Home Alone Inside My Head, by Sam Amidon

Home Alone Inside My Head

by Sam Amidon

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John Cratchley This is Sam Amidon's time,I think...ideas by the bucketful,growing technique,fearless expression...all these things coming together now.
These 'field recordings': aural notebooks,if you will,are Sam on the hoof...unfettered and unrestrained in his quest to move his music on to new territory.
It is 'old' music yet new at the same time...this paradigm gives the music great presence and freshness...but it is also avant in a way: disparate ideas and musical styles merging (Sam's vocal ideas are really interesting in terms of texture,I think).
So,mostly jottings and sketches (there are two longer pieces)...this is Sam trying out ideas, but they are alive and vibrant.
I admire the rawness and the unfinished ethos...it just lets the talent and the ideas surface.
Once again,Lightning Records go for quality and not quantity...always a pleasure.

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1.	Will Adams 05:33	buy track
2.	Sweet Banjo 00:40	buy track
3.	Too Slow 01:24	buy track
4.	TuvaCobainBanjoSong 02:06	buy track
5.	Violin Circle 01:35	buy track
6.	Singing 02:55	buy track
7.	Singing? 00:28	buy track
8.	The Tanuki Song 00:42	buy track
9.	Billy's Piano and Drum 04:16	buy track
10.	Violin Free 02:03	buy track
11.	Cuckoo 01:29	buy track
12.	John Bell Tune 01:56	buy track
13.	Apple Tree Blossom 06:39	buy track
14.	Ottawa 01:18	buy track
15.	Banjo Hymn 06:29	buy track

about

LTG 008 // Sam Amidon // Home Alone Inside My Head

Sam Amidon is a contemporary folk musician living in Los Angeles, CA. Sam grew up in a family of traditional folk musicians in Burlington Vermont, where he also formed collaborations with artists Nico Muhly and Thomas Bartlett (Doveman). Sam has released records with the incredible Icelandic collective Bedroom Community, and currently is an artist on the legendary Nonesuch Records.

Sam, known for his beautiful, storied singing voice, and his virtuosity on guitar, fiddle, piano and clarinet, combines the folk tradition of reworking melodies, and iconic new musics as far flung as Jimi Hendrix to jazz and avant-garde, with his impeccable wit, cleverly re-contextualizing their works and conceptual legacies into new folk experiences.

For Sam's Lightning release, he is releasing a series of self-induced field recordings he made over the course of Winter/Spring 2002 after having recently just studied with two musical gurus - Kentucky traditional fiddle tune master Bruce Greene, and legendary free jazz violinist / AACM associate Leroy Jenkins.

Sam Talks about his Lightning Release:

My world had been opened up by each of them but in entirely different ways and I wanted to sort of bring the lessons of each together into one document.

It was recorded onto my trusty Marantz tape recorder, mostly at my apartment in Yonkers NY, over the course of winter/spring 2002. I went on a long kayak ride in the northern seas and came back with the idea to make "Home Alone Inside My Head. I carried the tape recorder around wherever I went, and made these "self-inflicted field recordings" as they emerged from inside. The first song, "Sally Gal," is a fiddle tune that was first recorded by a Black fiddle player named Will Adam. Most of the other pieces were improvised/composed by myself with a couple other exceptions, including the track where I play along with some women singing- that is a field recording of Ottawa Indians singing a melody that I had first heard in old Shape Note hymns.

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released August 25, 2015

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LIGHTNING Los Angeles, California

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