Sarah Herrera’s journey exemplifies uncompromising artistic integrity in a landscape defined by compromise. For more than a decade, this musician has fiercely carved her own path through the underground punk and ska scenes, consistently defying conventional wisdom and resisting commercial pressures. Her evolution through multiple bands reflects not just a shifting sound, but a relentless pursuit of authentic expression in a world that often rewards conformity over creativity.
This interview, conducted in March 2025, captures Herrera at a turning point. On April 18th, a mere 20 minutes after her new live album was released, Sarah Herrera removed all her solo music and her bands’ collective 8 albums and 11 singles from all paid streaming services. This was a direct protest against the financial exploitation of artists. Just two hours later, she and her two bands were dropped from their label. By May 2025, Sarah had quit the music business in disgust. However, out of love and respect for her fans, and in true punk spirit, Sarah is sharing her personal email and cell phone number for anyone who wishes to reach out (see end of interview).
Sarah’s subsequent departure from the music business altogether transformed this conversation from a standard artist profile into something far more profound—a final statement from a musician who chose artistic principles over commercial success, even when it meant walking away from everything she had built. What emerges is a portrait of an artist unafraid to confront the contradictions and complexities of both her personal life and the broader cultural landscape. Herrera’s voice—raw, unfiltered, and often provocative—offers a window into the mind of someone who has consistently chosen the difficult path of speaking truth to power, regardless of the personal cost.
What bands have you been in and how did each band shape your style and sound?
Sarah Herrera: My experience in each band really brought something a little different to the table. When I was in RAPE! and Death By A Thousand Cunts, it was all about going in a more hardcore direction, which was the first genre I was exposed to. Exploited Cocks and Fentanyl Testers really pushed me in the direction of ska and ska-punk. These are very different styles of musicianship – for instance, in RAPE!, I was just basically screaming and intentionally playing sloppy chords, basically just practice dodging beer bottles flying at us, whereas in other bands I really had to emote with my vocals and play cleaner bass lines. And in vomitsemen (yeah, I know), my first band when I was 14, it was really more about learning not to be terrified playing in front of an audience and trying to remember the actual songs I had written. I had once heard in an interview with a musician that the trick was to stand up there and just imagine the audience naked. I’m severely dyslexic and get confused often, so instead I started imagining myself naked on stage with everyone laughing and pointing at me. As I got older and my substance abuse problems became more severe, that did actually happen at shows more than once.
You have mentioned in interviews something called ‘The Ungodly Document’ as a lyrical source for three songs that you have done. What’s the story behind that, and what are you favorite lines from it?
Sarah Herrera: Can I have 80 lines tied for first? Haha. Yes, the lyrics to the songs “What’s Yours Is Mine”, “A Collect Call From Nowhere”, and “I Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Down The Road” were all lifted from this thing. So, this document was something I (apparently) wrote during a 3-day alcohol and drug-fueled blackout. It is nearly 20 pages of single spaced sentences, one after another, all crooked. It’s my handwriting, so I guess I did it, no recollection – I woke up on the floor, everyone who had been there was done, my apartment was trashed, and there were all these sheets of paper rolled up and stuffed down my panties. Anyway, for some reason, nearly every single sentence contained the words “taxes”, “lawyer”, “drink and drive”, “rape or molest”, “homosexuals”, or “stealing” So I’ll give you one that follows the rule, and a weird exception that I found. I really love the line “I like paying taxes so they can find out why a grasshopper is green”. That speaks to me. There was also a line in there that said “I am a skinhead because my penis is a skinhead”. When I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, which happens fairly often, that phrase is usually in my head
You’ve toured in some questionable ways. What’s the most absurd gig your manager has ever tried to book?
Sarah Herrera: Want a list? Cemeteries. Crematoriums. The Museum of Saliva. The Bronx Psychiatric Center. A yarn store on Long Island. A NAMBLA chapter meeting. The Museum of Food Poisoning. Homeless Shelters. Dunkin’ Donuts, Archie Bunker’s House, Jews for Jesus chapters, dialysis centers, train platforms, the men’s room at Meadowlands Arena, a guns and ammo convention, The Museum of Torture, public libraries, Holocaust Remembrance Centers, the list goes on. Our manager … he’s a little off. The opening night of our tour, he scheduled a show in front of my apartment building, so of course there are tickets on sale right now that literally list my home address on it. I’m not coming out of the building, that’s for sure, I don’t want my neighbors knowing what I do for a living – they think I’m adult film actress, and I prefer it stay that way. Maybe I’ll do a Mardi Gras out the window if there’s a demand. We’ll see. Bring beads just in case.
