I’m sitting backstage at the Roundhouse in London with Sam Brookes. He’s just sound-checked and has a little time to kill before the show. “It’s a bit of both,” Sam confides, as he tries to explain the source of his songwriting inspiration and musical building blocks. He acknowledges both the strong influence that certain music has had on him and also the flow of his own subconscious. Sam expands, “I guess from a young age I had two distinct streams of musical influence pumped into me. My dad was the guitarist, playing finger style and very influenced by the 60’s folk revivalists like Davy Graham and Bert Jansch. My mum wasn’t really into any contemporary music as such, but she was a really good singer. I remember seeing her perform when I was a kid and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It’s a powerful memory and something that’s still important to me, because when I perform now, it’s that place that I’m trying to get to.”
If it was his mother’s influence that started Sam singing then a little more uncommon formal training took over as he explains, “Although I learnt to sing around the house, I became a chorister from the age of six to about 11. We used to sing in a private chapel in Great Windsor park and perform to the Queen almost every week. I definitely got a lot of training there and oddly it’s something that I often forget about, because when I stopped I didn’t do anything musical between the ages of 12 and 16. But there was always this guitar in the corner of the room barking at me.”
From the age of 16 Sam starting working with his dad and it was around this time that he also picked up the nagging guitar. Sam recalls, “I worked with my dad doing picture framing and gilding for about five years and all the time I was learning how to write and perform, get my craft going.” I ask what his inspirations were for those first attempts and he reveals, “It’s still the same today, although I’m more open to the stream of consciousness and the ideas that come in from the people around me, but I distinctly remember hearing Willy Mason singing Oxygen and thinking it was such a moment of clarity that I’d like to write a song like that. Then there was Tim Buckley’s Once I Was as well and the guitar playing of Bert Jansch and me thinking I want to write a guitar riff like that. I’m aware of stealing a few tools from people.”
Not everything is quite so well defined, however, as Sam continues, “These days ideas tend to come in from all sorts of places and sit with me for a while, although sometime’s I’ll just sit down and write a song straight off. I think when it works the best, the first lyrics that I write set up the rest of the song. I’ll just feel where the song is going from the first few lines.”
I refer back to Tim Buckley as I made the comparison myself in the review of Kairos, but more for Sam’s ability to glide through the octaves than anything else. It leads us back to the choir as I point out that Buckley developed his range trying to vocalise instrumental jazz solos. Sam’s training is more formal, but as he started so young there was a point when his voice broke. Sam explains, “That’s the thing. Not long ago I spoke to a lady who was a choirmaster and she asked me when it was I stopped. By stopping at 11, it let my voice do its thing and settle down again and that’s apparently why I can sing like I can today. From that age I didn’t sing for some years, but when I did start again, the neural pathways were all still there, it was just a question of me connecting them up again.”
There’s a little more to it than just his impressive vocal range as the training has given him a solid platform to develop his musical style. He affirms, “I think that’s what I gained the most, an innate sense of melody and harmony.” He confesses, however, “I’m not very good at music theory as such, but if you sing or play something I can generally work it out.”
I ask Sam about his current home base and he tells me, “I live in Homerton in Hackney now,” but he also reveals, “I used to live in Trowbridge just outside Bath and I still go down there a lot. My step mum lives down there and I’ve got a lot of friends because there are lots of creative types in the area. Half the album was recorded in Bristol of course. I always tell people that I live in London, but I survive elsewhere,” he laughs. I ask whether that’s what the song No Time is about Sam admits, “Yes. I went through this period where I was working a lot, but not in music. It’s me taking the mickey out of myself, because I was getting very negative and it was then that I decided not to get too wrapped up and take myself so seriously. It was time to have a real go of making the music work. I wrote that line, ‘Why do I do this every fucking day,’ because I seemed to be on the Tube with so many people who seemed to be in the same place. It’s something that happens a lot in London,” he laughs.
Picking up the Bristol connection I ask Sam about Greg Freeman who produced Kairos and he tells me, “Greg is an old friend of mine who I met about seven years ago when we were both playing in bands. Then he was the first person to record my band and he worked both as an engineer and drummer. But then we parted ways and I didn’t see him until a couple of years ago. I told him that I wanted to go in a bit of a different direction and try some new sounds out. In the meantime he’d been getting more into production and worked on all kinds of stuff as head engineer at Real World Studios, so we decided to get together and try and make music.”
From the outset it seemed to work and Sam reveals, “The first song we worked on was Numb. Originally it was just intended as a demo, but nonetheless we set everything up as well as we could in Greg’s bedroom and recorded the version that ended up on the record. We seemed to have captured something straight away and that then set a precedent for the rest of the album and we also realised that we definitely wanted to work together.”
So from that it would seem that they had quickly found the sound of Kairos and Sam confirms, “ I dropped a few names as points of reference to get us started. I’m very much into Scandinavian music at the moment and an artist called Ane Brun in particular, a wonderful singer songwriter who has this really interesting production on her records using synth-bass and all kinds of other electronic sounds and I told Greg that’s what I want to explore.”
