Sam Burton Releases FREE AGAIN, Announces UK/EU Tour with WIDOWSPEAK in November

Sam Burton has spent the past month on the road with Aldous Harding playing packed rooms across North America with his two-man band (him and Matt Popieluch of Big Search). On October 30, he will release his new album Fairweather Friend on Captured Tracks and today, he shares 'Free Again,' a poetic third single from the album.

'Free Again is a song about finding yourself in forgiveness,' says Burton.

Fairweather Friend sees the Palestinian-American musician at his most confident and self assured. Earlier singles 'I'm A Stranger' and 'Fairweather Friend' have both been featured on Rolling Stone's Songs You Need to Know columns and have seen acclaim at Billboard, Earmilk, Austin Town Hall, Buzzbands LA, Saving Country Music and more.

Burton's tour with Aldous Harding concludes this evening with night 2 at Pacific Electric in Los Angeles. Next month, he will join Widowspeak for a UK/EU tour that kicks off November 13 in Leeds, UK and includes stops in Dublin, London, Paris and more.

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.

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.'

Fairweather Friend Tracklisting

Fairweather Friend

After Days Slip Away

I'm A Stranger

Lilac Man

Tomorrow Takes A Dream To Find

Picture People

Before Waking

Free Again

Light

Gone Away

Start Over

Do You Still Know Your Man

North American Tour Dates

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

Photo Credit: Matt Allen | download high-res