Belgium-born singer Sarah Bettens has the kind of husky voice that makes you take notice, and accompanied with the rock melodies she plays with brother Gert as K’s Choice, she’s a musician whose two decades long career has found a dedicated and growing fan base. After releasing four solo albums between 2004 and 2008, Sarah has reunited with brother Gert for a new K’s Choice album, the band’s sixth since their 1994 debut, and The Phantom Cowboy is the first that the duo has intentionally co-written. All of their other work has been written separately, with minimal collaboration coming into play only after Sarah or Gert delivered their finished product. So what has come from this dedicated time of working together is their most cohesive sound yet.
When she’s not playing music, Sarah is a married mother of four kids and a full-time firefighter in Johnson City, Tennessee. We spoke with her about the return of K’s Choice and how she balances all aspects of her very busy life.
AfterEllen.com: This is the first album you’ve ever written songs with your brother. Why did you decide to try it now after having written so many separately?
Sarah Bettens: That’s a really good question, because ever since we made this album we’ve been asking ourselves, “Why did it take 20 years to try this?” I really can’t answer it. It seemed like it’d be really good if we did it in the same building and bounced ideas off each other right away rather than sending MP3s back and forth and having to wait a couple weeks before we see each other and be able to work on the song and stuff. So we said, “Let’s spend a week in Tennessee and I’ll spend a week in Belgium and we’ll see what we come up with.” Because we knew we wanted to make a rock record, and we knew we wanted it to be focused, and we had also noticed that after our solo albums, it took a little longer than before to kind of get on track, and see where we were going. And so we felt like, “Let’s be focused about this and work together,” and it was super fun and very productive and [we ended up] writing a type of song we would never write separately. Because he’d do the music for something and I’d do the melody; he’d come up with a lyric idea and I’d finish the lyric. So it was the kind of stuff that only happens when you’re together. Otherwise, when you’re alone, you find yourself in certain-you try to make different things, but you find yourself in certain patterns, and when someone takes you out of that pattern, you go different directions. So it turned out to be super interesting for us, too, to see where things would take us.
AE: So you could listen to previous albums and think “This is a Sarah song” or “This is a Gert song,” whereas now it’s different because you worked on them together?
SB: Oh, totally. There are people who know exactly which songs are mine, from all K’s Choice records, they can tell: “Those are Sarah’s, these are Gert’s.” And they really don’t know with this record. They have no idea. And if we weren’t there and didn’t make the songs, we wouldn’t know either, because it was really a collaboration. Sometimes we would separate for 10 minutes: “You work on this, and I’ll work on this, and then we’ll get together and see what we come up with.” It just makes for a different type of song and we’re already talking about doing it the same way for sure instead of writing separately.
AE: So you must see it as a successful venture then.
SB: Yeah, and I think over the years-each of us has four kids, and when we’re on the road, it’s hard to write because there’s always people around and there’s usually not enough privacy to sit somewhere and write. It’s hard to find that space-that mental space of having four or five hours where you’re just going to let it all the day-to-day stuff disappear and just be creative and work. And I think we got into the habit of almost waiting for that amazing magical moment where all the stars aligned just right and this is such a 9-to-5 situation and we realized this is more productive, actually. We were equally creative and 10 times more productive then waiting. It’s like “Well, you’re here for a week, away from your family. You’re going to write every day from 9 to 5.” It worked out great.
AE: Having a big family can be time consuming. How do you create that balance for yourself?
SB: I say it’s a work in progress. [laughs] It changes all the time and we adjust all the time. I think that’s partly what made it so fun to [write and record] this way. When you’re in a self-starter job like this, you could always be doing something else. You could be doing something around the house; you could be doing something with your kids. But instead, you’re sitting in your office with your guitar and trying to come up with something great.
Every day is again a decision. Like, what do I decide to do with my time today? And I know for a lot of people that sounds like an amazing luxury, and I realize that it is in a way, but at the same time, sometimes you just want someone to tell you, “Here are your hours. Go do this! Go finish this.” It was nice to give ourselves that. You’re going to be away from your family for a week-we’re going to make the most of this time. And I’ve noticed over the years that I have to do that, really allocate time and make a decision ahead of time, so I’m not, in the morning, “What should I do? Should I go more in that direction?” It just doesn’t make you productive.
AE: How does touring fit into that?
SB: I pretty much have a set amount of-since I’m the one flying to Europe-a set amount of weeks we talk about a head of time: “This is the max amount of weeks I want to be away from my family. Anything above that is just not fun anymore.” Because I want a normal life here and I want to see my kids grow up. I don’t want the whole family to function perfectly without me and when I’m here, “Oh great, but we don’t really need you.” It’s not a fun feeling. I want to be a part of it and I realize that sometimes I’m just not because I’m on the road, but we keep it at a avery acceptable-to me, anyway-acceptable amount of time.
