f24 Folk Roots, Strange Shoots
Sam Amidon grew up as part of the New England folk community, but is just as likely to be found duetting with Bill Frisell or shape-shifting old time songs with indie experimentalists. Sarah Coxson gets the words and Judith Burrows the photos.
S
am Amidon dabbles in a dizzy- ing array of universes; he might as yet have passed under your radar. Then again, you may know him well for his three exponentially confident and critically- acclaimed albums, But This Chicken Proved False Hearted (2007), All Is Well (2008) and I See The Sign (2010). Or, per- haps, as a prodigiously and precociously talented Irish folk fiddler. Or, the many trendies amongst you may be familiar with his work, on banjo or violin, in vari- ous New York-based avant-garde experi- mental indie rock and free jazz bands with whom he associates. It’s possible that he’s even tutored you at a Folkworks session. Around about now, he’ll have finished collaborating, along with a string quartet, with one of his heroes, Bill Frisell (“I can die happy now!”).
You getting the picture? The world of Sam Amidon is somewhat erratic, some- what eclectic, somewhat accidental… and this is just the way he likes it. Like a butter- fly settling for nectar momentarily, then flitting off again. “You don’t want life to get boring. And one way for it to get bor- ing is for you to just tour and play one kind of place every night. I’m very lucky. I’ll play one night in a dingy rock club, the next night in a folk club, then maybe in a church for hipsters or folkies or both. It’s important to play for kids who don’t know anything about this stuff.”
For the last three years, Sam has been a genuinely itinerant musician both in terms of his physical location and in terms of his creative processes. Put simply, he is a singer, guitarist, fiddler and banjo player but he, for sure, wouldn’t describe what he currently does as folk. “When it comes to folk music, I’m kind of a purist in a weird way. Obviously my albums aren’t! That’s just music I make with my friends and they just happen to be folk songs. When I listen to folk music, I just listen to field recordings or a really nice album of traditional Irish fiddle tunes with accom- paniment. I’m maybe a bit of an old cur- mudgeon as far as all of that goes.”
His fellow Americans would agree,
he just ain’t folk: “In America, people’s definition of folk music is related to a sound, often including guitar-based singer- songwriters in that definition. They don’t include me because it doesn’t sound ‘folk’.”
Yet his strange, apocalyptic interpre- tations of Appalachian folk songs are like a spring shower that reveals the universe
anew, casting new light on songs that have become part of the furniture. Here, at fRoots Towers, we call a folk song a folk song. And that’s what brings him to the cover of this month’s magazine.
It may help, by way of introduction, to give a brief overview of his last two albums to convey an impression of where Sam Amidon currently sits, musically- speaking. Or it may not.
All Is Well and I See The Sign, both released on Iceland’s Bedroom Communi- ty label, are beautiful and startling pieces of collaborative work. Initially unassum- ing, All Is Well sees Amidon’s candid, stoic vocals, sometimes cracked with fragility, and his pretty guitar or banjo-picking ris- ing out of rich ambient soundscapes. Tra- ditional songs to a man, the words and melodies here are mainly owed to Dock Boggs but the evocative settings are orig- inal. Collaborating closely with talented friends from a variety of musical disci- plines, the sound is infused with left-field minimalism: sparse piano chords; warm, enveloping horns; drones; inventive light- touch percussion and the odd fluttering of strings. My initial synaptic links lead me to Sufjan Stevens or maybe Bonny Prince Billy, but there is a further stripped-bare element. As a result, what stand out are the songs: his version of Pretty Saro is exquisitely and bleakly exe- cuted; the loss and loneliness of an immi- grant with a love-shaped hole in his heart is tangible. His stark version of O Death hangs grimly before the less-than-cheer- ing sacred harp hymn All Is Well. There is an irony in the title!
I See The Sign takes a further leap forwards. As before, Amidon is rework- ing lost and found songs in a thoroughly modern way. Some hymns, some Appalachian songs, some of Georgia Sea Islands singer/ collector Bessie Jones’ chil- dren’s singing games, but also a beautiful and surprising detour via R Kelly’s Relief (“…he’s definitely the Bob Dylan of our times. The dude is prolific, enigmatic, possibly crazy… everything a great artist should be!”) and one self-penned song. Here Amidon’s voice reveals more of its folky history: open-throated and honest. The arrangements are bigger and bolder, more anthemic, more visceral. The col- laborations are more in your face: with composer Nico Muhly, with multi-instru- mentalist Shahzad Ismaily, with “sound gardener” engineer/producer Valgeir Sigurðsson and, singing, with his partner Beth Orton.
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