In the last year 24-year old Sam Brookes has played shows in bars, clubs, community centres and libraries as well as shows with Scott Matthews and Sarah Jarosz, and toured with Ray Davies who dubbed him “absolutely amazing”. He has also become something of an impresario on the burgeoning London folk scene, curating “The Unplugged Sessions”, a fortnightly club night in the London pub where he lives and works, which has featured performances from the man himself and fellow travellers Pete Roe, Lucy Rose and The Miserable Rich. Sam’s busy touring schedule includes further dates with Scott Matthews, and shows with Emmy the Great, The Travelling Band, and Chris Woods.
The youngest of five siblings Sam was raised in the London overspill new town of Bracknell near Reading. When his parents split in his mid teens he moved west to the spa town of Bath with his father, who ran a framing business and renovated old guitars. The workshop resounded to the sounds of Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, John Martyn and Richard Thompson, all key influences on the young Sam, who first picked up a guitar at 12 to strum ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ and went on to master the finger picking folk blues of Davy Graham. At 18 Sam joined his first group, a pop rock 4 piece called The Volt, who built up something of a local following, played Glastonbury, The Great Escape and Liverpool Soundcity and reached headline status at the O2 Academy in Bristol. Sam’s fast growing confidence as a songwriter was pulling the band towards the bucolic folk side of Led Zeppelin, when he decided one day to drop everything and head to London to seek his fortune. The rest of the band didn’t follow suit so The Volt was no more, and Sam was free to pursue his own modern soulful folk muse.
Sam’s eponymously titled debut album features eight stream of consciousness gems that Sam has honed to a fine point, beautifully realized by producer Chris Hughes (Tears For Fears, Robert Plant, Paul McCartney).
