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Maine-based singer-songwriter Sara Trunzo isn’t a born-and-bred Mainer, but her adopted home, its timeless coastal setting and the vibrant characters that inhabit it feature heavily in her new EP, Cabin Fever Dream (Sept. 24). The EP’s five songs were written with timelessness in mind, but not placelessness, and follow 2019’s Dirigo Attitude. The full-length LP featured revered songwriters Darrell Scott and Mary Gauthier, and was also recorded at the Nashville’s legendary Sound Emporium, as Cabin Fever Dream was. Both collections fit squarely in the Americana realm, bringing stories of the genuine, unromanticized parts of rural living to the forefront, eyeing New England viewpoints. 

Originally hailing from working-class New Jersey, a daughter of an English teacher and machine designer who attended Catholic school and sang in the church choir, much of her current setting can, in some ways, be traced back to memories from childhood summers spent at a small family lakeside outpost — often called a camp by local New Englanders — in northeastern Pennsylvania. 

Sara moved for college and spent most of her 20s developing and working as the director of a food bank farm and food security program in rural Maine, called Veggies For All, spending close to a decade getting local, organic food into the hands of her neighbors experiencing poverty. It was good, meaningful work — she jokes that at one point she was on the board of most organizations that had Maine and food in the title — but she was exhausted. After a 10-year relationship ended suddenly, she began to dig deeper into her creativity to help herself feel better — eventually moving to Nashville for a few years to understand more fully the songwriting community that she’d become enamored with while driving her truck around that Maine farmland.

“Songwriting, I think, was my ‘Liberty Tool’ because it gave me something concrete with which to chip away at my identity,” she says. “When people ask why I continue playing music, I don’t always know the answer, or I fluctuate in and out of feeling like an artist. I really don’t want to force things, and I want to follow natural momentum. But I don’t lose the belief that songs are magic, and making something beautiful is of value just because. I’m willing to be surprised.”

Cabin Fever Dream was produced by Rachael Moore (T Bone Burnett, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss) and includes Dave Cohen (Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd) on keys, Adam Ollendorff (Kacey Musgraves, Keb’ Mo’) on pedal steel, Lex Price (k.d. lang, Neko Case) on bass, Jamie Dick (Allison Russell, Lake Street Dive) on drums, Kris Donegan (Lee Brice, Molly Tuttle) on guitar and Tiffany Williams on background vocals.

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Cabin Fever Dream | Dirigo Attitude | Thanks Birdie

Sara Trunzo’s Cabin Fever Dream Offers Timeless Look at Vibrant Coastal Characters

Cabin Fever Dream’s five songs were written with timelessness in mind, but not placelessness. “Got a hangover from too much of a good thing,” she says at the beginning of “Kind Bone,” a kiss-off broken-hearted song about being an outsider in a relationship, perhaps a third wheel, or possibly being led on by someone unavailable, and choosing to end the toxicity. 

“I Work Saturdays” was written during Sara’s 2019 Joseph A. Fiore Fellowship, hosted by Maine Farmland Trust. Taking its inspiration directly from an overheard conversation at Moody’s Diner, a midcoast Maine landmark and tourist destination, the song’s narrator finds herself lamenting the shortcomings of parenting-while-working class, social isolation, and making a life in a seasonal tourism-based economy. 

“Nashville Time” is a recognizable phrase to anyone familiar with the exercise of trying to schedule a meeting with someone in Music City. It’s a bittersweet-yet-upbeat song with a nod to creatives learning their craft together in a place where hopes for validation and success are high, but so is snake oil and disappointment. 

“Free For The Taking,” with its nod to Uncle Henry’s, a well-known Maine-based weekly classified advertising everything from cars, trucks, boats, RVs and farm animals to pretty much anything else under the sun. What’s the story with the complete package of wedding materials that have never been used? Why was that gun only fired once? Who is this person selling a collection of canning jars and Playboy magazines? 

Cabin Fever Dream was produced by Rachael Moore (T Bone Burnett, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss) and includes Dave Cohen (Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd) on keys, Adam Ollendorff (Kacey Musgraves, Keb’ Mo’) on pedal steel, Lex Price (k.d. lang, Neko Case)  on bass, Jamie Dick (Allison Russell, Lake Street Dive) on drums, Kris Donehan (Lee Brice, Molly Tuttle) on guitar and Tiffany Williams on background vocals.