AE: What do your kids think about their mom being a musician?
SB: I have two step-kids that are 20 and 18 and they thought it was really cool for a while, but I think they’re over it now. They’re at an age where they have their own musical tastes. They’re like, “Good for you, but this is what we listen to.” At this point, they’re completely unimpressed. But the little ones-I have a whole new generation. I have two four year olds that are actually more impressed by my firefighting than my musical career. They’ve never seen me play, so they’ve heard songs and they know I can sing but they’ve never seen a show or anything so they haven’t been able to visualize. But when they visit me at the fire station and see the big red fire truck, they’re pretty impressed.
AE: How does firefighting fit into your life as a musician and with your family? Is it full-time?
SB: Yeah, it’s full-time, 24-hour shifts when I need to go, and that’s what I mean I only have a certain amount of days when I go and plan very efficiently every single day that I’m gone, so that I don’t have to make up too many shifts when I get back. So it does make for a very busy household, but it’s all super fun, so that’s good.
AE: Is there anything about firefighting that lends itself to your creative side that you didn’t expect?
SB: Well, what’s been really fun about the training and just everything that comes with it, it’s very-it’s actually the opposite of the self-starter stuff I was talking about. Not that you can’t do self-starter stuff when you’re on shift and self-educate and train and stuff like that, but it’s a pretty defined job and you have to show up and work hard; that’s what’s expected. I think it’s something I needed in my life, where I was not in charge and it’s not something I’ve been doing for 20 years already so it doesn’t come easy-it has many, many challenges, mentally as well as physically. I think that’s what really attracted me to it. It takes me away from everything else and everything I’ve done before in my life and gives me the opportunity to, in my 40s, to really feel like I’m in my 20s and learning something brand new. It’s just super fun.
AE: I imagine you have to be in the best shape of your life.
SB: Yeah, absolutely, and especially since I’m a girl. We just don’t have the natural strength, and especially being over 40, if I don’t stay in shape, my back will go out. [laughs] I have to stay strong. It’s a great motivator to stay in great physical health.
AE: Are there any concerns with smoke inhalation for your vocal cords or anything related to your singing?
SB: No, safety is such a huge priority. I’m sure it’s like that all over the country right now, but it really is at our fire department. We make sure we’re always well protected by all the gear that we have. It’s not like it used to be. I think 30 or40 years ago, it was like, “Just hold your breath and put a towel over your mouth.” That’s not worth pot anymore, and if there’s no one to be saved, it’s discouraged to go cowboy into the burning building to see what you can do. There’s just a lot of safety first, and it’s really safety for yourself first, so it’s not something that affects my other career in any way.
AE: You live in a small town in Tennessee-what brought you there?
SB: My now-wife, who I met about 15 years ago, she had moved here and shares custody of her kids. So since she was here and I want to be with her, I ended up in Johnson City as well.
AE: What’s it like there? How do you like it?
SB: Well, it was a little bit of a culture shock in the beginning. I went from Belgium to Santa Cruz and then I moved from Santa Cruz to Atlanta. I was there for a year, and then from Atlanta to Johnson City. Definitely coming to the South was a little bit of a stretch. Belgium is pretty progressive and, obviously, so is California, so coming to the Southern Bible Belt as a gay couple with two adopted black kids has its challenges, but we’ve been very happy here and have a great network of friends and like all places in America, this place as well is changing and we’re making great strides in very short period of time. So we have very few complaints. It’s not super small and there’s a university here, a couple big hospitals, so a lot of people from different countries-it has more diversity than you would expect.
AE: Going back to the album, why did you decide to name it The Phantom Cowboy?
SB: Well it was a working title that my brother came here and we had this big dry erase board, totally blank as we were about to start day one, and I said, “I gotta write something. Just a working title for this record.” And I saw this little Scooby Doo comic book of my little boy and it was called The Phantom Cowboy. I said “OK, that’s got a good ring to it. Working title: Phantom Cowboy.” As it often happens, and I think 100 percent with us, we pick a working title really quickly just to have something and then we get attached to it and we can’t get rid of it and then we’re stuck with it. So then the idea of this mysterious figure of a phantom cowboy started to live its own life in our imagination and inspired a song and, like I said, we couldn’t get away from it so we stuck with it. We kind of felt like it fit with the feel of the record.
AE: Has living in Tennessee inspired anything specific in your music?
SB: Not in a way that the music that’s popular here has influenced the type of music that we’re making. But I do think in living in a slower type of community, compared to when I fly back to Belgium and everything moves so fast, and so hard and traffic-it seems miserable to me now. I feel like I live pretty leisurely life when I’m here because the pace slows down a lot, people take their time for things and the weather’s nice and you can do a lot of things outside. So I feel like I have a whole life here that has nothing to do with my musical career, and I think that, in itself, is inspiration.
The Phantom Cowboy is available now.
