Sasha Keable Has Already Moved On

When I meet Sasha Keable, she’s lying on a hotel bed with a little curler clipped into the front of her hair, getting ready for tonight’s performance. She’s already thinking about what comes next. By her own admission, she tends to move on from music pretty quickly once it’s out in the world - the songs she’s writing now are usually the ones occupying her head.

A few hours later, she’ll perform one of those new songs for an intimate crowd at Ruby Zoe Hotel. The room is dimly lit, with records, album artwork, and strange, ornate little objects covering the walls. A purple piano and guitars sit beneath the low lighting, while a mint-green vintage car is tucked into the room. Cocktails are lined up on a wooden table, lime wedges and chilli-salt rims catching the light as people begin to gather around the stage.

It’s an intimate setting for a song nobody has heard before. But that’s exactly what makes the evening interesting. The whole night is built around discovery - that moment when you stumble across an artist, a song, or a sound you weren’t looking for and suddenly become obsessed with it.

Keable knows that feeling well. She tells me that seeing an artist live can completely change how she listens to their music. Suddenly, they’re not just a name on your phone - they’re attached to a place, a night, a memory.

“I feel like artists come into your life when you need them,” she says.

It’s an idea that sits naturally within Dive in with Ruby, Ruby Zoe's live music series centered around bringing audiences closer to emerging talent and creating those unexpected moments of discovery. Tonight, Keable is on the other side of that exchange, giving a room full of people their first listen to what comes next.

And she’s already somewhere else. Keable tells me she’s in a completely different space from where she was even a month ago. Once music is released, she tends to leave it behind, moving on to whatever she’s writing and feeling now. The unreleased stuff is where her attention sits.

The conversation gets increasingly unfiltered from there. Keable tells me about writing with Kelly Rowland, where two hours of talking turned into them standing outside in the cold while Keable smoked cigarettes and the two of them kept “yapping” as they got to know each other. With Destin Conrad, it’s different - she knows him well enough that they can make up entire scenarios together. The question is simply whether they want to write something “deep” or “pop your pussy”.

There’s something revealing in the difference. Writing for other people gives Keable permission to get out of her own head. When she writes for herself, she’s digging around in there - asking what she’s feeling, what she needs to process, what might need to come out. “What does my soul need to write about today?” she asks.

Photo credit: Jeff Hahn

A lot of tonight is centred around discovery. What does discovery mean to you as an artist, in terms of finding inspiration for your music? What's the journey you take? Is it textures, colours, sounds?

Yeah. I think my everyday life is probably my biggest inspiration. Relationships are definitely my most written-about topic. I just really enjoy the human experience - I'm trying to make sense of my own emotions and other people's emotions. I think that's probably the stuff that inspires me the most.

[We’re] still sticking to the theme of discovery, but I want to talk specifically about discovering artists. What makes you stick with an artist? What is it that, when you first listen to someone, makes you think, 'I'm gonna go and listen to their EP, listen to their remixes from, like, 2016', or whatever it is?

I think that if I see an artist live and I enjoy it, it'll probably make me go and listen to their whole catalogue… there's just something so special about discovering someone live. Sometimes there are artists I've listened to for years, and then one little thing will switch in my brain, and I'm like, 'Let me go listen to the whole album'. If I see someone live and really enjoy it, I feel like I've got some personal connection with them. I've got my own memory around that person.

I feel like I fully resonate with that. I think seeing someone live just changes your perspective.

I think it makes it real. Do you know what I mean? That's why festivals are great as well, 'cause then you get to go and see people that maybe you wouldn't have gone out of your way to see, or maybe you accidentally see someone, or maybe your friend drags you to see. There’s nothing better than discovering a new artist. It's literally the best. You're like, 'Who the fuck's this? Let's see'. And 'why do I, why [did] I not know about them before?' And then all of a sudden they're all over your radar, and you're like, 'Wait, what?"'.. It’s so crazy how that happens. I feel like artists come into your life when you need them, like.

