We’re delighted to welcome stunning singer-songwriter Sam Amidon on Friday 9th May!
His music draws deeply from traditional folk, country, and blues. The new album ‘Salt River’ is an inspired effort to reinterpret and regenerate ten songs that he has gathered together as part of a decades-long quest to recontextualise what it means to sing folk songs or make folk music.
“Sam Amidon explores the organic quality of folk music with this collection of warm and playful re-compositions” – The Skinny
Born in 1981 and raised in Vermont by folk-musician parents, Sam Amidon sings and plays fiddle, banjo, and guitar. As a teenager, Amidon rose to acclaim as a fiddler, releasing five albums with his band Popcorn Behavior. A musician who glides through unlikely set of genres from traditional folk to free jazz, Amidon has released four solo albums, and also plays in the New York-based indie-rock bands Doveman and Stars Like Fleas. After a seven-year stint in New York City, Amidon has been fully itinerant since 2008 as he tours and collaborates with a roster of renowned musicians, including Shahzad Ismaily, Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, Ben Frost, and Valgeir Sigurðsson.
Salt River follows a busy and rewarding creative period for Amidon, which has recently seen him covering Bon Iver‘s Sable EP in full at Justin Vernon‘s request at the EP’s London launch in October; coaching actors Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal in ballad singing for the forthcoming World War I movie The History Of Sound as well as collaborating on the film’s soundtrack; and teaming up with choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan on the new stage work Nobodaddy, which entwines Amidon’s music with modern dance and theatre. Nobodaddy premiered in Belfast in September 2024, followed by 10 sold-out performances at the Dublin Theatre Festival.
The multi-instrumentalist has also previously collaborated with the likes of The National, The Britten Sinfonia, Beth Orton, Lonnie Holley, Marc Ribot, the Kronos Quartet and The Blind Boys of Alabama, among many more. Salt River is Amidon’s first record for Rough Trade Records’ sister label River Lea, who have previously released albums with the likes of John Francis Flynn, Lisa O’Neil, Ye Vagabonds and more, confirming its place at folk music’s ever-evolving vanguard.
“Channeling Appalachian fiddles, desert rock, Ornette Coleman, and Arthur Russell, the Vermont native keeps it moving forward, in his own inimitable style” – Pitchfork
“Clever re-inventor, overly ambitious re-animator, whiz-bang music folklorist, fusty archivist… the singer/songwriter has more than his share of fixed labels, even while his finished product eschews them all together” – The QuietusÂ
