Hi Sam hows things? Lets crack on, I hear you have new music. Can you tell us about it?
Walkin’ to Hollywood was meant to come out on Friday 1st September, but something went wrong behind the scenes. I woke up that morning and the record wasn’t live. My own record ghosted me! Luckily, we got it fixed and it’s now coming out on the 27th October. That unexpected grace period has actually been a blessing. It’s like a near-death experience – I appreciate the record more now and want to spend this window of time promoting it.
I’m very grateful to those that pledged money towards the record via my Kickstarter and I’m sorry that the album didn’t come out sooner. Without the support of the pledgers, I’d have never gotten the record over the line, so I’m extremely grateful.
Walkin’ to Hollywood represents a great step forward and I am proud of it. It’s richer than its predecessors, with added violins, cellos, piano, and even some gospel singers. I admire its ambition and scale. I think ‘Five String Guitar’ is the best song I’ve laid to tape…so far.
What was the record process like?
Ryan Pinson is a legend. He’s intuitive, honest, hard-working and enthusiastic. His input is great and he really helps you to bring these songs to life. That said, I wish I could enjoy the recording process more. I think I’m always very worried about the time. Run over, and it could mean additional time in the studio which requires more money. So I am a bit of a coiled spring in the studio, but that is my fault for deciding to make albums all the time!
I think with Walkin’ to Hollywood, the recording sessions for me were quite stressful as we wanted so many layers, additional musicians, etc. Not only that, but I foolishly decided to write an 11-minute song. Now, that sounds great in principle but I’ll say this to any bands thinking of doing the same – when it gets to the recording studio, laying down an 11-minute song is not fun! Obviously, you have to do multiple takes so doing that for an 11 minute song can take two days.
But like I say, Ryan is an awesome producer and he really helped us with this record. I was so desperate to make this album and Ryan really supported me in getting it over the line.
Would you change anything now that it’s finished?
Only everything! There’s always things in retrospect that you want to change. The problem is you live with this record for a long time. For the past few months, I’ve been the only person that’s listened. Naturally, you begin to pick faults and second guess.
Ultimately, though, I try to remember that the decisions I made were the right ones at the time – when I was in the studio, this was the vision I had. The main thing is I followed my convictions and made a record I wanted to make.
The best feeling will be when it’s released because then that’s it, it no longer feels like yours and you feel like you can let go of it. It feels like having a baby and successfully giving it up for adoption.
Tell us two truths and a lie about you?
I used to work as a DJ and one night I was doing an indie club night, spinning up-tempo numbers from the likes of The Smiths and The Kooks. It was all CDs back then, so I used to burn mixtapes off my computer but obviously you could only have so many tracks on one CD. Thus, occasionally, I’d have to swap them over. One time I must have grabbed the wrong CD because I was playing ‘A-Punk’ and then I started the next CD, and suddenly ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M. started playing. As you can guess, it killed the atmosphere stone dead. Worse, there was a rule of ‘no dead air’, so I couldn’t stop the song and change. I had to just let it play, for five excruciating minutes.
Another time, I was doing music journalism for a fine publication called The Indiependent. I was at a book launch in London and when I said this name out loud, obviously the lady I was speaking to thought I’d said The Independent. Thinking I was a scribe for a prominent newspaper, she then began telling me she represented U2, who were about to release their 2017 album Songs of Experience. She asked me to interview Bono for the paper and she’d send me an email right away. As you can imagine, this didn’t end well.
One final thing. I took a gap year after school and did the whole travelling thing, bouncing around Europe and ended up hanging out at this bar in Trømso. For some reason, the band The Calling are huge in Norway and some girls thought I was the singer due to my blonde floppy fringe. I didn’t have the heart or the grasp of Norwegian to tell them otherwise, so I had to spend all evening pretending and then do an admittedly passable impression of him at a karaoke bar, where I – natch – sang ‘Wherever You Will Go’.
So, I’ll let you guys figure out which ones are true!
What was the worst experience on stage?
One time we did a subpar gig back in the day and a punter said, “that gig was so bad I want everybody’s money back.”
If you could wish for one thing to aid your career what would it be?
More confidence. Some nights, I can’t get to sleep and I look back on my life and nod off thinking, ‘I’m completely hopeless and useless, talentless, and should fuck off.’
Do you subscribe to any conspiracy theories? If not, why not?
The fact I am not on a billion dollar record deal, sipping champagne in Nice with a platinum – not a golden – retriever is obviously a conspiracy.
Is there anything else you would like to share with the world?
Herpes!
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