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LUCK, TX- Sam Lewis is a singer-songwriter, but unlike any other singer-songwriter, Chris Stapleton once called him “a modern Townes Van Zandt”. That’s some high praise coming from a multi Grammy (5), Academy of Country Music Awards (5) and CMA (7) winner.
I spent some time ahead of my arrival at Luck Reunion checking out Sam’s music on Spotify, and Chris was right. Like Townes’ music, Sam’s song-writing is innately personal, and ever-so human. You’re drawn in by the emotional magnetism and warmth of the music, but kept by the simple beauty of his lyrics. God know how many times I played his latest single “The Only One”. The soulful inflection and the yearning guitar licks had me thinking this was an unreleased cut from Derek & the Dominos only album.
I was able to hang out with Sam for a bit after his “Song Swap” performance earlier in the day with Kevn Kinney, Caleb Caudle and Courtney Marie Andrews. During that performance, he performed “In My Dreams”, “Virginia Avenue” and “Little Time”.
Afterwards, he was gracious enough to let me snap a few photos and answer some questions about him, his music and what he’s got planned this year.
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Let the Blurred Culture audience know who you are. Where are you from and how did you get into music?
My names Sam Lewis and I’m originally from North Carolina and a little bit of Virginia as well. I’ve been in Nashville, TN for the last 9 years, typical blue-collar background man. I didn’t go to college or anything, I worked at Wal-Mart, pretty much my entire 20’s, while writing songs and playing coffee shops and in bars and in proper gigs and then kind of phased that out and just wrapped my third album called “Loversity”. It’s coming out May 4th, and yeah man, just topical songs, I’m your quintessential singer/songwriter.
The three songs you performed today, they each kind of touch on a different musical genre. One song was a little bit country. Another a little more folk. “The Only One” is more classic rock with soul. Is that the kind of diversity we can expect from your upcoming album?
It’s being defined as we speak. I’m not sure where its’ going to wind up living, it’s a little bit of soul, a little bit of funk in there as well … it’s probably going to fit in the Americana genre and I’m totally fine with that, I think that’s’ great. Yeah, a lot of it is pretty simple. It’s a simple record. I experimented a little bit more than I have in the past and I’ve been playing more electric guitar and getting some strange tones. We worked on vibes on the record. I’ve been a big fan of that sound for a long time. I also worked with horns for a couple songs. That was the first.
I’m a big fan of horns.
Yeah, they’re tricky, ya know, and fortunately we got some great players, Jim Hoke and Steve Herrman, they played on the two songs that have the horns and you can … you can get kind of carried away with horns, really quick. I tried my best to just stick to two songs and really don’t do any more than that.
But you did experiment more for this record compared to your past work?
Yeah man, we stretched out a lot of songs, there’s a lot of jamming on the record. Ya know, there’s a couple of tracks that are 7 minutes long, but it really takes you somewhere. It’s been a really fun project to put together and [I’d like] everyone to […] listen to it as much as you can, but [I want to encourage everyone to get] the vinyl. I’ve done something that I don’t think anyone [has done]. [At least,] I haven’t seen anything like it. And it’s a long record, it’s 14 songs, so it’s a 61 minute record. Oh, and the art work is out of sight.
For those uninitiated with your music, is there anything available online that you’d want a newbie to listen to?
Yeah, we just released the fourth single, “The Only One”. It came out March 9th, so yeah you can listen to “The Only One”, “Great Ideas”, “One And The Same” and “Natural Disaster”, which is a Loudon Wainwright song, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. They’re all on Spotify, iTunes and anywhere you listen to music. So, please check it all out!
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Lewis’ forthcoming record Loversity was recorded at Southern Ground Studios with engineer and co-producer Brandon Bell and is set to be released on May 4, 2018 and he will be touring throughout the year in support of it.
Sam has previously stated, “This is the closest thing I’ll ever write to a concept album. The idea is that we are all trying to get somewhere — all running from something and toward something. We’re all together in it, though.” I’m really looking forward to get there with Sam, preferably on vinyl.
