Meditations on change as Sam Carter plays Brighton date
Themes of change emerge on the fifth solo album, Silver Horizon, from BBC Folk Award-winning songwriter Sam Carter who plays The Annunciation Ballroom, Coleman Street, Brighton on Saturday, October 5 (doors: 7.30pm; tickets: £16.50; contact: 07766 476662).
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MusicTranscript
00:00Yeah. Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:06this morning to speak to Sam Carter. Now Sam, you are heading towards Brighton for a date
00:10on October the 5th, and on the back of your new album. And this is a new album, well tell
00:16me about it, it's an album which you realised was emerging about an album, as an album about
00:22change wasn't it? Yeah, yes, I'm really looking forward to coming to play in Brighton and
00:29play songs from the new album. Yeah, it is an album that's sort of themed around the
00:33idea of change, and it's definitely got a different sound to some of the stuff I've
00:41done in the past, and I was really lucky to have a great collection of some of my favourite
00:48musicians come and play on the album. We've got Roan Reingans, who's a great folk singer
00:54and fiddler and composer, and Evan Jenkins and Ben Nicholls on rhythm section, and Stuart
01:00McCallum who plays with The Breath on electric guitar. So it was, yeah, I'm excited to have
01:08the album. But that theme of change, what is it you're saying about change? Obviously
01:12you're saying that there's ambivalence around change, isn't it? It can be exciting, it can
01:16be extremely anxiety-inducing. Absolutely. So there's each song on the album, something I
01:25noticed while I was writing it is that a lot of the songs were themed around change and that the
01:29sort of narrator in the song was either sort of looking to the future at some future point of
01:34change that was coming up for them and feeling either excitement or trepidation or, you know,
01:40whatever. And then other songs, the narrator has kind of gone through some kind of big change and
01:47is sort of looking back with either relief or, you know, regret or, you know. So Silver Horizon,
01:53the idea is that the horizon is that point where that change is coming up or receding, you know,
02:01away from it. And that is the sort of central image of the album. And that kind of change and
02:09uncertainty, there's definitely a theme around that sort of idea. Yeah. And the wider reflection
02:17is changing times for the music industry. You're saying that things are still pretty tough out
02:21there, aren't they? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's some great stuff going on out there.
02:28There's some incredible young musicians coming up on the folk scene, but on the wider music
02:34scene as well. And that's, you know, there's lots of positives. But it's still a tricky time
02:41for the industry. We're not really back to normal post-COVID now. I think some of the changes that
02:48happened in terms of audiences and how they buy tickets and what they like to go to, and obviously
02:55their spending power because of the cost of living crisis, that's all had an ongoing effect on the
03:00music industry. But, you know, we're still out here doing it. And I think the thing is that,
03:08you know, music's obviously in one way, not an essential thing, not as essential as toothpaste.
03:17But in another sense, I think we really need it. And culture is, you know, music and art and so
03:22on, it's soul food, you know, it's the stuff that kind of really keeps us going. And I think that's
03:28what keeps us musicians going, wanting to still share that with people, no matter how tricky it
03:35gets as a kind of economic adventure. Fantastic. Well, I hope you enjoy that Brighton day.
03:43Good luck with the new album and lovely to speak to you soon. Thank you. Thanks, Phil.