Welcome to Captured Tracks: Sam Burton
Singer-songwriter Sam Burton joins Captured Tracks with his forthcoming album ‘Fairweather Friend’ arriving October 30th
Listen + watch the music video for the lead single “I’m A Stranger” now
Pre-save & Pre-Order ‘Fairweather Friend’
& Catch him on North American + UK/EU tour dates with Aldous Harding and Widowspeak
Sam Burton has always made music full of the hope of possibility and unbound potential that also channels the tension of accepting loss while still grieving it. Now, Burton is at his most confident and self assured—he’s at ease in his depth. Fairweather Friend is the Palestinian-American musician’s third solo record and his first album being released via his new label home, Captured Tracks.
It is out October 30 and Burton has shared the poignant Jonathan Wilson-produced lead single from the new album today. Burton spoke on the track saying, “The song sits somewhere between nostalgia and alienation. It’s more of a feeling than a statement. There is no home to go back to.”
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.
“I think a lot of things were changing, including the way LA used to feel for me when I was young and I felt like I could do anything,” he says. Now, “It felt like certain doors were closing. But the growth was inspiring to me. And I liked that.” Coming off such extensive touring, he began writing with solo performance in mind, rather than exclusively for a band— elevating his own guitar playing by studying solo performances by artists like Neil Young and Jansch. He spent several months in Northern California, near the town of Humboldt, working on a farm and spending long days writing. He began a period of deep reflection, looking, he says, for the piece of himself he’d often found in others. There, he wrote nearly half of the new record.
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.”
Catch Sam on tour his dates across North America and the UK this fall, kicking off a run with Aldous Harding in Philadelphia on September 9 with stops in Boston, DC, NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and more before concluding with two nights in his home of LA on September 30 and October 1.
He will then join Widowspeak for a UK/EU tour that kicks off November 13 in Leeds, UK and includes stops in Dublin, London, Paris and more.
North American Tour Dates:
09/09 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts*
09/11 – Washington, DC – The Howard Theater*
09/12 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel*
09/14 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair*
09/15 – Montreal, CAN – Le National*
09/16 – Toronto, CAN – The Danforth Music Hall*
09/18 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall*
09/19 – Minneapolis, MN – The Cedar Cultural Center*
09/21 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater*
09/22 – South Salt Lake, UT – The Commonwealth Room*
09/24 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall*
09/25 – Vancouver, CAN – Hollywood Theater*
09/26 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theater*
09/28 – San Francisco, CA – The Castro*
09/29 – Santa Cruz, CA – The Rio Theatre*
09/30 – Los Angeles, CA – Pacific Electric*
10/01 – Los Angeles, CA – Pacific Electric*
UK Tour Dates:
11/12 – Leeds, UK – Brundenell Social Club ^
11/13 – Dublin, IE – Workmans Club ^
11/15 – Glasgow, UK – The Rum Shack ^
11/16 – Manchester, UK – YES (Pink Room) ^
11/17 – London, UK – Scala ^
11/18 – Lile, FR – La Bulle ^
11/19 – Paris, FR – LePopUp! ^
* supporting Aldous Harding
^ supporting Widowspeak