Sam explains how the recording happened and the Pledge Music campaign to fund it interacted telling me, “Basically I didn’t have any money but Greg is a friend and we agreed to work when we both had a bit of free time. Half of the album was recorded in his bedroom. He lives in this big high ceilinged house and as much of it is very gentle, we didn’t need any big space to set up a live room. It was finished when I hired a holiday let cottage in Shropshire and we turned that into our studio. It was a lovely place, a big old barn conversion and this was March last year so we got snowed in. It was perfect” He continues, “The pledge campaign really came later, because having recorded the songs I needed to generate the funds to find a way to get the music out and to reach the audience.”
But Sam also confesses, “I wasn’t really sure about Pledge to start with, because I wasn’t sure this was something that I’d do for someone else. But I researched it quite thoroughly and realised that I invest in the artists I like in much the same way really, by buying direct and getting the vinyl, the special editions and so on. I’d started playing the songs live and everyone was asking, ‘When are we going to be able to buy the record?’ It eventually dawned on me that pledge was the way to do it and it couldn’t have gone any better really. Of course it’s an ongoing thing and I’m fulfilling all of the pledges now. I did a house tour, which was great fun. It felt really good to be sat in a room with a bunch of people who were there because they wanted to help me get the record out.”
He’s certainly finding his audience. As we sit backstage at the Roundhouse the night’s show with Newton Faulkner as headline is a sell out and as well as supporting, Sam will also join the star turn for several songs. He yawns and apologises that things are catching up with him a bit as it’s been a busy and intense period and by far the biggest gigs he’s played to date. Sam recalls I did a couple of gigs with Ray Davies back when I started playing solo that were to this sort of crowd, around 3,000. I also did a few gigs with Newton in Europe, but this tour has been much more extensive. I play several songs with Newton and sing too, it’s nothing complicated. It’s been brilliant, but with the performances, the late nights and the travelling it’s also pretty exhausting.”
The live side is something that Sam has nurtured and he even promoted his own nights. He confesses, “When I moved to London I didn’t really know anyone here, so I started putting on my own music nights called the Unplugged Sessions. It was a really small room and you could only fit about 30 people in, so it was completely unplugged. I was lucky to be able to book some artists that I wanted to get to know.” He laughs again and recalls a fairly simplistic pitch of, “I think you’re really good and we could be good together. I started off by hunting down a guy called Pete Roe, whose song writing I loved,” he laughs again continuing, “He’s a good friend now.”
From that start the circle grew to include FRUK favourites Hot Feet and Emily from Emily And The Woods and others and the promotion evolved to become Because The Night. “We formed this little collective, putting on a monthly night. We’d change things each month, doing different arrangements of each others songs and stuff like that. We did that for a year and half and it was a great success and the nights would sell out, so we were able to start inviting other artists, because we knew we cover fees and create a great atmosphere.” He laughs again saying, “We had a cheese raffle at each event.” But on a more serious note, he reveals, “It was through Emily that I first met Newton, so if it wasn’t for those nights, we wouldn’t be sitting here now.” He confides, “It only came to an end because we all arrived at a point where we had other stuff to do, records and tours, so maybe we’ll get it up and running again.”
Finally we return to working with his father and another reminiscence of long hours of careful work gilding. He remembers “It’s quite meticulous work but you get into a state where your mind just drifts and so I always had a notepad next to me and would scribble song ideas down. My dad used to rebuild guitars too and all of the instruments I used had been worked on by him and so there were always a couple lying around. He was far from being a slave driver and every now and then we’d stop and I’d show him an idea that I’d just had. In many ways it would be great to get that workshop back too.”
It may seem like a long way from there to the stage of the Roundhouse, but Sam has honed his craft with the same kind of attention to detail. It’s what make Kairos so special. Reports are of very encouraging sales form the merchandise table as well, but if you missed your chance Kairos is available now: Order Kairos via: http://sam-brookes.bandcamp.com/releases
Interview by: Simon Holland
Live Dates
Mar 25 Oporto w/ Hot Feet, Leeds,
Mar 26 Nice ‘N’ Sleazy w/ Hot Feet, Glasgow,
Mar 27 Sneaky Pete’s w/ Hot Feet, Edinburgh,
Mar 29 Old Bridge Inn w/ Hot Feet, Aviemore,
Apr 01 Malt Cross w/ Hot Feet, Nottingham,
Apr 02 Bicycle Shop w/ Hot Feet, Norwich,
Apr 03 Theta Cafe w/ Hot FeetIpswich,
Apr 04 cb2 w/ Hot Feet, Cambridge,
Apr 09 Blue Sky Cafe, Bangor,
Apr 10 Lamp Leamington Spa,
Apr 11 Four Bars w/ Hot Feet, Cardiff,