SARIA FARR
Mother of Barbara Manning (SF Seals)

Escandalo: Did you ever play music?

I'm a musician but I never played much until she was about eight. Barbara really liked it. We had guitars and so we kinda shifted from listening to the record player to playing music ourselves.

What do you play?

The flute. I wanted to teach both my girls how to read music. Terri learned right away but Barbara didn't want to. She would say, "I don't need that in my life." Then she made up her own system of writing music.

When was this?

She was about nine. That was around the time we moved into the forest, living in tents. Later we moved into a cabin that I was care-taking.

Wow. Were you home-schooling them?

We did later. They were going to the normal school but there was a fire and the school burned down. After that they went to regional schools, but that didn't work out. The school was really tiny and cold and they had to walk three miles to get there. So I went to Baltimore and got a curriculum for them and withdrew them from school. It was a hard time for me. I had to be a teacher and a mother and take care of the dairy. Barbara and Terri were best friends over those years. There was a junk yard close by and they'd play war together. Then they replaced that with Star Wars... Eventually, Barbara wanted to move to the city and go to high school. One time we were in San Francisco and they bought a couple packages of obscene fortune cookies and set up a table and sold them for a quarter a piece. Barbara was learning Tarot, so sometimes she'd take her cards to the store and set up a table for Tarot.

Did she do that for money?

Yes. She'd bring along her cat, Balarama, too.

How old was she then?

About 11. The next big change came when I bought a school bus because I decided to go back to school and I wanted a place to study. We moved to town and they started middle school. Barbara bought a guitar and learned to play it and put her poetry to music, which is how she really developed her writing style. Her sister would harmonize with her. They were really into the Bee Gees. They took down all the Star Wars stuff and put up the Bee Gees! In Nevada City, they went on the radio and recorded in the school's sound studio. They made oodles of copies and gave them away as Christmas gifts for family because basically we were pretty poor. I was working as a nurse's aide and going to school. After that Barbara spent a year in high school. She and her sister skipped a grade or two.

So how old were they when they got to college?

Terri was 15 and Barbara was 17. Barbara became a DJ on the radio station. That was the thing she loved the most, that and a band called Daily Planet. She and Terri were at all the Daily Planet shows standing outside the window because they were underage. Through the Daily Planet she met Cole Marquis, her first boyfriend. Now he's in, I think they call themselves the Downsiders. Barbara actually showed him how to write songs. He didn't think he could.

When she met Cole Marquis she started her own band, 28th Day, and they did a record together. Barbara was the vocals and the bass. She was really experimental on the bass. But by the time that album came out (it was on Enigma Records), there was a lot of contempt in the band. The boys would take advantage of her. She was really disappointed with the record; she wanted to have more control with the production.

Right before the album was finished, Barbara moved to San Diego and stayed with her dad for awhile. Then she came back to Chico. Her sister moved to Fremont and was taking courses on interpretation for the deaf. Later, Barbara and Terri moved to the lower Haight district. In the interim Barbara had been working at a copy center full-time and doing her music at night. She was seeing this fellow named Brandon. They made an album called World of Pooh. Barbara's songs then were contemporary -- she sang a lot of songs that were screaming. She went through that phase.

When did she write stuff for Lately I Keep Scissors?

That was a compilation of songs, some written back when she was with Cole. That was on a much smaller label (Heyday), but she wasn't really happy with them either. But then she began working with Greg Freemen. Because he's a friend and an excellent musician, she had a lot more control with the mixing and production.

And this was her first solo record.

Yes, then there was One Perfect Green Blanket, also on Heyday. And then she started San Francisco Seals. Actually they were called a lot of things before they were the Seals. The Teaspoons (tablespoons). Basically what she wanted was an all-girl band. Melanie, her drummer, had been her friend from the very beginning, but she wasn't always able to tour. (these last few dates are the last time she's playing with them because she's going to have a baby.)...Anyway, Barbara toured the US that summer ('93) and stopped in Chicago and did an album there, Barbara Manning and the Original Artists. Then, after that she made Nowhere. Nowhere was what she wanted to call it, but I said if said if you split it up differently it says Now Here...so is Nowhere/Now Here the same? Then I noticed that she put it both ways on the album!

What's your all-time favorite song of hers?

"Baseball Trilogy." I'm not sure if that's on anything. All I have is homemade tapes she's made me. She always makes tapes so special for me; she designs them, puts on her own cover and writes everything out.

What's Barbara up to now?

She finished her latest album in March. I named it. I like one-word album titles, but she wouldn't accept that. She said she wanted something wild, so I named it Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows.

How do you like it compared to Nowhere?

It's better. In Nowhere she used a lot of breaks that kinda cut things up and Truth Walks doesn't have all that. It's more integrated and she's experimenting with a lot of different writing styles. In fact, because of this album, I just got her a lap steel. One of the songs on it reminds me so much of a lap steel ("Ladies of the Sea") and I'd really like to see her do more country songs. All these songs have been written since she got back from her tour last summer. "Bold Letters" is my favorite so far. She integrated sound effects and her instrumentation is excellent, in terms of bringing in cello and piano. She even has a vibraphone player. The album cover is a picture of Carlsbad Caverns, where her sister was vacationing last summer and the reason she's making it purple is because that's my favorite color. You know, she wants to get everyone in on the act.

So where's Terri now?

She's in San Francisco, she backs up Barbara sometimes. Before they moved into the house on Judas street, they toured Europe together playing songs from One Perfect Green Blanket. Terri's on most of her albums a little bit, but her goal in life is to be an interpreter for the deaf; she's not really comfortable with the limelight.

Barbara was telling me that you made up your own name. How did you come up with it?

My name Farr is a family name. It was my sister's middle name. When I was finishing nursing school I wanted a name that was shorter. The name I had before that was Saria Lorraine Alexandria. I made up my whole name at one point. Saria was a time of change for me. I was moving from one place to another and I wanted to change my name to something uncommon. I took it from the Bible, Sarai is the mother of the tribe and her name was Sarah. I just changed the last two letters.

I'm a spiritualist. I like to look toward guidance that way and I decided to change my name. That was something I did in the 60's.