We were lucky to catch up with SONiA Disappear fear recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, SONiA thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

just after graduating from University of Maryland with a bachelors of Arts degree, my first job was Projects Director for the Baltimore Center for Victims of Sexual Assault. Previously I had worked in Sonoma County, California for the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Commission so I had some understanding of the functions of a non-profit government agency. My real passion was music and visual arts and I was able to apply those qualities to what might seem to some a mundane office job. But it was anything but mundane. Being part of growing and important agency to help victims of sexual assault was a real eye opener and brought me closer to how to address difficult topics and how to help a wounded soul heal. My overall ambition was to start a band. So around my 25 hours a week work schedule I was able to take local gigs and start building a following. Plus folks from work would come and see my band perform around town and at festivals. The BCVSA was looking for a new name I came up with the ‘disappear fear’ center. When a person s the victim of a crime all of their power of choice is ripped away. I thought if they could regain their personal power by disappearing the fear that kept them locked into the assault and then they could forward their lives in a positive way. The center chose a different name. They went with SARC (Sexual Abuse Recovery Center). So the name’ disappear fear’ was written on a little yellow post-it that I tucked back into the top drawer of my desk. It was around that time that I was starting a new band with my sister and we needed a name. The more I thought about the idea of disappear fear the applicable it seemed to be-
Equally important to me as making Baltimore and beyond a better place to live, was the idea of being able to express myself my music and ideas as an openly gay performer. The concept that when you disappear fear between people- what you can have is love. THIS seemed like a good way to umbrella a lot of phobias and suggest their antiquated and ridiculous claims needed to be erased- homophobia, transphobia, race-phobias, gender-phobias, age-phobias, religious-phobias…and on. so we grabbed the name ‘disappear fear and created our own merchandise company our own record label and basically our own ‘disappear fear’ brand.
we were definitely filling a void. There were lesbian bands that played only for all women audiences and there were white rock bands playing for mostly white heterosexual audiences. We just wanted there to be something where you could be open and free and not scared. The word got out pretty fast back in the day before phones and internet. it was word of mouth. And LGBTQ+ were finally able to hear songs they reflected stories that they could relate to with out hidden fake pronouns disguising the truth of their forbidden Lucious love. But the songs were good enough to not limit us in any way we gain flowers of followers in every persuasion.
Cindy and I were very naive but we went with our instinct. We wanted to make good music we wanted to present a show that was rehearsed but also alive and spontaneous. We were gracious to our our audience and fans. And we were committed to the world where we walked and our music played…being safe for the LGBTQ+ community..

SONiA, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Quality has always been super important. disappear fear is a name where when you buy one of our hoodies or t-shirts or CDs it was not made to die fast. We have fans coming into shows from 25 years ago with the same T-shirts. Sometimes I wish they would just throw the old shirt away buy some new ones. We used 100% cotton and we used local printers and sustainable products as much as we could. When cassettes were the medium of the day late 80s we had them recorded in regular time and on chrome cassette tape. This decreased our profits greatly but it made a much higher quality tape. It was even better than your standard SONY Records or Atlantic Records cassette. So folks would come back and buy another tape and another one as a gift and good quality makes good customers. we could continually built on our products and this furthered our reputation. This kind of ethic also made us stronger to hold our distributors and agents responsible for their part of the deal. As young female entrepreneurs, in a mostly male industry, this was important. At the time of our launch the first vinyl record we released was in 1988, Echo My Call, it was another 5 years before any single other mainstream artist came out as gay. So we were it; and way ahead of the curve. We were gaining fast. LGBTQ+ community wanted to be accepted and not imprisoned for their sexuality. We hd products that reflected a proud and inclusive positive approach. I came up with the idea of LOVE OUT LOUD in 1989. Today we still sell a ton of those t-shirts and hoodies at our webs site soniadisappearfear.com And we are going to release what will be my 23rd album in 2023. disappear fear music is available for streaming on the popular sites. and mostly Apple.
I like to think that in some infinitesimal way we helped the community and world be safer for the LGBTQ= community

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I don’t think you can know all the answers to all the issues that will come up. I suppose the road as long as you stay on it will teach you as you go. One situation where we got burned was a friend of a friend offered to photograph us for our first album cover. She had verbally greed to do it for the cost of the film development. The cost of the film development was about $250. After we chose the photo from the photo sheets she then said we owned her $2000. We did not allocate $2000 mostly we went with this photographer was to get a fairly decent photo for a minimal cost. But we did not have the agreement in a written contract. Let’s call her Piggy Bank. Piggy was unhappy with her sudden inability to have a certain access to one of the members on our team. So Piggy felt like why should I grant them any favors? Piggy lawyered up and refused our usage of the photo with out paying the full amount and giving Piggy a photo credit. we had a whole east coast tour based on this album release so we had to sucker up. I remember talking on the phone to her lawyer we could not afford a lawyer. And saying ys we will pay the money but Piggy Bank knows this is wrong and you are wrong too. And a woman where I had my day job said, Sonia, there are going to be a-holes out there. Do your music that is what you do best and don’t worry about retaliation for the criminals. This was good advice and I know when I put my head on my pillow at night. I have done my best, I get to play my songs and people love them. we did comply with the lawyer although we did not print Piggy Banks as the photographer on the album we stuck a sticker that said “cover phot0 – Piggy Bank” that went on the Seran wrap which people tore off and threw into the trash.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

We did not really have capitol. We just squeezed the orange as far as we could. we were flying before we knew how to land. I m not saying this is smart. But I think I wanted to live it as a risk. I think it was exciting it certainly retrospectively was stressful. We would would try to save up and work extra harder when we knew we had a big expense to fill. Credit cards helped. At the time the rates were more reasonable and each thing built on itself But for the most part it was person to person-For example we needed to print flyers so we had a tab at a copy cat downtown. We were able to get one business where we had good credit to see we were worth our word at another business. So say we had to make cassettes. if we brought some one in who had the funding we could kick back a dollar a cassette to that person. That way they would cover our the initial cost and we would sell the tapes and then pay that person back. And of course there was some profit to be had by selling a bunch of tapes to a local record store or at a gig. We needed to have vinyl though to get real national radio airplay. We were true to our word and that made us dependable and so the deals got bigger an better as we grew. And as we grew the small indy studios grew as well. Since we needed say 300 cassettes for an upcoming gig instead of 30 they had to go out and purchase more tape machines. Everyone involved profited and the product was good. so the buyer were happy. It was a very hand to mouth existence and I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.soniadisappearfear.com
• Instagram: @disappearfear
• Facebook: @soniadisappearfear
• Twitter: @disappearfear
• Youtube: YouTube.com/disappearvideo

Image Credits
Klaus Faust Lea Morales