This article was originally published in print for Rockstar Weekly Magazine, that featured a full cover image of Sam on the back cover (see our image included) and a full spread article on pages 8-13. The print version is still available for purchase HERE
For Sam Roberts it’s always been about truth. Whether it’s the songs he writes, or how he performs them on stage, staying true to his passions, his emotions, and his sharing of those songs, is something that he strives to maintain.
While many popular rock bands are writing about drinking, partying, and girls, Sam Roberts’ songs are filled with references to current politics, definite spirituality, and unabashed personal themes. And people seem to respond to those themes in a positive manner.
“You can choose to filter out certain elements of your experience as a person when you’re writing songs; I think it depends on how tight that filter is. If you set that to only include sex, drugs and drink, then a lot of that other stuff, that full spectrum of that human experience is pushed down to a fairly narrow path. I don’t think there is anything wrong with writing about sex, drugs, rock and roll either, but it’s just that it’s nice to set in a more complete context, and that includes addressing other fundamental human issues – and those can be political, and they can be spiritual, and they can be deeply personal.”
“It’s more about not liming the scope of your song writing rather than saying, “I’m going to be this type of singer. I’m going to be this kind of song writer.” And in doing that, you then allow your music or your songs to follow the twists and turns that your own life takes, and your own state of mind, and the things that concern you can be addressed. I think it’s a good thing to not pigeon hole yourself to one thing. And to certainly not be embarrassed to speak your mind… the fundamentals of good song writing, in my mind, is just allowing yourself to go to these places and not feeling like that’s not something anyone else would want to hear from you. And to acknowledge that life is beautifully complicated, and taking that head on and trying to wrestle that notion into your songs in some way.”
It’s this personal approach to writing songs like Brother Down, Bridge to Nowhere, Without a Map and many other instantly recognizable tunes, which allows Sam Roberts to perform his songs night after night, for months on end, with the same passion, excitement, and energy for one audience, as he does for the next audiences, on subsequent nights.
“Because they’re my songs, I feel very closely connected to each and every one of them in a different way. The beauty of music is that it’s not a static thing. It doesn’t just stay in its original form throughout your playing career. The songs have a tendency to change, the relationship changes, how you feel about them changes, and I think that you have to be open to allowing them to shift, if that’s what they’re calling for in a way.”
“And that’s something we’ve always done as a band – it’s keeping our definition of what the song is, a little bit elastic so that it can change when we need it to change – and that change allows us to stay motivated to play it, and inspired to play it. We’ll go back before the tour starts, and dig into the vault and pick out a bunch of songs. Some of them we’ll be tired of playing them a certain way, so we’ll add new things, we’ll take things away, strip them down or heap new things on it, and that will reignite the fire.”
The passion and fire for the songs is most apparent at the live shows. Watching Sam Roberts on stage, one is struck by how unselfconscious he is about the performance, about how unpretentious the show itself is – it’s all about the music, about being true to the songs, about letting go enough to connect with the audience.
“It’s obviously different for everybody but I believe the less you try to choreograph your stage presence, the more chance you have of becoming less aware or less concerned with your own conscious self – and the quicker you get to that state of mind where you start channelling something. You’re participating in the music and the show almost the same way the audience is. That’s where you’re trying to get to in a way – that’s where you want them to get to. And sometimes it’s easier than other times.”
“I don’t put a lot of conscious thought into it, because I like that it feels like a natural expression of me, and who I am, and the things that are important to me – and I get to do that in a very public way. Unlike something like public speaking, I get to talk about it or demonstrate it to people in a way that to me feels a lot more natural and potent as well. I’m using something where I really feel like I’m getting through to people – and I can see the sort of physical reaction from people to what we are doing, and that spurs me on. It makes me want to dig deeper and that’s the magic of being up on stage – to find that connection with the crowd. To find that point where you’ve let go of yourself enough, and they’ve let go of themselves enough, and there is a communion in a sense – that’s what you go after every night.”
This letting go by band and audience is especially evident when the band performs the closer, Mind Flood. Running anywhere from 7 to 13 minutes, depending on which night and how good they feel, this is an unabashed full out band jam – a gift of sorts to the audience but also to themselves.
“Mind Flood is almost always in the set. Sometimes we do it almost from a selfish standpoint. It’s because for us that’s a moment where we know that real free expression exists – the opportunity for free expression in our set. That’s just a moment we need so you don’t feel like you’ve just gone through the motions, and the next time you get on stage that possibility that anything can happen, still exists. And I think we all feel that it’s important to keep that kind of spontaneity in our playing and how we connect as a band. We sort of let go of the reigns and we have to find our way out of it, or through it, and as players it’s exciting – and I think the audience responds to that freedom all of a sudden.”
It took me four Sam Roberts Band shows over the years to finally personally connect with Mind Flood… the last show the band performed in Kelowna was my own defining moment and it suddenly enveloped me in this wave of musical energy. But the show isn’t only just emotional; watching Sam Roberts on stage you can’t help but notice how physical it is too – the man never stops moving. The underlying impression is that the music is just ‘in’ him so deeply that if not permitted to move about freely, Sam wouldn’t be able to sing.
