‘Honest storytelling’

San Francisco-born performer Sarah Hethcoat developed a passion for music when she began exploring the ivories at age 10.

A talented but somewhat bored pianist, Hethcoat found more enjoyment in lending her voice to theater, while writing and composing her own music took a back seat.

She wouldn’t realize until many years later, through a spur-of-the-moment project, that the latter was her calling in life.

“Some friends [who owned a recording studio] and made music asked me to write a few songs for tracks they’d recorded,” she said. “I went right home and two hours later called and said, ‘OK, I’m ready, let’s record them.’

“Just getting into the studio — the process — it was home for me. I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be, so right then and there, I quit doing musical theater and never looked back.”

Her latest self-released album “Nobody Likes a Bully” hit stores last October, following prior releases “Faces” and “Prosody.”

Three EPs and multiple U.S. tours later, Hethcoat is now gracing area stages with her “Stevie Nicks meets Pat Benatar” presence and inspirational rock ballads about “life.”

Her songs, she said, are an outlet for working through personal problems and the feelings they arouse in her.

“My music [reflects] the human condition. I’ll write about things I’m dealing with, but don’t yet quite understand myself. Once I’m able to get it out and perform it, I’m able to work through it.

“Often a song that [initiated] from a very vulnerable and negative place will become totally empowering,” she said.

An admirer of jazz/rock/pop Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer Carole King’s “honest storytelling,” Hethcoat said this quality is also what separates her from many mainstream artists today.

“I’m very uncensored and honest,” she said. “Since I don’t have a major label pushing me [to be a certain way], I am just me and I’m not afraid to share my process.”

Hethcoat will play at the Blue Café Saturday, on the first stop of her first Orange County tour.

With two talented singers in her family — a father who soloed in the San Francisco Opera company and grandfather who sang in a Barber Shop Quartet — it was only natural that Hethcoat would find her voice.

She spent many years in the Bay and San Diego areas, and even some time in London with prestigious theater companies, where she starred in productions like “Rent” and “Phantom of the Opera.”

While she had a greater desire to learn guitar, she said she was also drawn to the piano in her early days and attributes much of her success to that experience.

“Through piano I discovered an amazing freedom in playing and writing my own songs,” she said.

“That sense of liberation continues to inspire me today.

What she hopes to inspire in her listeners, is the freedom to “live, be open, trust and not be afraid to be broken.”

It is in these things, she said, where all of life’s lessons lie.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Sarah Hethcoat (also playing: Tammy Olea, 4th and Dock, and ZeeJay).

WHERE: The Blue Café, 17208 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach

WHEN: 10 p.m. Saturday

DETAILS: Cost is $5 at the door; call (562) 592-1302 for information.