Sam Lewis – Solo
Loversity Records – 7 February 2020
If you’ve not encountered Sam Lewis before, the title might suggest this is a side project away from a more customary band setting. In actual fact, it refers to the fact that here, recorded live in the studio in front of an audience, it’s just him rather than any of the many collaborations that have marked his studio and stage journey. As such, dubbed a modern Townes Van Sandt by Chris Stapleton, it finds him revisiting old material alongside a handful of new songs on a setlist of 19 numbers.
It’s one of the new ones that opens things up with the lazy strummed What Does It Mean, a hint of The Band coupled with the laid back feel of Ben E King with a soulful sweetness before he reaches back to his 2012 debut for the hardscrabble family story-song Southern Greek Tragedy, the title of which pretty much speaks for itself. The same album also serves up the four following offerings, the slow waltzing Bluesday Night, break-up number In My Dreams, the lost promise of I’m A River and the bittersweet memories in Runaway Bride.
Progressing chronologically, the lyrically playful all-new Neighbors with its echoes of Loudon Wainwright III provides the stepping stone into material from 2015’s Waiting On You, kicking off with the Prine-like Things Will Never Be The Same, a reflection on a lost love written in England he notes, Waiting On You, smalltown sketch Virginia Avenue, the no regrets I’m Coming Home, might have been Never Again with its Willie Nelson barroom waltz feel, a reference picked up with a mention of ‘yesterday’s wine’ on the glass-half-full sentiments of 3/4 Time where he sings how “You’ll find the needle in the haystack/Deep in the pocket of your dreams”.
The third new song comes with another longing for old and better times in The Light (“waking up is hard to do when you waited for the dawn”) and not settling for second best, before the final choices taken from his most recent release, Loversity, first up being the positive fingerpicked Guthriesque Everything’s Going To Be Different From Now On, leading into the bluesier The Only One’s call for individuality, Talk About It and, finally, the defiantly moving on When Come The Morning.
He closes the set with the last of the new numbers, the simple take me as I am and I’ll do the same affirmation I Love You where he says “you don’t need to pretend you’re anything more than you are” – a simple, open, intimate, honest and hugely listenable album, Lewis sums up those sentiments up perfectly.
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2020 UK & EUROPEAN TOUR
FEBRUARY
Sat 01 – Newcastle upon Tyne, Live Theatre
Tue 04 – York, The Basement
Wed 05 – Sheffield, The Greystones
Thu 06 – Cirencester, Glos., Sundial Theatre
Fri 07 – Glastonbury, Hawthorns
Sun 09 – Bristol, Hen & Chicken
Wed 12 – London, Green Note
Thu 13 – Winchester, The Hyde Tavern
Fri 14 – Witney, Oxon – – Fat Lil’s
Sat 15 – Grayshott, Hants, Applegarth Farm
Mon 17 – Cambridge, Cambridge Junction J2
Wed 19 – Norwich, Open
Fri 21 – Lewes, Lewes Con Club
Sat 22 – Swansea, Sin City
Sun 23 – Shrewsbury, Henry Tudor House
Tue 25 – Manchester, Gullivers
Wed 26 – Leek, Staffs., The Old Mill Smokehouse
Thu 27 – North Wingfield, Derbs., North Wingfield Community Resource Centre
Fri 28 – Atherstone, Warks., The OSCA Centre
Sat 29 – Salisbury, The Vestry
MARCH
Mon 2 – Köln, Blue Shell
Tue 3 – Utrecht, TivoliVredenburg
Wed 4 – Eindhoven, Cafe ‘t Rozenknopje
Fri 6 – Hamburg, Pooca Bar
Sun 8 – Berlin, Privatclub
Tue 10 – München, Orangehouse
Wed 11 – Vienna, Chelsea
Fri 13 – Olten, CH, Mokka-Rubin
Sat 14 – Lugano, CH, Rete Tre Show, RSI Studio 2
Tue 17 – Barcelona, La Pandora
Wed 18 – Zaragoza, Rock & Blues Cafe
Thu 19 – Madrid, Intruso Bar
Photo by Scott Housley