Sam Burton Lets the Songs Happen on ‘Fairweather Friend’

There’s a warmth and ease to Sam Burton’s singing that draws you into his songs. His new album, Fairweather Friend, brings to mind classic folk and pop records like Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman and Leonard Cohen’s Songs Of Leonard Cohen. From the title track’s restrained band groove to the solo acoustic string-bending of “Lilac Man”, the songs have a timeless feel and enough surprises to keep you curious about where he’ll go next. 

Burton wrote nearly half the album while working on a farm in Northern California. After extensive touring, he was writing with solo performance in mind and studying the guitar playing of Neil Young and Bert Jansch. Recorded live, the album brings together sessions with producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Conor Oberst) and other songs with Burton and his band handling production themselves. 

Out October 30, Fairweather Friend is Burton’s third solo album and his first for Captured Tracks. Burton spoke with us about writing Fairweather Friend, the challenge of capturing a song in the studio, and the unexpected inspiration he found in Disney’s Robin Hood.

Dean Fields: Congratulations on ‘Fairweather Friend’. Which song on the new album best captures where you are right now as a songwriter? What makes it feel that way?

Sam Burton: Thank you very much. I don’t use my songs to describe myself as a songwriter, nor do I feel that I know where I am as one. I don’t identify with my music, and I see recordings as a mixture of presence and something accidental. If I couldn’t duplicate it, how can I identify with it?

What were you listening to while making ‘Fairweather Friend’? Did any of it find its way into the songs or recordings in ways that surprised you?

The record was mostly inspired by how I was playing live and who I was playing with. I wanted to capture it; I was surprised a lot in the studio in both positive and negative ways.

I love to talk about influence and the way the music that comes before us shapes what we create. Is there a song by another writer that changed your idea of what a song could do? What did it open up for you?

Truth be told, I’m not really ambitious with it. I don’t need a song to do what I didn’t think it could do before. I just try to like what I’m coming up with and feel it in the moment, and then I try to find that again in the studio; I don’t always find it in both places. Sometimes a song that feels good to write doesn’t feel good to record, or maybe you just aren’t the person to do it.

Was there a song that made you realize you’d started writing a new album? How did that song take shape, and how did it steer the songs that came after?

I go away to write for my albums. And so I say, for these dates, I’m writing a record. On the first day I wrote “Tomorrow Takes A Dream”. I was thinking about the Disney cartoon Robin Hood and how Roger Miller sings as the rooster and plucks the guitar, and that’s what I got. It didn’t steer the songs that came after; I just moved on, usually. 

Which song changed the most between the first version and the recording we hear? What helped you figure out what it needed?

I’d say “Fairweather Friend”. I recorded it so many times with different people and in different studios. I changed the key, and I gave the riff I was doing to the lead guitar, and I just strummed instead of doing it.

Is there a lyric on this record you feel especially connected to? How did that line come to you, and what makes it meaningful to you?

“I wandered out here like an echo without a voice, and the one that spoke to me silently said there is no choice.”

What do you hear in ‘Fairweather Friend’ that you don’t think you could have done on your first record?

I couldn’t do any of it, nor could I do anything I did on earlier records now.

Is there a song on ‘Fairweather Friend‘ that hints at where you might go next? What does it make you want to explore?

No, I can’t do that kind of thing, or I get blocked. I just sit down and write what’s there. I can’t control what it’ll be, and what inspires where I’m going isn’t my own records, you know? It’s life and other music.

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Photo of Sam Burton via ‘Fairweather Friend’ album cover