Dedicated to Clayton
When the unthinkable happens, everything stops, even the music. The other half of Hope Street House, Clayton McDonald, unexpectedly died of illness in mid-2023. Sara’s partner in love, music and extraordinary friendship.
‘As I walk towards something new, I feel the pain of every step, with and without you’
In April 2024 Sara releases ‘Song for Clayton’. The music is starting again. They were working on this instrumental a few months before he died. To go back there was a dangerous walk and stumble into insurmountable grey and emptiness.
All of Hope Street House and our band Hope Street brings back the presence of love and collaboration; his voice, his skin and his words, like beautiful salvaged pieces from a shipwreck.
Hope Street House was and still is a collaboration of the heart
The chatter, sketches of melodies, ideas, sparks, quarter ideas, no ideas, trashy ideas. Moments of humour, learning, frustration and fixing, talking, mixing, smoothing, chaotic rhythms, disagreements, symbiosis, push, patch and play – accordant, exacting and velvety warm, in a terrain of love, fun, dancing and cooking.
Hope Street House is – Sara’s composition, piano and vocals and now the whole shebang. Was, Clayton’s all things tech – ideas, mixing, mastering, artwork and publishing.
Started in 2020 in Canberra.
‘For you Clayton, in an infinite nowhere time and in vivid memory of everything that was exquisitely you’
Sara Vancea was born in Melbourne, Australia. As a small girl she discovered the vortex-like suction of music. At the age of 7, a friend of the family donated a piano and it was placed in her bedroom as there was nowhere else for it to go. Soon she was making a lot of noise by lifting the piano top and pressing down on the sustain pedal while playing the keys. Six months later the piano was sold and without the piano she would imagine tunes on her teeth by clicking them together in rhythms and imagining ascending and descending notes.
In the 90’s Sara joined a Canberra band called ‘Filthy Lucre’. One time after a gig, while the band was grabbing a drink and talking, she put a mic close to an empty guitar case and tapped out woody cardboard-box sounding rhythms. The guitarist joined in. So good! Sara is the real-life person behind the character ‘the girl’ in the cult movie ‘Dogs in Space’. She was 15 when she lived in that group house in Berry Street, Richmond. The Post punk era of angst, music and refuge.
In Canberra, she became part of a chaotic and somewhat anarchic theatre and music scene. She began singing her songs and playing guitar, and then later, ‘Filthy Lucre’. This was a turning point. She feels glad to have collaborated with such talented musicians; the late Jon Nix, Greg Walker, Kevin White and Lindsay Dunbar. Must mention the late David Branson here, the great organiser of eclectic and odd events whose support and energy was pivotal to the Canberra music scene at that time.
Sara was also involved in the contemporary theatre company ‘Splinters’ and her band performed in a bus depot.
Clayton McDonald grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He sang in the school choir, was badly concussed playing football but he excelled in everything, everywhere. He studied dentistry for 3 years and dropped out to study Chinese medicine and massage much to his mother’s horror. He began a radio show at 4ZZZ and played drums in local grunge punk bands. He was involved in left politics and activism at a time of peak police corruption in Qld. His father, Morris, was a Train Guard and played the black keys on the piano while kicking a large floor drum with his foot. He would play at community dance halls in remote towns of Queensland and Betty, Clayton’s Mum, would dance to every song.
‘Hope Street House exists in the love and memory of that extraordinary person Clayton, who lives in my heart forever’.
Sara is based in Canberra and receives Australian radio airplay and airplay in the UK and USA. The playlist of the songs Ulterior Kinetic (2020), Lilly Pilly Python (2021), Strange Angel (2021), Viridian Sanctuary (2022 – vocals), Somatic Mind (2022), Aqueous Air (2022), Sensory Empathy (2022), Uncanny Chasm (2023), World Mesh (2023 – vocals), Song for Clayton (2024), Amplitude of Nadir (2024),The Mutualists (2024), Disintegration Alley (2024), and For the love of Clayton (2025).
Heart Node – preview
Waterway – preview