Sam Wickens - Strange.24 (single)
Sam Wickens from Bangor, Co.Down, is a mesmerising performer, gifted with the talent to arouse the soul with haunting melodies laced with poignant lyrics sung with his trademark transparency of spirit. Compared to Jeff Buckley, John Martyn, Death Cab For Cutie, Tom Waits, Sam is a soulful writer and performer with a restless creativity, conveying a personal blend of Electronic, Soul, Blues, Gospel, Folk and Indie. This young and gifted 20-something artist humbly plies his craft with a focused sincerity, and has created a style his own: consistently delivering on his reputation as a bewitching live performer. In 2016 Sam performed at the prestigious Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival, Nashville, Tennessee, where he sang to an entranced audience at the famous Bluebird Café in Nashville.
Sam also performed at 'The Factory' in Franklin Tennessee. This event was filmed by Music City Roots and beamed live into 60 million homes across the U.S. In 2017 Sam worked with legendary American record producer Tony Visconti (producer of scores of albums by major artists including: David Bowie, T.Rex, Paul McCartney, Damon Albarn, Moody Blues, Marc Almond, Kaiser Chiefs, etc) as a featured artist on a Sky Arts documentary about Tony’s amazing life and career ‘Tony Visconti’s Unsigned Heroes’. This led to Sam working closely with music icons including Stuart Copeland, Nitin Sawhney, and Imelda May, and performing live at Union Chapel, London supported by legendary saxophonist Howie Casey (Paul McCartney) and top afro-urban band the Compozers. Sam released his stunning ‘All I’ve Seen’ debut album on 13th June 2019 to much critical acclaim. Now he returns with "Strange.24", the first single from his forthcoming "Watson" EP set to be released in February 2021.
Haunting arrangement of the song only underlines the subject the lyric talk about, mental health, the acceptance of recovering from mental illness. As Sam Wickens describes " Life without deep hopelessness seemed strange to me as I was accustomed to the black hole that was my normality."
His debut album was a real treat and a breath of fresh air on the music scene but the new material proves to raise the bar even higher. Always a strong lyricist and a performer with voice like no other, you'll notice in his work he has come a giant step forward in many ways than one.
photo: DanDanDann Productions
Sam Wickens is going to play a real live gig at the Workman’s Club, Dublin on April 1st 2021 (No April Fools), you can get the tickets here