i’ve been trying to write this blog for the past 6 months. Actually i’ve tried to write many, at many different stages of the recording process, and each time i try i feel like whatever i’m writing isn’t quite making sense, isn’t quite telling the whole story and isn’t quite… something else.. So i’ve given up trying to make sense and all of that and i’m just going to tell you how it is

We started in December, at Albert’s studios in Sydney, just before Christmas and got three days of recording in. From memory we did 8 or 9 songs just me on my guitar and mandolin and one of my best friends Kent Eastwood came in and sat across with me and played along on his Banjo/guitar/mandolin while i sang the songs. At one point we played a song together with just him on the piano and me singing.. it was really late at night and we were so tired from all the work we’d been doing and then this song just came straight out of us both and my heart filled with all the sadness and joy it could hold and then i sang out all my sadness and was left with only joy

In February we went to Jungle Studios and spent the most amazing day with YOU GUYS! the ones who pledged for the album and chose the package that included the chance to BE on the album. We had two groups in that day, clapping, whistling, singing & stomping, eating cupcakes and having loads of fun. I can’t wait to show you guys the songs you’re on – quite honestly, it really makes the songs really special, better than i could’ve ever imagined – especially ‘Hit Me With Your Heart’.

Then i went on a tour, for a really long time, and played all around Australia in beautiful venues and in YOUR homes which was, once again, a beautiful and mind opening experience.

By this time i was really very tired. So i did my best to rest and get ready for a huge week of 12 hour days to finish off the recording with a whole lot of really fun musical sounds like drums (the best i’ve ever heard), double bass (absolutely gorgeous), trumpet, trombone, clarinet (played by my cousin Justin!), sousaphone, organs, electric devil guitars… it was the most beautiful and intense thing i think i’ve ever done and at the end of the week i got quite drunk and ate way too many chocolate freckles & Anzac Cookies and woke up in the middle of the night feeling very sick and had each and every one of my songs stabbing my brain and haunting me while i tried to sleep. I’m not being dramatic, that’s exactly what happened! So i spent the next couple of days in beautiful silence, walking around my neighbourhood, eating really really healthy food and watching really bad movies (including the Exorcist which is SO not scary but i did go to bed for the next couple of nights wondering if it was going to start shaking).

Then back in! Every time we thought it was finished we’d realise there’s more to do, something to change, something to add or take away. I’ve never approached recording like this before – over a long period of time with gaps in between to listen back, think things through, and make sure that i’m 100% over the moon happy with every single sound. It seems so obvious.. of course you’d do that right? But it’s amazing how easy it is to lose perspective of why you’re recording something in the first place and just end up wanting to get it finished and done, or feel like it’s too hard to get it right.. But i felt like i needed to change the way i make music and i’m so glad i didn’t rush myself, or anyone else, and just allowed each song to take as long as it took.

So, what next? Well, i think i’ve been learning – time and time again, in so many aspects of my life – the value in taking things slow, and understanding that things will unfold in their time and that each day we just wake up and do a little bit more of something on top of a little bit more of something until we look back after a year’s passed and we realise that really we did a whole lot.

So, with that in mind, i’ll first be releasing an EP, i think around October this year. It will have 4 songs on it and i’ll take it to shows and sell it after i play and i’ll busk on the streets of whatever town i’m in and give it to anyone that throws $10 in my guitar case. I’ll make a video clip, and then maybe another and i’ll visit radio stations and talk to people about it and then i’ll play some more shows and maybe, after that, a few more.

In the end, we recorded 13 songs that ‘made the cut’. Since finishing the recording i’ve written another song that i absolutely love and, between now and the end of the year, i’m quite sure i’ll write a few more. So i think i’ll be heading back in the studio to add more songs to the album before finally releasing it early next year. So, by the time this record is actually released it will be over a year since we first set foot in the studio to make it and it will be somewhere around a year and a half since you beautiful people pledged to help see it get made. It will be two and a half years since the first song was written for the album and it will be somewhere around 3 years since i knew i wanted to make one.

To those of you that pledged through Pozible, late last year, for the album to be made – i hope this is ok with you. It’s a long time since you pledged! Releasing an EP first and then an album means more music in the end. That’s good news! And, it makes the workload a lot easier to manage and allows me to keep building my little musical castle to help keep on doing this for a long time – which is so important to me. So, to say thankyou for waiting and thankyou for your support and thankyou for making all of this possible in the first place – and to make sure you have music in your ears – i’ll be sending you the EP, before it’s release, as a gift. Without you i honestly wouldn’t have been able to make these songs sound the way they do and, in fact, i might not have even recorded them at all. So, from the very bottom of my heart, thankyou for being here and sharing in all of this with me.

This is a very long post! So i’m going to leave it there. But will give you guys more updates as they come, and as the time comes nearer to you hearing some of this new stuff.

Lots of love, lots of light and all of the gratitude in the world

xoxSam

i don’t know how many of you know, but i have a small tattoo on my left wrist. i got it around this time two years ago, during a time in my life that seems like it was worlds away. Sometimes i wonder if that person was even me. A lot had changed, there’s was a lot more still that would change in the coming years and the one word that kept swimming back into my head through all of this was ‘Patience’.

