On May 1st, Sam Carter will release his highly anticipated fourth album Home Waters. Since winning best newcomer at the BBC Folk Awards in 2010, he has continued to garner praise from both the press and peers alike. Ex-Bellowhead frontman Jon Boden declared him “the finest English-style fingerpicking guitarist of his generation”. With his third solo album How the City Sings (2016), he left us in no doubt that he was developing his aspirations as a writer and performer while in collaboration he was equally bright.
As False Lights, a collaborative partnership with Jim Moray, their 2015 debut Salvor was “exceptional”, while their 2018 follow-up, Harmonograph, took it to another level entirely with Folk Radio’s Thomas Blake describing it as the work of two modern masters in perfect harmony.
If this first taster from his new album is anything to go by, we will be singing his praises all the louder following the release of Home Waters. Watch him performing ‘The Forge’ live, on which he shared the following:
“Home Waters was recorded at Simpson Street Studios in Thropton, a converted church with fantastic acoustics. Album producer Ian Stephenson and I thought it’d be great to shoot a series of ‘live in session’ videos to capture solo performances of the album tracks in the same acoustic setting. I’ve often thought of blacksmithing as a great metaphor for the creative process, one of hammering away in the dark until you craft something that ‘catches the light’. The Forge is a metaphor for the seat of creativity, and the song’s blacksmith narrator is a personification of raw creative energy.”
If you’d like to hear the album version of The Forge, you can do so now by pre-ordering Home Waters now on Sam’s official Bandcamp page https://samcarter.bandcamp.
We’ll have more on this new release soon, in the meantime, make sure you catch Sam on tour. He has an extensive solo tour lined up in May, details of which you can find below. There are also three special dates on which Sam will be accompanied by the specially-assembled Home Waters String Quartet (Mark Carroll, Edward Cross, Jean-Pierre Garde, Hannah Tattersfield), who are central to the sound of Home Waters.
Sam Carter Tour Dates
Sam Carter with the Home Waters String Quartet
Thursday 21st May – Kings Place, London
Friday 22nd May – Christ Church Downend, Bristol
Saturday 30th May – Queen’s Hall, Hexham
Sam Carter Solo
Friday 24th April – Carding Mill Valley, Shropshire
Friday 1st May – St Andrew’s’s Church, Rugby
Saturday 2nd May – The Met, Bury
Tuesday 5th May – Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham
Friday 8th May – Conquest Theatre, Bromyard
Saturday 9th May – The Stables, Milton Keynes
Sunday 10th May – The Musician, Leicester
Tuesday 12th May – Exeter Phoenix
Thursday 14th May – Chapel Arts Centre, Bath
Friday 15th May – West Ends Centre, Aldershot
Saturday 16th May – Harwell Village Hall, Didcot
Monday 18th May – Cambridge Junction
Saturday 23rd May – Chester Folk Festival
Friday 29th May – Shakespeares, Sheffield
Tickets and full details are available via https://samcartermusic.co.uk/gigs/
HOME WATERS is released 1st May 2020 on Captain Records