If someone made a movie about your life, what would be the title, and who would play you?
Sarah Herrera: I hate to steal from my own song titles, but I’m gonna – it would be called “I Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road”. Who would play me? Would love to see it go to James Earl Jones, but he might be dead. So maybe Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, one of those two. If you wanted to shoot for the moon, I’d love to see The Rock portray me. Or maybe Woody Allen, I dunno. Is he out of jail yet?
You grew up with a Colombian father but never learned to speak Spanish at home. How has this influenced your identity as an artist?
Sarah Herrera: It has and it hasn’t. My father refused to speak it in the house, the only time I ever heard him speak it was on quiet phone calls back to Colombia where he was always talking about kilos of something, maybe he was trying to lose weight, I’m not sure. I am greatly interested in the culture and the language. But Miguel (Estrada, the drummer) is Latin, and I hate him for the way he treats me sometimes. Maybe that makes me Anti Semitic, I don’t know. You should see the video for Full Disclosure (I Am A Stalker) that we just did, it’s up to like 20,000 views on YouTube already. The videographer asked me to just walk around and try to be sexy. I’ve got the goods, so I did as he asked, all the stripper moves I learned as a child, et cetera. The video premiered, and spliced in between footage of me being sexy were clips of the guys in the band sitting on couch laughing at me. Welcome to being a chick in a male dominated genre. I should have just made music like Taylor Swift or some other crappy pop singer.
You released an album with Pancreatic Cancer (Yelling Freebird! At Funerals). What inspired this project, and what’s it like working with your brother?
Sarah Herrera: Well, actually not a huge difference, Pancreatic Cancer was my previous band, and it’s still me and Jimmy, only my brother Matt is on drums. So, the sound is very similar – vocals, guitar, bass – the only difference is that Matt is classically trained in playing Jamaican steel drums. So we’re at shows trying to play some punk and he’s standing there in shorts and a floral shirt playing this huge steel drum and asking for tips. I think he tried to braid some girl’s hair once. I guess that’s why we went with Miguel (Estrada) when we started The TLE. Matt’s my brother, and I love him, but sometimes after I show I could just murder him by running him over with my car in our driveway when I was drunk back when I was 11!
How do you balance writing music for your solo work, and your two bands? Do you approach them differently?’
Sarah Herrera: I do. This is a little difficult to talk about, but I suffer from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), what in the bad old days was called multiple personalities. There was some childhood trauma involving circus clowns and the country of Bulgaria, it’s hard to get into. But, for instance, being in the Tommy Lasorda Experience is stressful, we’re a big band, the other ones are pretty small. When I get overly stressed, or scared, sometimes Jessica comes out. This is what they told me at the hospital, it’s not something I’m conscious for. And her style of writing is very different from mine. She writes about sunshine and lollipops, and I have to go back and change sunshine to rape and lollipops to drink and drive.
Your live solo album ‘I Never Make Mistakes Because I Never Do Anything’ is coming out soon. What do you hope listeners take away from it?
Sarah Herrera: Oh boy. I want them to feel. I want them to think. I want them to laugh, and to cry. Mostly I want them to soil their pants. Really the excretion of any bodily fluid, preferably onto someone else – that’s my goal with this album.
Your creative process for the album ‘Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine’ involved watching movies and pulling lyrics from them. What’s your favorite movie?
Sarah Herrera: All of them! I can’t choose between my seven favorite films, that’s like choosing between punching a cop and punching a firefighter – how do you choose? I love TV and movies. Our song What’s Happenin’ (from the album “There May Have Been Others”), is about the show of the same name, and it references “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons”, and a much earlier song was basically an endorsement for Shirl from What’s Happenin’ for President (I figured a deceased President would do a better job than a living one), and there are an enormous amount of Sanford and Son references in our music. I don’t know, I guess I just want to travel back in time to the ‘70’s. And be Black.
