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Sarah Blasko on foods that ruin a performance

Myffy Rigby
Myffy Rigby

Singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko says it can be difficult to find a healthy meal while touring.
Singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko says it can be difficult to find a healthy meal while touring.Janie Barrett

Singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko had a meat-and-three veg childhood, but over the years as her music has progressed, so too has her palate.

Sarah Blasko is dressed in a floaty, floral dress reminiscent of a Queen Anne nightgown. That is, if Queen Anne lived in Sydney's inner west and was one of Australia's most prolific female solo artists. She has a firm handshake, and a deliberate stride. She fusses about the noise levels for the interview because we're under a fan. She's right. It's loud, and her speaking voice is low and a little husky. But clear as a bell.

Hers was an unremarkable childhood when it came to food. Growing up in 1980s white bread suburbia, you'd never pick her lunchbox in a lineup. The sandwiches were Vegemite or peanut butter, the muesli bar was Home Brand, and so was the juice box. She remembers being in awe of the kids who'd turn up with a hot lunch. "Every now and then you'd see a kid like that, and it was like, 'Wow. That's really impressive'."

It was the bland diet of her childhood that made her receptive to complex flavours and food from other cultures. "Now I feel I have a richer appreciation of it." That said, she still loves simple food and finds people who are particular about the way they eat to be very boring. "Come on, sometimes you want a cheeseburger. Sometimes you want a kombucha and a kale salad."

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Joining her partner's Italian family upped the game for Blasko significantly. Food isn't just food. It's a lifestyle and a preoccupation. "It's just in [my partner's] makeup that he always thinks, 'What are we eating, when are we gonna eat next?'" she says. "And sometimes I'm like, 'I don't know. I'm just going to have a sandwich.' But he's like, 'No.' He doesn't want to have just a sandwich. He has to make something. When it comes down to it, I'm not fussy. I don't need too much. But I like that someone else in my life makes me think about it more."

It isn't just her appreciation of food that's changed, but also her ability to make time in her working life to eat. In her younger days as a recording artist, the work was all-consuming and the experience of eating was never savoured. These days, she's taken much of the producing and arranging of her music into her own hands. That confidence leaks out into other aspects of her life, including taking the time out to cook, eat and appreciate. When Blasko isn't singing solo, she performs in indie-folk supergroup Seeker Lover Keeper with Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann. They're releasing their second album later this year.

You can't really eat cheese before you sing, because it's really bad for your pipes. It really clogs up your mouth.

The process of creating it was enlightening, with no small thanks to bandmate Holly Throsby, who would make a point of bringing in fresh, healthy food to eat during recording sessions. "Sometimes in the studio people forget to do that. We'll just order stuff." She says recording feels like a richer experience now, too. "We're making music together, but then you eat together, you drink together, you kind of live together. When you're comfortable and confident in what you're doing, you can be a bit more like, 'Oh let's cook together, and let's spend an hour having lunch.'"

Working life for the musician is a fluid thing, going from recording and performing, eating minimally where possible, to lying on the couch for months on end covered in Cheezel dust. She's had to learn when to brake and when to accelerate. "It [performing and recording] seems to happen in a very concentrated period of time," she says, "then you have a little break for a couple of months. And sometimes when you come off something like that, you just want to blob out. You're ordering food in, and you're literally just not even moving. There's a bit of a shame in that. But then, it's so satisfying."

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It's touring when the bad habits make themselves known. On one hand, performance for Blasko is a massive release of tension. "All of the anger, the sadness... it's self-expression, it is catharsis," she says. "The live stuff is where it all comes into play. That's where it feels like that's who you really are and what you want to be." But on the other, it's a lot of time on the road. And that means stopping in at service stations and either giving in to the pie warmer or trying, and often failing, to find something remotely healthy to eat in the car in between gigs. "That can be hard, but then you feel like you're exerting a lot of energy every night."

In Europe, food plays a huge part in the way artists are looked after. "You have these huge meals, and then you have to go on stage an hour or two later." As tempting as it is to smash a massive bowl of bucatini all'amatriciana before a set, Blasko prefers to eat light, and mostly vegetarian when she's touring. "It feels better, before you perform. You never want to eat anything too heavy, you know. Otherwise you feel like you just want to go to bed."

Blasko says she's quite careful with everything she ingests before performing. She lists off a staggering roll call of things that affect a singer's vocal cords.

There's always a cheese platter backstage, which she loves, but she has to beg her bandmates to leave it alone until after the show. "You can't eat cheese before you sing, because it's bad for your pipes. It clogs up your mouth. Anything dairy, really, all of that's bad." Chocolate, too, is a no-go zone, as is red wine. "It's terrible before you sing; it dries out your throat and vocal cords have to be as lubricated as possible."

When it comes to her tour rider, there's always gin. The musician's a big fan, especially of Yarra Valley distillery Four Pillars, although she admits that alcohol is meant to be terrible for your vocal cords. "Some people are really pedantic about these things. I'm not."

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Myffy RigbyMyffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.

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