Sam Hare

Barry Middleton (BM) Interview with Sam Hare (Sam) - June 2010

BM: What were your first experiences of the Blues?

 
Sam: Like many people, The Rolling Stones were my starting point. And then my older brother brought home an album called 'Real Stones' - a compilation of all the early Rolling Stones songs, done by the original artists. So it was a heavy dose of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, etc. I remember it was the harmonica solo of 'I just want to make love to you' that got me hooked! But I think I always had a feel for that kind of music anyway, as I was already into Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, etc.

BM: Who were the influences on your musical career?
 
Sam: As in choosing a career in music... it was very much a path I chose to go down on my own, based on very little other than my gut instinct. My uncle Robin Hare was in a band in the early 60s called The Wild Oats - they were sort of Suffolk's answer to The Rolling Stones, and used to support them, The Hollies and others. So he was the first person I turned to for advice - how to tune a guitar and the basic open chords. I had a couple of friends who showed me a couple of things too, but basically I just went my own way. My Mum encouraged me in the form of going halves with me on my first acoustic guitar, and then by having the patience to listen to me try and learn how to play it! But it wasn't until much later that I started trying to forge a career out of it.

If you mean musical influences, then all the music I'd grown up with (which I'll cover in the other question), then as I said through The Stones on to the Blues, and then gradually discovering all of the people who I considered to be the best of that genre, or certainly the ones who grabbed me the most: Muddy, Wolf, BB King, Freddie King, Elmore James,

Albert Collins, Lightnin Hopkins, Otis Spann, Buddy Guy.... and so on. I think it was hearing BB King that made me move from my (impossible to play) acoustic to my first electric guitar - which was an Encore Strat copy. Around the same time, someone gave me a ticket to a Clapton Blues night at the Albert Hall - 1991, the year that featured Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Albert Collins, Johnnie Johnson, Jerry Portnoy & Jimmie
Vaughan all on the same stage. It was Jimmie's tone that got me more than anyone else - it was so pure, with no bullshit. I loved the way he
played the bare minimum of what was required, and no more - and with so much feeling. I then got very into a lot of other Texas blues guys as
well: Stevie Ray, Doyle Bramhall II, Derek O'Brien. There's a certain attitude about the way the Texas guys play blues that I still love. But
I was also being influenced by Robbie Robertson, James Burton, Mike Bloomfield, Duane Allman, Eddie Hinton, Reggie Young, Cornell Dupree... all at the same time, so I guess that's what shaped my style.

BM: Does singing the Blues come from experience?
 
Sam: As much of a terrible cliche as it sounds, I don't really think you can sing the Blues unless you have gone through some degree of pain and upset in your life - I just don't think you'd be able to relate to it properly. But surely everyone has to some extent? I know I've got much
better at it with experience, but mainly because I only ever started singing to stand out a bit more at jam sessions, and so that I could control what song I played. I was horrific when I started. It's only fairly recently that have I started to really accept myself as a singer of sorts, and I've got better at it just through doing it a lot. I sing along to all my favourite music in my car every day, and that creates my style.... You know, some people I can relate to more when I'm singing their stuff than others. But in my opinion, singing the Blues shouldn't be something you try really hard to do... like to come up with a 'blues voice'. I don't like listening to people who's voices sound in anyway contrived. My voice just comes out the way it comes out, and all my favourite singers or biggest vocal influences are people who technically might not be anything that special, and they may sometimes be right on the edge of tuning, but they have a good TONE, and it sounds like they are singing exactly how they feel, straight from the heart, rather than how they think they should sound... I'm talking about guys like Gregg Allman, Ray Charles, Eddie Hinton, Sam Cooke, even Elvis and Dylan at times. I like voices that sound natural, and I think mine does. To answer the question... I don't necessarily think that singing the blues gets better with age or experience, because of course the ageing process starts to get in the way! But, yes I do believe it comes from experience of life in general.

BM: What was the first gig that you played?

 
Sam: It was with my uncle's band The Wild Oats that I mentioned before. They were having a reunion tour (of Suffolk!) in the early 90s, and they
asked me to join mainly to keep it in the family, but they also needed
another guitar player. So my first gig was on 21st May 1993 in Leiston
leisure centre, in front of some 700 people or something. I was
terrified, but it was great fun. I did several more quite big gigs with
them, including The Snape Maltings - and gradually started taking a
bigger role as a guitar player, and even backing vocalist as well. So
that was a nice introduction to playing live, and all the guys in the
band were very supportive and helpful.

BM: Do you think that Blues needs to evolve to stay relevant?
 
Sam: Absolutely. But as long as it's evolving sort of naturally, instead of
people desperately trying to write 'modern' blues songs for the sake of
it, with too many changes and odd chords for the sake of it. But I think
it is something that will just happen over time... people who are
percieved as blues artists will make albums that contain songs that
aren't really blues songs. So gradually, between us we can all start to
stretch the parameters of what blues is. I have to relate this to my
album of this year 'Down to the sea' - I just set out to make an album
of my songs, some more bluesy than others, but also mixed up with a lot
of other styles and influences. But I didn't and still don't want it to

© Al Stuart

exist purely within the Blues genre - I didn't want to make a 'blues' album necessarily. I especially didn't want to go for a traditional blues production - much more of a Southern Soul/early 70s thing.... In fact, I know it's not bluesy enough for a lot of people who were expecting it to be. And it's not really that guitar heavy either, it's more about the songs. But all the material sounds good at blues venues & festivals, and it's played and recorded with a sort of blues mentality and by largely blues musicians, even it's not an album of shuffles. I think there's only one twelve-bar song on there, and that's more of a country thing anyway! But nowadays, on iTunes and things, you have to list a genre. So my album is still filed under 'Blues' or sometimes Blues/Country/Soul.... I am not deliberately trying to make blues evolve, but I hope I am contributing to it a little bit. Ian Siegal's album 'The Dust' is a very good example of any album that's not really a blues album at all in the traditional sense, but it's being bought and listened to by the Blues crowd, even though it's bringing in a lot of Country, Soul, Gospel and things.... as my album does. And all his albums are helping to stretch the genre a bit. I think at the opposite end of the spectrum is someone like Matt Schofield, who is pushing the evolution of the Blues Guitar, as he brings in all his different influences and mixes them all together. His songs are doing it as well, but I think his guitar playing especially is very much changing people's perception of what Blues is, and what can be played within that musical form. Someone like Seasick Steve is helping the genre evolve a lot too, but based more on a traditional sound I think. But....the Blues can't possible stay relevant in today's society if it is purely being played by black people sitting on a porch on the side of a cotton field, so yes of course it has to evolve.

BM: Aims for the future and what do you hope to achieve within the Blues?
 
Sam: My aim for the immediate future is to promote my album as best I can, and to get out there and play as much as I can. Because I really enjoy how the songs start to change on the stage. More long term - as a continuation of the above, I am just going to carry on writing songs that mix up all my influences and hope that they are still accepted by the Blues-buying public, but also trying to make them appeal to people
who think they don't like Blues as well, as I think I'm already doing to a certain extent. I'm not looking to be a pop star, but some of my stuff has been played on mainstream radio, so that's encouraging that people outside of the blues scene like it as well. I don't have specific aims
or things to achieve, just keep doing what I'm doing, but better, to more people, and for more money