NOTE FROM SAM
Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my debut album I Drowned & I Woke Up! The record means so much to me and I think you are going to enjoy it too. I began working on the album in March 2020, and over a year later, the finished product maps my story over this past year, as well as a story that feels universal. We live, especially during the last year, amidst pain, fear, loss, strife, sadness—forces of conflict that every single human experiences one way or another. I Drowned & I Woke Up is an exploration of the resilience of this conflict, the journey of going through the pain and coming out alive, coming out better—and I feel such a message has never been more relevant than where we stand, within a pandemic. I don’t mean to “spill” too much of the album, but one lyric from the song “Tweed” seems rather relevant to me in this note: “it all revolves.” If you know me well, you may have heard me say this in everyday conversation, and you may have scratched your head or simply laughed at me (understandably so), but to me, it makes sense. Everything turns and everything keeps going. This world revolves. The wheel keeps spinning. Despite our problems, despite the conflict, we keep going, through every new day, and that is pretty comforting to me.
Furthermore, this story is told, and best absorbed, by fully embracing the wonderful art form that is the album. With all the wonderful benefits that have come from streaming services, they have also led to a decrease in the value of the album. Beyond just singles, beyond tracks that your streaming service recommends for you, the album is a piece of cohesion, a novel told in chapters, a time capsule into the mind of the artist at the time. I Drowned & I Woke Up is designed to tell a story, listened to in order from start to finish; I feel that if you listen to it this way, taking a bit of your time to delve into the power that an album can hold, you won’t regret it. Once again, I thank you so much for checking out my music, and remember, it all revolves.