The Sunday for Sammy Trust is marking 25 years of championing creative and performing artists in the North East. As part of the celebrations, local musician ERNIE, who has received grants from the Trust, has written and performed a song that embodies its mission of empowering and supporting aspiring artists in the region.
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00:00Singer-songwriter from Newcastle, Ernie, has put together a song to celebrate 25 years
00:06of Sunday for Sammy. The amazingly talented students from Gateshead College put together
00:11a music video for the launch of this new Northern anthem.
00:25Ray Laidlaw, who's best known for being a drummer in the iconic band Lindisfarne, is
00:29the producer for Sunday for Sammy, and I caught up with him about how this new track, called
00:34Carrying the Weight Around, came to be.
00:37Sunday for Sammy is a North East based charity that supports young performers when they're
00:43starting out, basically. It could be with assistance on fees for drama school, or it
00:48could be a bit of kit, it could be an instrument, that sort of thing. And we do that by putting
00:53a big show on every two years, with the great and the good from the North East scene, people
00:59you know, everybody from Anton Deck to Brian Johnson to all of them, they've all been
01:03in it to show some time or other. Lots of younger ones too, people like Rosie Ramsey,
01:07all been in the show. And the funds we make, we put into grants and give them out to young
01:13people who we think have got a future. 2025 is the 25th anniversary of Sunday for Sammy,
01:20and we're having all sorts of events throughout the year. And we decided that we'd like to
01:25mark that anniversary with a song. And we thought the best way of getting a song that
01:30was relevant was to ask somebody who we'd actually given a grant to over the years to
01:36write one. So I approached Ernie, and he was more than happy to help, and he came up with
01:41exactly the right song for the project. And we've used that piece of music as the music
01:48that a lot of dancers have done flash mobs to, and we're going to use it in other projects
01:53too, and it's just been released to the public last week. It's a fantastic tune, and the
01:59words, the lyrics are great because it exactly echoes what Sunday for Sammy is all about,
02:04which is basically, you know, you've got to work against the odds, you've got to work
02:08with what you've got, but don't let anybody tell you you can't do it. If you've got a
02:12passion for something, pursue your passion.
02:14Ernie recorded the track at Blank Studios in Newcastle, collaborating with producer
02:20Josh Ingledale and fellow artist Imogen Williams, lead vocalist of Imogen and the Knife, another
02:26recipient of the Sunday for Sammy's trust support. Now the song has been released, Ernie
02:31reflected on how the song came together and the deeper meaning behind it all.
02:39I've been doing it for as long as I can remember, really, ever since I was a kid, in various
02:45different bands, different sort of project names, and then I started this Ernie thing
02:51sort of in lockdown, really, and made it public in the last couple of years,
02:56and it's just kind of gone from strength to strength, which is good.