Getting Messy with Sarah Fridrich

DC singer-songwriter-pianist Sara Fridrich, AKA Ms. Fridrich has been leaving her mark at many favorite venues around the DMV such as The Smithsonian, Iota, and one of her personal favorites, Black Cat Backstage. For the past seven years Sarah has been performing solo and as the front woman of her indie/pop piano/rock band Ms. Fridrich’s Messy Ann Band along with jazz drummer Kirk Kubicek. They found the vibes were really good when they toured Boston and Seattle, loved the breathtaking mountains while touring Colorado and Wyoming, and have traveled to cities close to home like North Carolina, Baltimore, and New York. Sarah has an accomplished career as a music teacher and has released two albums (2007- Sarah Fridrich EP, and 2011- You Call That Brave). She was awarded an individual Artist Grant by the Montgomery County Arts & Humanities Council and in 2011, she was recognized as a Finalist in the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest for her original song "Anvil"

At five years old Sarah would play along on a piano in her mom and stepdad’s house to records mimicking the sounds she heard, though she would not take her first lessons until she was thirteen. Her grandfather introduced her to her musical influences “The King of Swing” Benny Goodman along with Sam Levine’s 1995 album Dixieland Jazz. Young Sarah was surrounded by musica. She would dance around the living room with her mom who shared a love for musicals and Sarah’s dad would send her mix tapes of various artists from Mozart to Bruce Springsteen. During high school, her dad bought Sarah her very own guitar from a pawn shop to dissuade her from stealing, I mean borrowing, his. At age 24 Sarah finally took a step out and performed “Angels From

Montgomery” on guitar at her first open mic at a Unitarian church in Annapolis, MD. Before then she had written songs but never played them in public. During this time she was also learning to play jazz piano, unsure of what musical direction she wanted to go in. At 27, after previously receiving a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Sarah made a decisive move and enrolled at the University of Maryland to pursue a Degree in Jazz Piano. Finally Sarah found her calling and began making moves to turn her love of music into a career. When I asked her when she started her career, she threw the question back to me, “How does one define ‘career’?” Was it her first paid gig? Or maybe the first time she recorded her songs?

An inspiring and talented HERA’s Heroine to follow. Sarah was recording at The Brink this past weekend so I asked someone what it was like working with her:

“Sarah is hilarious and has a wicked musicality. She is also one of the better arguers I’ve worked with because she has given all of her music a lot of thought. And she’s so nice, I’m okay with losing (nearly) all of the arguments” -Stephen Russ

For more information on Sarah Fredrich visit

www.msfridrich.com/ and for info on her band- http://www.messyannband.com

You can show support for Sarah Fridrich by following her on Spotify