhythm as she builds a name for herself. Faced with a pivot from a career as a professional dancer, Sarah, like many others, found that “getting into the music industry isn’t that easy, it doesn’t have a simple path.”
As a neophyte in the industry, Sarah has built a network of connections through hard work. To support her career as a professional dancer, she started waitressing at City Winery, where she would work her way backstage to a position coordinating artist hospitality. Now, Elaz is a talent buyer at MRG Live. While her focus is music, sticking with her commitment to genera-spanning Elaz also books comedy shows for acts like Modi Rosenfeld and Kyle Gordon.
Asked how being a musician influences her work as a booker, she said it “makes [her] more empathetic and able to anticipate and understand artists’ needs.” In an industry where band’s touring margins can be a razor thing, having that reflective understanding of tour budgets has benefited Elaz in building trust. Recently she booked the shows in the great white north of Canada for Connecticut jam bands Eggy and the L.A.-based Thumpasaurus. Elaz is dedicated to sowing the seeds of a jam scene in Toronto, organizing “The Grateful Jam” an open jam focused on improvised psychedelic rock.
Off the clock, Sarah can be found playing in a half-dozen projects at any given time, from collaborating on original work with the Brooklyn jam band Boojum to enthralling crowds with her eponymous Phish tribute act and playing with newcomer acts like Katzroar. When live music returned after the pandemic, Elaz would gig at any opportunity, but she has grown more selective, focusing on the improvisational-oriented music that has always inspired her. She has won that privilege by “playing as many gigs with as many people as she can until afforded the luxury of saying no.”
For Elaz, that insistent need to perform has its benefits; playing across genres and “playing a pop show, a punk show, a jam show, with people of all ages and experience makes you learn faster and play better, plus now you know all these other musicians you can work.”
Elaz, a Massachusetts native, has found a “partner in New York” after she moved to pursue her career in dance. She doesn’t see herself leaving the city any time, in part because of the density of standout music venues. While the Brooklyn Bowl is her favorite in the city, the Bowery Ballroom was another standout (in part due to it’s proximity to nearby Katz’s Deli).
Elaz’s love for the jam music she prefers to perform could be genetic, inherited from a sister 15 years her senior. Some of Sarah’s first memories of Phish come from her sisters’ return from a summer tour. That inspiration led Elaz to Limewire to download whatever Phish and Dead tapes she could come across. It was a show in 2018 where watching Phish’s Mike Gordon inspired Elaz to pick up bass, saying, “watching him play up close, it looked like it made sense. I understood it wasn’t easy, but it seemed intuitive.” Now Elaz compares playing bass to her professional experience as a dancer, “it’s all about finding the groove and keeping in it. Any note or move can be intentional if it’s in the groove.”
Speaking with Elaz’s mentor and occasional instructor, Dan Kelley of Neighbor, he commented how “passion for the art” is what drove Sarah’s success rapid achievement in picking up the bass.
Image is essential for an artist, and while Sarah can be found sporting her iconic sparkling amethyst Music Man bass, that isn’t always enough. Elaz acknowledges that as a female performer, she feels pressure to have a new look for every show. Finding a silver lining, she notes how rental services like Nuuly allow her to be creative without adding to fast fashion waste. “It’s another creative outlet for me, fashion becomes another part of the performance”
For Sarah, the pressure of sexism as a musician is more overt, from the lecherous fans who are bold enough to grab at the musicians onstage to the more banal, like audio techs who assume Sarah to be a fan of whatever band she performs in.
Behind the scenes, Sarah says the situation is more egalitarian, noting that “I am lucky to have so many examples of women above me who I look up to” with the quip that “I hope there’s no glass ceiling to that.”
Sarah Elaz’s next performance is with her original band, Boojum, on March 16 at the Sultan Room. On March 27, Sarah Elaz’s Almost Phish will play at Garcia’s at the Capitol Theatre.