I’ve always felt a couple of steps behind everyone else, slow to catch on, not so quick to get the joke, not so sure what to say in this situation or what to do in that situation – and it seems that things people know about me, see in me, i don’t know or see in myself until a good long time after they become apparent to everyone else. So i think because of this i’ve always felt in a rush to catch up. I’ve always worried that if i don’t hurry up i’ll be left behind.

So, lucky for me, i have a constant reminder of the word that i now hold the most dear. Something that calms me, allows me to take a few breaths and be patient with life, with other people and with myself. It helps in traffic jams, it helps when i’m on the phone to Vodafone, it helps when i’m Christmas shopping with my sister, i’m sure it will help on Wednesday when i go to the cricket with dad and it certainly helps me every day in my musical life.

“Oh yes! The album!” you say. “What IS happening with that?”…

We’ve done three days at the beautiful Albert’s studio in Sydney. One of my closest friends, Kent Eastwood came along on the very first day and we did a whole bunch of songs sitting across from eachother in the studio, me on one instrument, him on another while i sang my little heart out. We also recorded a song on the most beautiful piano i’ve ever heard in my whole life. When Kent started playing it my eyes welled up straight away, it was just so rich and warm and sad.

We played banjo, mandolin, guitars, the beautiful piano and put down a lot of songs on that first day. Five i think.

The next two days were just me and Paul McKercher with our wonderful studio assistant Reyne House and we recorded nine songs in those two days, scrapped one of them and even managed to do some backing vocals on a couple. It was all just me and a guitar or me and my mandolin, the bare bones of each song.

So, next up we’ll be adding the next layer of sound. Double bass & some drums i’d say will be our next session and we’ll start getting some more backing vocals on there too. I’ll be getting some friends in to do bits here and there as well as singing some myself. I also want to redo a couple of the songs we recorded on the second and third days because when i listen back they just don’t sound… i don’t know.. like, the emotion or feeling in them is almost right but not quite. it’s 95% there but there’s that little bit missing that i know is inside of me, i just have to figure out how to express it when i’m singing in the studio. That’s the biggest thing that i’ve noticed recording this time around. Each song is asking me to reach further inside than i ever have before and put myself back in the place i was when i wrote the song. Or look forward to the hope i was looking at when i wrote the song. Or feel as utterly confused and heartbroken as when i wrote the song.. it’s exhausting! three days of that and i was ready to sleep for a month.

So anyway, after we’ve done all of that we’ll take a while to listen again and then decide what else we want to add. a little extra sound here or another vocal part there… we really probably only need to spend another five or six days in the studio but it’s all the behind the scenes stuff that takes longer. Working out parts, rehearsing with people, figuring out studio dates, matching those with my tour schedule and Paul’s recording schedule, and the other players/singers… waiting, waiting

So, i look again to my wrist, to the word that felt so important to me back then that i wanted it to stay with me forever. A word that, as i get older – stronger in some ways, more fragile in others – becomes even more meaningful in so many parts of my life. I’m gearing up for a great year ahead and i thank YOU guys for your patience! We’re getting there. Slow and steady wins the race

xxSam

Dear Diary. or, all of you reading this..

i’ve recently been faced with some difficult decisions. Decisions that, to an outsider looking in, are very easy to make (the ‘obvious choice’ depending on who was looking at the situation at hand) but to me got very complex and confusing. Decisions that bought up a lot of fears that i’d forgotten i had and decisions that tested my own beliefs about who i am and who i want to be.

After a long night of letting off steam (read: drinking wine and eating curry with my friends), i woke up painfully early the next morning and everything suddenly became clear. The only question i needed to ask myself was this: If you didn’t need money, if you didn’t have career aspirations, if you didn’t have to worry about where you’ll be in 5 years, 10 years, 15, 20, 50, 70 years time, if you didn’t care what people think of you and if you just wanted to do exactly what made you happy and exactly what you felt was who you are and moving towards who you want to be, what would you be doing?

Happy to report that the answer to that somewhat long winded, bellybutton gazing question was ‘Exactly what i’m doing right now.’

So, decisions were made, my mind has been restored back to it’s peaceful and purposeful self and there’s 13 days to go until we hit the studio to do the first few days of recording! I’m in the very last stages of preparation now where i’m figuring out the tempos, practicing the songs, making sure i’m happy with the structure and recording myself singing them so i can pick out all the bad bits and make sure i make more best bits. Never in my life have i thought so hard about how i want each song to sound, what i want it to say and how i want someone to feel when they hear it. And, more than that, never in my life have i cared so much about how i feel when i’m singing it, and what it means to me, and the story that i want my music to tell to anyone who hears it.

Maybe this is why i haven’t been crying my eyes out for the past two weeks (did that before i recorded the last EP) & maybe this is why i haven’t gotten sick with a killer flu (that happened before i made my first album). I feel in control with what i’m doing, i feel like i’m making choices for all the right reasons, in line with who i am and who i want to be and i feel like i have the most beautiful people around me lifting me higher and higher, loving me and allowing me to love them right back.

Lucky lucky lucky me
xxo