Oh my God, that is such a good way of putting it. We love that. We love that. [Writing music now] do you feel like anything is different about you - your circumstances, your life, or even the backdrop to the music you’re making - compared to when you released your last EP?

Yeah.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Tea.

For sure. I mean, things change monthly. It's crazy ... at the fucking rate that my life moves at - I'm even…in a different space than I was, like, a month ago. It's definitely different.

I wanted to ask specifically about tonight. I'm curious to hear from you, as someone who puts out music - putting out something tonight, releasing it into the world - how does it feel to do that when no one knows the lyrics or the story behind it better than you?

Honestly, I'm not gonna lie, I try not to think about it too much. If I start trivialising how I'm going to perform it, I get so in my head, and then I get super nervous.

So I'm just excited for people to hear the whole song. I'm excited to perform it and add this song to the set. But yeah, I don't really love performing unreleased stuff ‘cause it's vulnerable. No one knows it. It's like, 'impress me, bitch'. I'll try. It's always nerve-wracking whenever new music's coming out. I think I just shut it out. I don't really let myself feel. I'm just like, 'Yeah, cool. It's coming. I'm doing it'.

Photo credit: Jeff Hahn

I hear you. But then I feel like, for example, tonight is a smaller, more intimate performance. I feel like if people are coming tonight to see you at this venue that's more intimate, they're gonna love whatever you put out, because they're here to listen to you.

I hope so. I bloody hope so. 

I think when you're performing to a smaller audience, it's a more curated crowd, like they're there because they fuck with you. And they love your music, so I wouldn't even worry about that. I would love to know about [your relationship with your music]. How quickly do you outgrow your own stuff? How quickly does that happen, or does it depend?

Generally, once I release it out into the world, the only time I'll listen to it will be when I perform it. It's just because I move on - with what I'm writing about, what I'm feeling, whatever. Then I'll be in the process of writing new music, so that's what I'll be listening to.

And what about if you're writing music for other artists? How much of you do you feel is in that? How much is it a collaboration? Is it that you write the whole song and then they'll perform it? Or is it that you're sat together and you're [creating a song] line by line?

It depends on the artist. I've done sessions where I've written everything, and I've done sessions where the artist doesn't want to be involved at all, which is fine. I've written a lot of stuff that's collaborative between the artist and me, and that's how I prefer to work. I love collaboration. I'm really good at getting into people's minds and making whatever they're feeling - finding the words to piece it all together.

Before you get to the point where you're putting pen to paper, do you have to do a discovery session with them? Almost like therapy?

I was writing with Kelly Rowland last year, and obviously I know what I think I know about Kelly Rowland, but I don't really know anything about her. So, we sat for maybe two hours and just yapped, yapped, yapped…she was outside while I was smoking cigarettes. I felt so bad, but I was like, 'Yeah, just go outside and yap'. I was like, 'Oh, I've got Kelly Rowland outside in the fucking cold -' Yapping, yapping. We talked for, like, two hours, but then I've got friends that I write for, like Destin [Conrad] [and] I know that boy like the back of my hand, so it's easy for me to just go and be like, 'Right, we'll do...' We normally write about just whatever. We just make up scenarios in our heads, and that's fun too. It's just like, do you wanna write about something deep, or do you wanna pop your pussy?

Period.

Then we can do either one. I'm just here to facilitate it and make sure it sounds good and to get your point across…it is easier writing for other people because I need to service my soul when I'm writing. 'What does my soul need to write about today?' Whereas when I'm writing for other people, I ain't gotta do that. I've just gotta write a song, and that's my goal.

Okay, so going back to tonight, is the song you're performing a glimpse into what's to come? And if it is, what do you want people to notice about it?

Yeah, it's a glimpse into what's to come. It's the start of something.

Honestly, people take whatever they take from my music. I'm not the fucking 'what do you take from it?' police. You take whatever you want. Hopefully you like how it sounds, and you like how I sing it, and you wanna go and listen to it more. That's all I can hope for.

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