I’m With Her’s Sarah Jarosz on the trio’s truly collaborative nature ahead of Tuesday’s Kauffman show

I’m With Her. // photo credit Alysse Gafkjen

I’m With Her, the trio of Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz, and Sara Watkins, released their sophomore album, Wild and Clear and Blue, early last month. Coming seven years after their debut, See You Around, the album is worth the wait, with the harmonies and melodies even stronger, and it sees the group almost more emotionally affecting than before.

I’m With Her comes to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, June 17, and we took the opportunity to hop on the phone with Sarah Jarosz to discuss Wild and Clear and Blue and the tour that surrounds it.

The Pitch: It’s been quite a wait since the last album. It has. Yes. Is it difficult to coordinate the schedules of three people who are almost constantly doing other projects?

Sarah Jarosz: Yeah, I mean, it just takes a lot of foresight. Part of the reason this was so long was partially ’cause of the pandemic in there for some of those years. In the fall of 2021 was when we actually scheduled our first writing retreat for this record. I think that first one was really scheduled in many ways not to try to–we weren’t even like, “Oh, we have to write all the songs.” We mostly just wanted to reconnect and, and get a sense of where each other’s heads and hearts were at.

I think it was at that writing session that we realized that we really wanted to take our time with the writing of this record, and because of our crazy schedules, we could only get together one week each fall for three years in a row, and so, it was a very long process. But it was really kind of a beautiful unfolding. I feel like it was necessary to do it that way and to take our time with it so that, when we were together, we could really be present together and write these songs.

I would have to imagine that having so much time to sit with those songs in between times of meeting really lets them grow.

In a way, it’s funny, because we were all so busy with our respective projects, in many ways it actually was a very focused writing retreat when we were together and then putting everything aside and not really thinking about it in between. I put out some solo records. Aoife put out solo records. Sara was with Nickel Creek. I actually think that space was really helpful.

And then, of course, when we came to the final writing session, which took place in North Carolina, that was when we realized that there were these themes connecting the songs, but even that was kind of beautiful because we hadn’t been focusing on them in between these writing sessions.

It was, it was like, “Wow, these themes of ancestors, and death and rebirth, and family and connection to family,” and all those things. We hadn’t gone into it, laying those out as the themes, and it was beautiful by the third writing session to realize that all those things were winding throughout these songs.

The final writing session was in North Carolina. Where were the other two?

The other few were in Los Angeles, where Sara Watkins lives. Normally, with the history of this band, we like to try to have the sessions be on what Watkins calls “neutral ground.” Sometimes, when you’re in a place where one of us lives, it can be a little distracting if you know you’re writing all day and then you have to meet up with friends, you run into people that you know or if they have to go take care of their kids or, you know, anything like that.

For those first two, like I said, because we were kind of not in a rush, it wound up making the most sense for our schedules to, to do it in Los Angeles where Sara lives. But, even still, Aoife and I got an Airbnb so that the three of us could have our own space to be focused when we were together. And actually, it’s really sad. The first writing session was in Altadena, and actually, that Airbnb was burned in the fires.

It’s kind of wild–we wound up writing “Standing on the Fault Line” before the fires took place. It’s really eerie that, that that house actually no longer exists.

Given that all three of you are like veteran collaborators, what makes this particular trio of the three of you collaborating different, at least for you?

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we are really, truly collaborating fully on the writing of these songs. I think a lot of times when you get sort of a super group situation, what winds up happening is that you rearrange songs from each other’s catalogs for the three voices or for whatever the configuration may be. It winds up being a remodel of former songs.

From the outset of this band, and part of the reason that we even wanted to have a band name and not just have it be our three individual names, is because we didn’t want it to be that. We wanted to write music together and create a sound together as a band. I think that’s what’s so special about this record, especially. I feel like on the first record we were finding our sound. We had barely been a band for very long when we made that first record. With this, we just got to go so deep.

I think that the three of us, the reason we wanted to be a band was because the vocal blend just naturally was quite magical from the get-go. But then I also think instrumentally, what each of us brings to the table is a pretty unique sound and why we’ve chosen to tour just the three of us, without a backing band. It’s just been a pleasure to explore the sound that we can make with just the three of us.

Your first album, See You Around, was recorded in England, and this one is recorded in upstate New York. What made you want to record in this location versus going overseas?

It has a lot to do with the neutral ground theory. But also, I mean, both locations very much have to do with the producers that we picked, you know, for that first record we worked with Ethan Johns, who lives in England. That was very much, we wanted to work with him and he had a studio picked out over there, so we flew over there for that and.

For this record we worked with the amazing Josh Kaufman, and he lives in upstate New York–in Kingston, actually. He has a family and three young kids. And he was like, “If we’re gonna make this work, it’d be easiest if y’all kind of came to me,” and that worked great for us because it fulfilled the neutral ground thing. We wound up sort of doing it in two different studios. The first was Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, and the second was a place called Outlier Studios in the middle of nowhere. I can’t even remember the town name. It was very, very deep in the Catskills.

I love the idea that this tour is just the three of you, because Josh Kaufman added so much to the richness of this new record. What’s it like to take these songs back to where they started, where it’s just the three of you?

It’s really special and it feels really natural in many ways, ’cause I think we were conscious in the writing process. We knew that we wanted to expand sonically on the actual album part of this thing and with these songs, but even knowing that we wanted the album to have these flourishes and more textures and layers, we always also wanted the songs to be able to stand alone on their own with just the three of us. I think the fact that we wrote with that in mind has made–now we’ve played a few shows before this official tour kicks off.

We were just in Amsterdam and London and it just felt incredible. There was never a point in in the show when I wished, “Oh, I wish there was more instruments happening.” I think the thing and the reason that we decided to tour is the three of us–the thing that makes it special is the space and the unique textures that the three of us can make, just with our different combinations of instruments and voices.

Being is how this album has been such a long time coming and now it’s out, what other projects do you have on the horizon for the rest of 2025? I imagine this tour will take up a lot of head space, but I’m sure you have other things in mind.

You know, this is the focus for now. I think that’s part of why it’s it’s taken so long to come around to doing it, is that the three of us, when we do put out a record, we want to really be able to focus on it and not be spread super thin with other things. It’s kind of nice to just look at the rest of the year and it be just this, really.

I mean, you know, I am always writing on my own or doing co-writes with other people here in Nashville when I’m home but, at the current moment for me, not for anything specifically. Just to kind of collect songs. Eventually, those will lead to something but for now, for this year, it’s really nice to just, just be focused on this record, ’cause it’s been a long time coming. It’s many years in the making, so it feels right to give it its proper focus.

I’m With Her performs at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, June 17, with opener Mason Via. Details on that show here.