What led you to start putting your music on Spotify and the other streaming services after years of being an underground DIY band?
Sarah Herrera: Well, we actually had a lot of music on Bandcamp and Soundcloud, because when we started out, we thought Spotify and Apple Music actually had standards. Once we realized they didn’t and we started getting onto the streaming services, we kind of abandoned those crappy sites that nobody listens to and are really more geared toward housewives shrieking their shopping lists into a cellphone or whatever.
Your band has recorded songs backwards because of your severe dyslexia, and then had your producer reverse them in the studio. How insane is that? Have you ever considered just releasing an entire album in reverse just for kicks?
Sarah Herrera: It’s something I thought about briefly, but the only problem is that very few people would be able to listen to it other than myself and the other people in the support group. But yes, it’s challenging. I do the cover artwork myself, and then our record label has to reverse it because I did it backwards, and then if I’m wearing a t-shirt with a band’s name on it, that always comes out reversed because of reversing a backwards image is like triple backwards or something. It’s an adjustment. Oddly, I signal the right way when I’m trashed, and then the wrong way when I’m driving sober. It’s kind of weird.
If you could resurrect one of your old bands for just a single show, which one would it be and why?
Sarah Herrera: probably vomitsemen or RAPE!, just because I would love to be 14 again. For multiple reasons – life was more carefree, everything was simpler, and my alcohol tolerance was much lower. I could get a nice buzz off three six packs instead of the intake I need today. Also coke was cheaper. Like, way cheaper. I’m getting slammed these days, I owe Rico like five large, and Rico don’t play.
You’ve written and performed in multiple languages. What’s it like being a multilingual artist?
Sarah Herrera: Oh, haha. I guess I’m semi-lingual – my English is shaky and my Spanish is non-existent. People hear my last name and that I’m from the Bronx, and they just start speaking Spanish and I have to say “No speako Spanisho”. But I did take singing lessons when I was younger with Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban salsa singer (salsa is kind of my jam, by the way) and he taught me how to roll my R’s properly and all that. Do I know what I’m singing? Not in the least. It’s all phonetic. Also backwards. One neat thing, there’s a line in one song that was taken from you can probably guess where, “I am not a prostitute because I am only a slut”. That doesn’t rhyme. When you translate it into Spanish, prostituta and puta actually do rhyme. Kind of a neat accident.
The track list for the album ‘Yelling “Freebird!” At Funerals’ is pretty crazy Which song are you most excited for people to hear, and why?
Sarah Herrera: Wow, now you’re asking me to choose between punching a priest and a meter maid – how am I supposed to decide? I’ll give a few answers. “Aloha Spicoli” is probably the best song musically. “Eat Your Sacred Cows” I am most proud of lyrically. I am very much not excited for people to hear “No Anesthesia (bass solo)”, that’s just me playing bass in the studio and swearing and yelling at myself, and it was recorded and released without my knowledge. But on balance, the song I’m excited for people to hear is “It’s Time To Get Serious About Drunk Driving”. So many people are just not taking drunk driving seriously, they need to know the basic rules I have outlined in the song so as to not get caught or hit too many people, many of whom probably don’t even deserve it, and just relax and enjoy being a giant pinball going down the road.
Do you ever listen to your own music, in the car or out taking a walk around the neighborhood?
