Sam Burton Shares New Song “Fairweather Friend”
Singer-songwriter Sam Burton shares his second single and the title track from his forthcoming album ‘Fairweather Friend’ arriving October 30th
Listen + watch the music video for the lead single “Fairweather Friend” now
& Catch him on North American + UK/EU tour dates with Aldous Harding and Widowspeak
Burton spoke on the track saying, “Fairweather Friend is the first song I recorded with my band I had been touring with for the past few years. After we survived the accident we all grew really close and I really wanted them to be a part of this record. It’s the first song I’ve put on a record that I produced myself with the band and so it was really meaningful to me.”
Fairweather Friend sees the Palestinian-American musician at his most confident and self assured. The album was announced last month alongside the release of single “I’m A Stranger” which was listed as one of Rolling Stone’s Songs You Need to Know and was covered by Billboard, Earmilk, Austin Town Hall and more.
Watch: Official Music Video for Fairweather Friend
Fairweather Friend began in the wake of a bad car accident while on tour with the band Burton was in during and post-pandemic. He and his bandmates were lucky to be alive. Struggling with guilt—Burton had been driving at the time, though the accident wasn’t his fault—they bonded through a process of healing together; he was moved by and deeply grateful for their love and support. Then the project split. Some relationships ended, others started, and Burton left for a series of tours playing solo, stripped-down sets for bigger audiences. Back in Los Angeles, he began writing again.
You can pre-order the album now on CD & Limited Edition Bone Vinyl.
Burton, who records all his songs live, first returned to the studio with Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Coner Oberst), who also produced Burton’s last record Dear Departed. When they’d finished, he wanted to try cutting a few of the songs again. Since Wilson was already busy with other projects, Burton and his bandmates went into his drummer Pierce Gibson’s studio, Recorders, in Echo Park. The portion of the record they cut there was directed and arranged by Burton and the band, done without a producer in the communal spirit of connection and love that had bonded the band together in the first place. You can hear it on those tracks. When the record was finished, Burton says for him, a cycle felt like it had completed; a new one could begin.
Sam Burton writes, essentially, folk music, but to limit him to the genre doesn’t feel like it does justice to his work —his depth places him in the legacy of singer-songwriter acts like Fred Neil, Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen. Musically, lyrically, and spiritually, he finds an edge in his songwriting that shows he’s willing to fall: accepting some losses as irretrievable, and relentlessly, almost compulsively, pursuing his destiny, no matter how lonely the pursuit can be. “I’m really just doing this because I have a compulsion to do it. And I have found wholeness—or something that felt like wholeness—doing it my whole life.”