“That’s just the way I am when I play music – well rock and roll music. I find that without movement, without me being able to really engage in the music in a physical way, I don’t feel the same about performing. I could stand there with my guitar and not move, but I don’t think it would come out the same way! It’s always been like that for me, even when I was young, even when I was in my first band in high school. I’ve never just stood there – I can’t. It’s not like I was a hyperactive child either – or that I’m hyperactive now. If anything it it’s just the opposite when I’m off stage; but I find when I’m up there that’s just what happens.”
In between shows comes the daily grind of tour life. Roberts and the band have been touring in support of their latest album, Collider, since early 2011 but they’re not done yet.
“I think we started touring two weeks before Collider came out – so the end of April. It’s unbelievable how long we’ve been on the road already because when you’re sitting there at the beginning, looking at heaps of dates that you have to go and play, you think ‘how are we ever going to get through all this? How are we going to cover all these miles? How are we going to find the motivation to be up for every show?’ And then you find yourself months and miles down the road, and you’re still ready to go further. I don’t feel like we’re at the end of our rope in any way.”
The current tour has seen Sam Roberts and the band crisscross Canada a few times, playing not just the larger cities, but many of the smaller communities as well. They’ve also dipped into the United States for shows in places such as Portland, Oregon and the famous Knitting Factory in New York. With that many miles, months and performances, one would be hard pressed to remember individual cities and shows.
“Sometimes the days just seem to bleed one into the next; it’s hard to tell them apart. But each show has its own sort of unique personality from the venue to the crowds. You can even break it down to sort of East Coast vs West Coast throughout Canada. It’s interesting too, to see it all in quick succession like that. You really do notice a difference between the cities in how they respond to the music.”
“The response to the music can also depend on the time of year. Sometimes when you play one place in the summer, people move differently and respond differently than when you play there in the fall or winter. In winter time people coming into the venue have to thaw out literally and figuratively. It’s just one of the things you get used to while being on the road over the course of a year, or many years. It’s the cyclical nature of touring, and the subtle or sometimes not so subtle differences between shows and places.”
The response to the music, to the new songs on ‘Collider’, has been nothing but positive from audiences on both sides of the border; a testament to consistently energetic and inclusive live performances, as well as to the strength of the writing. Choose any Sam Roberts album and it’s a complete album as opposed to a collection of songs. There are no filler songs. With each listen, you can discover something new. ‘Collider’ is only different in that it’s the band’s best album to date.
“It’s always heartening to hear that people still want to listen to an album as a whole and not just an assemblage of individual parts or songs glued together. The whole idea of the album being a snapshot or reflection of a place, and a state of mind, and a reflection of where your life is at that time, and your relationship to music – I think that’s a really important part. I don’t want to move away from that. I feel that as an art form, the album still has so much life in it because it allows you to express yourself so much more fully. So when I hear people say ‘the album’ and have sort of an expanding relationship with it – it makes me feel good to know there are still people out there who still choose to consume and digest music in that way. Rather than in the sort of schizophrenic breaking up of things into these little bits and pieces all the time, which seems to happen.”
‘Collider’ is also the first albums to be billed as Sam Roberts Band rather than just ‘Sam Roberts’. This was a conscious decision based more on truth of circumstances, than an emotional choice.
“At the beginning, the band’s identity wasn’t nearly as strong or as present as it is today. I think that the way we started – the way we approached everything, from song writing to studio work, was a much more solitary pursuit on my part. The guys didn’t play on the first couple of records. They were a live band. It was around ‘Chemical City’ album that we started to do more together.
“Because we started off on that foot, when people wrote about the music, they were talking about me because the band wasn’t a part of it at that point. Because live performance became such a big part of what we do, such an important part of how we see ourselves creatively, that started to infiltrate the studio work. Around ‘Chemical City’ the guys became involved in the recording process. And on the next album they became involved in the pre-production – taking those songs and fleshing them out, developing them, channelling them the way that Dave Nugent plays guitars, and how James Hall plays bass, and Josh Trager plays drums, and Eric Fares plays they keyboards. It’s going to sound different than if I played it on my own. With every record it seems that role has deepened to the point now that it doesn’t seem accurate to describe it with just my name. It’s a real reflection of the way things are – that’s how we try to do everything – just tell it like it is really.”
Roberts however, still writes all the music and lyrics.
“I don’t sit down and think ‘I’m going to write a few stanzas and a chorus and we’ll hack some music together.’ I always think of songs as lyrics beholding to melody, which is beholding to the song itself, the music itself, and vice versa. I try not to separate the different elements of the song when I’m writing and because of that I tend to write whole songs. You go in with a blueprint or a plan, and your job is to sort of follow that. Sometimes to reign it in, sometimes to let it loose. So much about creating music is about accidents, and a sort of serendipity.”
So what about the songs on ‘Collider’, which features the Hadron Super Collider on the inside of the album sleeve?
“In my mind – the album theme of science, and space and exploration, reflects what that creative process is to me. Not so much that we go out physically into other dimensions but certainly it’s an inward exploration of the same scope. The album cover is an actual colored-in version of a particle collision from a super collider. A sort of physical byproduct of smashing two things together. To me that’s representative of the creative process, and what this, and every album we’ve ever done, has been about. Taking two things, not just too many ideas, and smashing them together to create something new.”
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