Rising Stars: Meet Sarah Clanton

A tumbleweed blowing in the wind, as a kid we moved around the country and along the way, I got started playing piano at age 5, found cello at 9, and was always involved in something musical at school or church. My mom was an opera singer and my dad a nuclear engineer, so I am an interesting mixture of the left and right brain. As a kid along with music, I remember playing business, building forts, making believe that I was running a daycare with my American Girl Dolls, or writing newsletters for my Beanie Baby town. It’s interesting looking back from where I stand now, I feel like I am playing at the same things, but now that I am an adult, it’s called adulting. Growing up I was always a bit weird, but I found community in my swim team, Girl Scouts, and in the orchestra. When my family moved from Denver to Atlanta in the late 90s my love for the cello and curiosity around singing and songwriting really began to take root. Yet I really didn’t get the the guts to get on stage at an open mic or playing in a band until my early 20’s, as a senior in college. Then I was full speed ahead: I ran a solar-powered musical festival that ran 19 Saturdays called Music in the Woods in Greenville, SC which still runs to this day! Then I got a little braver and started performing and touring solo or as a side woman for other artists such as Greg Laswell. For my 30th birthday I promised myself I’d move to Nashville to build a team and within a few years, I got signed! A few years later on the day that I released my, record the FBI raided the offices of the parent company that owned the company to which I was signed, because the owner had been convicted of a 200-million-dollar Ponzi scheme! My career froze. I lawyered up and I got my intellectual property back because I would not be just another victim of the music business. As I fought to get all my music back, I became a detective, I found thousands of dollars in royalties that were owed to me. This experience lit a fire inside me to help other artists collect their royalties. First, I started a podcast with my friend, songwriter and producer Wilson Harwood of Elevated Music Studio called The Wealthy Artist Podcast. Then it turned into coaching artists 1:1 to guide them through the song registration process and now there’s my self guided workshop Tunedough, which teaches artists how to quit leaving cash on the table in their music business.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?