Sam Amidon: "When you're learning a folk song, you're inheriting some kind of wisdom"

Sam Amidon is a man of many hats. He’s donned the full rock-band outfit in Popcorn Behavior, and the label “experimental folk musician” has followed him around for years. And now, he’s gone orchestral. Notably, some of his tracks wear a halo of “hymnostic” blues, to borrow a term from his pals Big Red Machine, which sees them tiptoe into gospel territory. And for good measure, he’s also been known to give his folk songs a jazz tuning.

Having grown up a fiddle prodigy, the London-based Vermont native eventually became an important figure on Nonesuch Records. He’s also collaborated with the likes of jazz guitarist Bill Frissell, sonic polymath Shahzad Ismaily, and singer-songwriter Beth Orton, whom he married in 2011. In January, meanwhile, the seasoned folkster released album number 13, Salt River, his first under the Rough Trade imprint River Lea.

Indeed, the 43-year-old has been hectically busy, including serving as singing coach for Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, on the upcoming World War I movie The History Of Sound. Last year also found Amidon and choreographer Michael Keegan Davis teaming up on Nobodaddy, which entwines the singer’s music with modern dance and theatre. The play premiered in Belfast in September, followed by 10 sold-out performances at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Then there’s Salt River, the creation of which saw Amidon joined by saxophonist/producer Sam Gendel, and percussionist Phillipe Melanson.

“We didn’t know what we were going to do once we came together,” says Amidon, sitting in Stoneybatter’s Mad Hatter Café. “We’d sit down and I’d start playing one of the guitar riffs and Sam would start messing around. The album came together quite suddenly, and without expectation.

“It’s rare that I go into the studio knowing that I have everything arranged. I like it to feel a bit open. I had been gathering material and did some recording over the six months prior, though I was unsure if I had enough to create a record out of it. I found that approach created a lot of excitement in the studio, because we didn’t know what we’d make. That kept it open for what it wanted to become.”

A thematic arc eventually emerges on Salt River, though again, Sam emphasises that it happens organically.

“The themes are quite subsconscious,” he says. “It’s all about what interested us at that moment. But once we neared the end of recording, and I added more vocals, I started to see what we’d put together. I was very thoughtful about the order of the album. Salt River has this kind of journey running through it, around themes of searching and wandering.

“You know, take a novel where some character comes in and they have some innocuous dialogue early on, and the story moves on. Then, as the novel ends, something happens where you realise how crucial that little motif was in the grand scheme of things. I wanted to have something like that happen on the record.

“It might sound as though it’s out of place once you hit track two or three. You may ask yourself, ‘Well, what is this?’. But by the end of Salt River, you understand why it was there. It’s like a path through these different worlds.”

In other words, everything is in its right place on Salt River. The covers may seem a bit off-centre, but they certainly stick the landing. After all, the only place I thought I’d see Yoko Ono and Junior Crehan united was in my wildest dreams. Also in the mix are tunes by Lou Reed and avant-jazz legend Ornette Coleman.

“I always keep my antennae out for folk songs with lyrics that interest me,” says Amidon. “In this case, I drew from Reed, Ono, Coleman and a bunch of others. Those artists were always kind in my repertoire.

Sam Gendel comes from a place of improvisation, and I come from fiddle tunes, which are both rooted in community. In trad circles, you’d often consult the masters of the folk tradition. So in a way, I started viewing Yoko, Ornette and Lou as those elders.

“I chose these songs where they’re dishing out folk-style truths. There’s a wisdom at play there, which is passed down from them – in the same way that when you’re learning a folk song, you’re inheriting some kind of wisdom.”

Growing up in the ’80s with folk-favouring parents, the Amidon household exclusively played acoustic records, although there was also some Cyndi Lauper, as well as Talking Heads’ classic Stop Making Sense.

“We had a couple of folk records by people in our community,” says Sam. “They let in some of the influence of the New Age and synth-pop of that era. One of those records was Grey Larsen’s The Gathering, and the other was Human Fly by The Horseflies. They offered little windows into the outer world. I hadn’t thought about The Gathering for a long time, until Sam started playing all these synths in the studio, and the melody to one of the songs, ‘Oldenfjord’, popped into my head.

“As the two of us started playing it, I realised we’d landed on the first song for the record. It evoked such a warm memory from childhood, and became a very personal talisman to me throughout the making of Salt River. ‘Oldenfjord’ is the skeleton key to the record, because it reflects my childhood, filtered through the sounds of a world I had not yet discovered.”

Sam’s teenage years, meanwhile, were soundtracked by the likes of Yo La Tengo, Miles Davis, Arto Lindsay and the free jazz greats. All of these influences seem to inform the album, making for a heady stylistic brew.

“There’s a big change for me on this record, in terms of the sonics,” says Sam. “For me, the act of exploring the digital and the synthetic, and finding humanity within that, marked a huge leap forward. My previous records were all very acoustic-sounding, even if they had electronic elements. Putting myself into Sam and Philippe’s sonic worlds required a bit of a trusting leap on my part.

“Because so much of it was born of loose jam sessions, it definitely took some work to sculpt the album into its final form. There’s a subtle difference between creating something that feels all over the place, and something that feels like a wandering, surprising journey, full of twists and turns. Our goal was to create something in that adventurous vein, and I’m honestly really proud of where Salt River landed in the end.”

• Salt River is out now