Short answer: no. Long answer: fuck no. Well, that’s not entirely true actually, there are a few songs I can tolerate. So, “I Guess That’s What It All Came Back To, Didn’t It?” is I think our best song; Miguel and Jimmy agree. I don’t know what happened, it was like God’s penis reached down and touched us in the studio that day. “The Sex Pistols Were Terrible” was the first song I wrote, I was 12 or 13, and we recorded it a few years ago, it’s a bit raw but I’m very happy with the way it turned out. There are a few songs that I don’t really particularly want to listen to, but I don’t have to walk out of the bar dry-heaving if they come on – I Like Your Afro, Being On The Sex Offender Registry Sucks, One Through Thirteen, These Things Happen, This Is My Jam!, The Worst Pool Player In The World, maybe a few others. On occasion I will listen to the three serious (yes, I have written a few) songs that I wrote, “The Blacks And Blues”, which is about racism; “Support The Troops … Except …” is about all the horrible things our government has done to fellow human beings in other countries, and “Eat Your Sacred Cows” is just awful quotes from politicians who are for some reason revered: Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, etc. I’m fairly open with my politics, I kind of veer between anarchism and socialism, which in some ways fall under the same umbrella, but a better description would simply be “humanist”. I care about people. Doesn’t matter whether they care about me or not. Some of them may want to take away my rights as a female, a subversive, the daughter of an immigrant, a trans rights advocate, an inveterate drunk driver, whatever. Those people, I’ll still stick up for their rights.
If you could force one of your songs onto the Billboard charts just to confuse the general public, which one would it be?
Sarah Herrera: Funny you should ask, I was just thinking about that. This is actually a track from my solo EP, “I Give To The Poor So I Can Have Something To Steal”. It’s called “Song For My Niece”, it’s a song I wrote for my sister’s 3 year old. You can find the lyrics online, they damn sure can’t be printed here, not even a small sample. What happened was, the guys in the band spent a few nights writing down every piece of profanity I yelled at them when I was drunk, and they typed them all up. We already had a song pretty much fleshed out with no lyrics to it, and so what we recorded is basically me just singing the list (backwards, I think). And I must have been pretty hammered, because the song starts off with the lines “cockholster syphillis spreader motherfuckwagon shitmonger cuntzilla vomitbucket assbasket jizzmopper thundercunt fuckmustard” and just goes on like that for a really long time, and ends with “goodnight Katarina” and actual audio of my niece crying. I seem to be more creative when I’m drunk. I certainly drive more creatively!
Tell us something that readers might not know about Sarah Herrera
Sarah Herrera: probably that I’m in the Nation of Islam, I’m a hardcore five percenter. I converted after a 2 to 4 bit I did a few years ago (it was knocked down to 18 months with good behavior). So I adhere pretty strictly to the teachings of the honorable Elijah Muhammad (peace be unto him). When you see those guys yelling on 42nd Street, if you see a white girl with blonde hair ranting about “white devils”, that’s me. The N.O.I. forbids alcohol consumption, of course, so I admit I cheat a little there. Also smoking, drugs, violence, eating haram (pork) and sleeping around are prohibited, I may not adhere completely to those, to be honest.
You’ve listed Aerosmith as a band that really let you down, to the extent that you recorded a song about them. What other bands have let you down in this way?
Sarah Herrera: Yes, that was Love Me Anywhere (Except In An Elevator). Oh – there’s one band I could name, but they’re my closest friends and I would get killed! So let me look at my music library in alphabetical order. Okay, I’m seeing Aerosmith first, that’s not helpful. I’ll start with Z and go backwards, that’s kind of my thing. There it is – ZZ Top! Wow, did they fall off the cliff with that synthesizer shit and songs about legs. I LOVE Wesley Willis, he really let me down by dying. Van Halen. Still going backwards. DEFINITELY not Sha Na Na, that’s the one band that has never let me down, we are actually trying to collaborate with Bowzer and it’s just a scheduling issue, but it’ll happen. Scorpions. Ozzy (don’t print that, he’s got a huge legal team). No Doubt. Motley Crue. Metallica, what a shitshow they turned into after Master of Puppets. Okay, I’m bored with this.
What’s the weirdest piece of fan mail you’ve ever received?
Sarah Herrera: A human foot. No return address, and I’m surprised they delivered it, because the box was totally dripping blood. I often don’t get my mail, junkies break in and steal it all the time looking for AARP discounts or whatever, but they wanted no part of this. We use it as an ashtray, its kind of a good conversation piece. There are issues with flies unfortunately.
Anyone you’d like to thank?
Sarah Herrera: Yeah. Anyone still reading this. So thanks, Mom and Dad.
OFFICIAL LINKS:
https://music.fandom.com/wiki/Sarah_Herrera
https://www.facebook.com/sarahherrerapunk
sarah@mypenisisaskinhead.com
(718) 502-8714
