When she was a middle-schooler in Arkansas, Sarah Slaton would stay up all night downloading music, then burn mix CDs to hand out to her friends. For me, listening to music was so cathartic, she recalls.
At seventeen, she dug out her sister s guitar from the back of a closet and taught herself how to play. In the years that followed, she performed a few gigs and dropped a couple of songs on MySpace, but she was just getting her feet wet.
In 2004, Slaton went to Missouri State University, where she learned about the music industry and earned a degree in entertainment studies. She landed a marketing internship with Live Nation in Denver, and so packed up and moved here, hoping the city would offer even more opportunities. Later, she worked as a talent buyer at Casselman s and the Vinefield Agency, and eventually became a production assistant, doing stints with Live Nation and AEG.