Sara Messenger, hat size still normal despite the size of her talent, grew up surrounded by gangs of skinheads in sub-rural Maryland but lived to sing about it. Falling in love with the piano at age five, Messenger taught herself the guitar soon after and began penning songs on topics that embrace both the state of the heart and the state of the world.

Forming her first band at 11, her teenage bandmates included Urban Verbs’ Danny Frankel and Larry Burnett of Firefall. By 13 she was performing at DC clubs, including the prestigious Cellar Door, and was the only local act featured, among the legends, before a crowd of thousands at the original Earth Day celebration. On the strength of her originals, she began touring the U.S. and Europe at 19.

To her credit is the maverick album, "Tattoos," released on the independent Terrapin Records and being among the few independent releases ever to make it to rotation on commercial stations nationwide, including rock and jazz heavies KKGO (Los Angeles), WRVR (New York), WBEE (Chicago) and KFML (Denver), as well as over 100 college and community-sponsored stations. Amazingly, "Tattoos," sold nearly 10,000 copies with only low-budget promotion, grass-roots distribution and minimal touring. Even more amazing, different cuts on "Tattoos" made it to heavy rotation on major stations in major cities in two different markets ~ rock and jazz.

While living in Los Angeles, Sara’s writing only benefitted from collaboration with some of the city’s finest songsmiths. One such fruitful venture was that with Alfred Johnson, whose tunes "Company," "Youngblood," and "Weasel & the White Boy’s Cool" can be heard on Rickie Lee Jones’ platinum debut lp.

Sara’s considerable instrumental skills, often taking a back seat to her voice and writing, have nonetheless not escaped notice. In 1984 those flying fingers prompted Brian O’Neal to ask her to join The Busboys. Sara’s keyboards also appear on Narada Records 1990 release, "The Wilderness Collection."

In 1994 Sara was the featured artist on Not Just Another LA Music Show, and in 1992 Peacemakers Television devoted two half-hour segments to Sara’s music and powerful spoken word. Also a published writer and performer on the national poetry scene, Sara is a 1993 winner of Chicago’s highly-competitive Green Mill Poetry Slam, and was featured in 1998 at the 24th anniversary of the prestigious Ascension Series at Vertigo Books in Washington, DC, where previous features include June Jordon, Ishmael Reed, Stanley Crouch, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka.

She has often been called a musician’s composer ~ which explains the list of players who’ve worked with her ~ cats who’ve played with Miles (Munyungo Jackson), Sting, Herbie Hancock, Maxwell, Brian McKnight (Angel Figueroa), Michael Jackson. Babyface, Stanley Clarke, Jean Luc Ponty, Anita Baker, The Isley Brothers (Rayford Griffin), Jeffrey Osborne, K-CI & Jojo, Patrice Rushen (Darryl Woolfolk), guitar meisters Grant Geissman, Marc Antoine, Snuffy Walden, and cats like Doane Perry and Andrew Woolfolk, whose credits and memberships in bands like Jethro Tull and Earth, Wind & Fire are legendary.

So with all this going for her, why isn’t Sara Messenger famous? Why do mini-malls have Blockbusters and Starbucks? Why is George Bush president?

Sara is currently producing and performing in San Diego, while adding yet more songs to the ever-towering stack of over 200 originals ~ just in case there’s a subject she forgot to write about.