Tomberlin, the Louisville based artist, has shared a video for “Self-Help,” the lead single from her Saddle Creek debut album, At Weddings, which is scheduled to drop on August 10th.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, and now based in Louisville, Kentucky, Sarah Beth Tomberlin wrote most of At Weddings while living with her family in southern Illinois during her late teens and early twenties. At 16, she finished her homeschooling curriculum and went to college at a private Christian school she describes, only half-jokingly, as a “cult.” By 17, she had dropped out of school, returned home, and begun to face a period of difficult transition in her life. The daughter of a Baptist pastor, Tomberlin found herself questioning not only her faith, but her identity, her purpose, and her place in the world.
“I was working, going to school, and experiencing heavy isolation,” Tomberlin says of the time when she first began writing the songs on At Weddings. “It felt monotonous, like endless nothingness. It was a means to get through to the next step of life.” In songwriting, Tomberlin found relief and lucidity she had trouble articulating otherwise. When she was 19, she wrote “Tornado” on her parents’ piano, and began to develop confidence in her music. A year later, she had written enough songs to fill an album.
Tomberlin cites the hymns she grew up singing in church as her greatest musical influence. “A lot of hymns talk about really crazy stuff – being saved from the depths and the mire, judgment. When you actually realize what you’re singing, it becomes really overwhelming,” Tomberlin says. “I grew up singing in church. I was still helping to lead worship when I started coming to terms with the realization that I didn’t know if I believed. I felt nauseous and shaky reading these words I was singing and feeling their intensity. If I did believe this, how could I sing these words without being scared out of my mind? That’s what’s influenced how I write.”
At Weddings Tracklist:
1. Any Other Way
2. Untitled 1
3. Tornado
4. You Are Here
5. A Video Game
6. I’m Not Scared
7. Seventeen
8. Self-Help
9. Untitled 2
10. February