I See the Sign: Q&A with Sam Amidon

September, 05, 2010 , by Ladye Jane

In This March of this year, I got a chance to tag along with a friend to the Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville. Although the line-up of over 55 shows was beautifully curated, only one show was so good that it convinced me immediately to purchase an album. Sam Amidon’s I See The Sign, became one of my favorite releases this year.

A player of Irish fiddle tunes since youth, Amidon likes to reimagine the songs he grew up listening to, collaborating with the likes of Beth Orton and Nico Muhly. His reinterpretations of Appalachian folk tunes and murder ballads make I See the Sign a collection of beautiful new tunes with slightly, or in some cases drastically, different twists on the originals.

As his tour prepares to make a stop in the Triangle on Tuesday, Sam was kind enough to chat with me about his music, the tour, and those quirky YouTube videos of his.

From its opening to the 802 Tour and your solo show, you were a huge part of the Big Ears festival. What were your highlights?

I’m not sure how much music I actually got to hear, since we kept on playing all over the place, but I really loved the opening to the festival. I guess what was so amazing about that, which is true of North Carolina as well, was that I was playing with my friend Thomas [Bartlett], and I looked out and realized that a lot of people there probably knew the songs because a lot of them come from that area, the Appalachians. It was really nice to realize that I was actually playing for a variety of people, many of whom would have heard that music on their own and have a connection to it in a personal way.

Where do you find these old folk tunes that you work with?

There are a few different pockets that I tend to pick songs from. One is the Sacred Harps or shape note traditions, which is this folk choral music that started in New England around 200 years ago and has since moved west and south. It’s made up of these very intense raw hymns about death, life and choral pieces composed by farmers and non-trained musicians. So a lot of them come from there. Some come from this singer I love, Bessie Jones [of the Georgia Sea Island Singers], and all these children’s singing games she collected. Really, though, they come from friends and from all over.

What first draws you to a song you want to work with, the lyrics or melodies?

I’m someone that tends to not notice lyrics right away, so it’s initially the melody. I get more into the story later on. Sometimes maybe it’s the case that I’ll come up with a guitar part for a song first, and I’ll realize that the song’s melody fits in there. Or, I’ll just know that I like that set of sounds.

What is your process of arranging the songs? When you find one you know you want to work with, how do you go about reworking it?

There’s no one way. Sometimes it’s just that I love the song and I realize that I want to sing it. It’s not like I set out to forcibly re-alter a song. Sometimes it doesn’t need it. Other times, the songs end up radically different.

What I like about working with the folk songs is that there’s room to take the song first or start with something that’s not part of the song and just put it over the top of something you’ve created to see if it matches or not. There’s a lot of room for mistakes, accidents and coincidences in that process, which is what I like because that’s what I love about folk songs—how mysterious and weird they are.

Sometimes the narrative is super disjointed because the guy who sang it last forgot a verse or maybe he didn’t like it, or he added a verse from a different song and some weird character shows up for a minute. There’s a highly odd process and mystery to the origin of these songs since they change when getting passed down from person to person.

You grew up in a musical household, with folk music playing a large part. Is that what led you to record an album like I See The Sign?

I didn’t think of myself as a folk singer at all growing up. I mostly played the fiddle; that was my main thing until I was like 21. I sort became one of by accident. When I came here, I wanted to play with people that weren’t folk musicians; I was sort of trying to get away from it.
I came down with my friend Thomas, made friends with Nico, and all these different people, and it sort of turned out almost by mistake that what I could bring to the table of working with those guys was to sing these folk songs with them and see what they did to them. When I play live, it’s mostly by myself, but on the albums a huge component is the role of Nico, Shahzad [Ismaily], Thomas, and all the people that join in to add what they add coming from their different musical backgrounds.

With your record label over in Iceland, how did recording work with so many people involved?

The first album I did with Bedroom Community, All Is Well, arose from laying down a series of recordings that eventually evolved into a release.

I See The Sign was made over the course of a year and a half. I would go over there for two weeks every 4 to 6 months. I first went over with my friend Shazad to put some initial stuff down. Then Nico went over and did the arrangements. I went back and added more over that, then with Beth Orton to add more vocals. Valgeir [Sugurdsson] and I then went in to see what was in there, did some editing, carving and sculpting since so much had been added.

In a way that’s kind of my favorite part. The editing, the piecing together, seeing what emerges from the layers.

How did “I See The Sign” emerge as the title track?

That line has a ring to it. I think that’s about it. It was one of the least likely. Least likely in terms of the way it ended up becoming an arrangement. It’s kind of one of the most distant ones from how I first heard it.

I think one reason it has a central presence for me, besides the crazy lyrics, is because it’s such a tumultuous batch of stuff thrown in there between what Shahzad is doing on the drums and guitar, Nico’s arrangements, and the intensity of the song. I like the way all that works together.

I forget that people outside of Georgia have heard of the Sea Island Singers. It was crazy to hear ‘You Better Mind’ on your album.

Well, it’s the same thing for me. When I was a kid, the nerdiest side of my life was going to the folk camps with my parents and learning about these bands. It was the dorkiest thing in the universe. Then all of a sudden I came to Williamsburg and everyone was playing these obscure folk records in the bars and it totally cracked me up. To me it was this totally surreal experience.

What’s one of your favorite musical memories as a kid, going to these folk camps?

I loved getting to play these old tunes with people. I remember the first time I got to play fiddle with one of my favorite fiddlers, this woman named Sue who’s, well, more of a dog trainer now. Just getting to sit down with these musicians that were my favorite in the entire universe just because they were around. It’s not like they were hugely famous, but just really wonderful.

Talk to me about your Vimeo and YouTube videos. They’re so weird and great.

I was alone in Copenhagen for a very long time when I made those.

What inspired those, boredom?

Yes, boredom is the root of everything fantastic.

This is just one of the many videos, you can watch more here.

What is really cool about those, though, is that there’s a huge parallel between them and what you do with music, especially the Graveyard Dispatches. They’re so entertaining; why did you stop?

They go in phases. If I think about them too much they get really bad, so I have to not think about them and not force it. So we’ll just have to see if the rains come and more videos appear. I have some long train rides on this tour, so maybe that’ll get me bored enough.

Speaking of train rides, you mentioned you’ll be traveling by planes, trains, and automobiles for this tour. Each one of those evokes a very specific kind of soundtrack. What will you be listening to?

I have Sonny Rollins’ saxaphone, bass and drums trio for the train, Mary Margaret O’Hara and Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing for the airplane, and then I have The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire book on iPod for the car. Unabridged.

Sam Amidon plays this Tuesday, September 7th, at Gerrard Hall in Chapel Hill. Tickets are $1 for UNC students, and $5 for non-students.

Listen to ‘How Come That Blood’, featured as one of NPR’s songs of the day last week. Listen to and download his cover of R. Kelly’s ‘Relief’ here. Both songs are from I See The Sign.

Photo by Fastboy