Nashville is for cowgirls, too – and Sarah Souther is perhaps the best living proof. She blazed a trail all the way from a remote family farm in Ireland, where she earned a degree in design and did a stint in the film business, all while raising a son as a single mother. Then a Nashville songwriter happened to pass through, met Sarah and promptly asked for her hand in marriage.
It was romance that brought this pioneering lady to Music City, but her affection quickly expanded to include confection – marshmallows, to be specific. Picking up on the waning trendiness of cupcakes, Sarah saw a space in which to create the "future of classy elegance." Inspired by an exceptional homemade marshmallow she tasted while dining with friends at a local tapas restaurant, this bold lady took it upon herself to create a version of her own, involving ground cardamom and rosewater (she is an Irish rose, after all). Her friends loved them from the start (one likened them to "swallowing God in velvet pants!"), dinner party demand skyrocketed, and soon enough Sarah set up shop: in an unheated cabin on a trailer, in the dead of a brutal winter.
Sarah stuck to her guns, though, and eventually secured a space in Nashville's Marathon Village where Bang Candy could officially take root and expand into the realms of hot food, simple syrups, boozy barks and caramels. Above an antique jukebox in the store's doorway hangs a framed pink silk scarf with a handgun print – part of a line of silk apparel this Renaissance woman had created in a past life as a "bored housewife." Guns and marshmallows: an odd combo of interests that perfectly captures Sarah's ladylike poise and steely tenacity. After being held up at gunpoint not once but twice, in both Ireland and Nashville, Sarah adopted the image as a symbol of empowerment.
Call us crazy, but we'd gladly take a bullet for her Sparkle Bark any day.