When Sands was fourteen, her father purchased, for $150 from a hard-up student at UC Berkeley, a OOO-18 Martin, and this guitar is the battered wonderful thing she still uses.
Sands grew up on Joan Baez and Judy Collins and was further inspired by Joni Mitchell; the 3 Js, as she refers to them, were big influences. But just as she cut her hair, finally, to welcome in the 21st century, other influences eventually penetrated her musicianship, such as it is.
Sands is really comfortable when songs have three chords—the idea of 1,4,5 she has somewhat mastered (though she is known to have to count these off on her fingers). She really likes it when B is nowhere around, although she’s learning to be a little more clever with her capo. In her own songs, she often uses odd (diminished? augmented? demented?) chords, but does not know their names. This is all improving all the time. She has played a bit of piano since she was young, and recently, after her mother Barbara made her a gift of her own mother’s upright Steinway, Sands started to study the piano in what she hopes is earnest. Her nephew Dashiell is ahead of her in Robert Pace’s workbook, Kinder Keyboard. (Another nephew, Hunter Dallas Jones, is a composer.)
One of Sands’ greatest pleasures is playing with friends, and she likes a party where guitars come out and fiddles are tuned (even if a number of her friends, including 
Cynical Spice, insist on referring to her as Singalong Spice). She is grateful to those who invite her have at a song or two during their concerts, as Maggie McKaig and Luke Wilson (Wonder Band) do from time to time; and to those who add their amazing talents to the songs (her own and traditional tunes) that make up her repertoire. Among these musicians are Louis B Jones (guitar and dobro), Maggie McKaig (guitar and accordion), Luke Wilson (banjo, oud, tenor mandolin—just about anything with strings), Greg Spatz (fiddle, guitar, mandolin) and his wife, Caridwen Irvine Spatz (who sings like an angel and fiddles like one too—to hear husband and wife twin-fiddle is a loving and musical event not to be missed); Randy McKean (sax and clarinet). Maxima Kahn (fiddle), and, far too rarely, though we did have a splendid time working together in Woody Guthrie’s American Song, Barry Angell, Rudy Darling, and Rick Toles.
She also counts herself lucky to occasionally be back-up singer to Mark Childress’ renditions of favorite Elvis tunes; to inveigle Chronicle Books editor and drummer Nion McEvoy to thunder away on a rendition of Long Black Veil; to wrangle notable female writers and editors into backing up, hilariously, her own song, You Made Me Believe in Love Again, and the many other Follies acts that mark the end of the annual Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.
All songs written and performed by Sands Hall.
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