Sam Lynch is the Next Big Thing
Sam LynchVancouver-based singer-songwriter making wavesPhoto: Raunie May Baker
By Alexandra LeBaron
Sam Lynch’s 2020 debut album may be called Little Disappearance, but Lynch is not easily forgotten. Her songs are expansive and ruminating, holding both the quiet mystery of a dark room and the warm glow of lamplight. They feel intimately familiar and yet entirely novel, capturing the best aspects of alternative rock while adding sonic and lyrical elements that are distinctly her own. While listening to one of Sam’s songs, her voice lingers in the air, signaling that she is here to stay.
Hailing from Vancouver, Lynch started writing music when she was young. It wasn’t until after she finished university that she chose to start pursuing music professionally. Lynch is currently recording an upcoming project, a follow-up to her first album. She recently wrapped up a North American tour with the Vancouver-based band Peach Pit.
While on the road with Peach Pit, Lynch played with Haley Blais, the opening act for the band’s North America Tour. I sat down with Lynch near the Chicago House of Blues before their show on April 12th.
AL: How has touring with Peach Pit been? You’ve been on the road for how long now?
SL: Just over a month, which is wild. Yeah. It’s been super fun. This probably the largest scale tour that I’ve been involved with, so it’s been super special. A team of pals. The Peach Pit guys are friends from home, and everybody in our band is from Vancouver, and so there’s that shared camaraderie of just being from the same hometown and knowing each other before this, which is really nice.
AL: When did you meet Peach Pit and the rest of the people on tour with you?
SL: A couple years ago. Being from the same city, you tend to cross paths with people, so it’s been a few years for sure.
The members of Peach Pit, an indie-pop band also based in Vancouver, met one another in high school. // Photo: Wikimedia Commons
AL: What is your daily schedule like?
SL: It’s a lot of driving. We wake up wherever we slept the night before and drive anywhere from – I think two hours has been our shortest drive, and 10 hours has been our longest. So we drive a lot. Then, we get to the venue, we load in, we bring all our gear inside. Usually we have half an hour to an hour to chill, and then we soundcheck. Then, we have dinner on our break, which is like our break now. And then we play our set! Then we load our gear up, and drive to wherever we’re staying, sleep, wake up, and do the whole thing over.
AL: Do you have any pre-show rituals or things you like to do before going on stage?
SL: I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but honestly, for me, I just like getting dressed, putting on whatever I’m gonna wear for the night, putting on makeup or hair. It’s less about the end product; it’s more about taking the time to be quiet and focus in on specific things. I also usually do a little vocal warmup.
AL: I know you wrote “Not My Body” [from your debut album, Little Disappearance] on a solo tour. Do you find that touring drives your creative process visiting all these different places? Is it different than when you’re at home writing music?
SL: Touring solo is just so different than touring with other people, in the most extreme sense. When you’re touring solo, you’re alone 90% of the time, with the exception of when you’re playing a show, or if you’re staying with friends. Whereas being with other people, you’re almost never alone.
I haven’t been feeling super creative independently on this tour. I feel like if anything, it’s been more just a thought, little ideas. I’ve been jotting things down in my phone and my notebook. [Touring with others] just makes it a little bit more difficult to zone in on getting actual, tactical work done.
Lynch pictured at her desk at home. Of Vancouver, Lynch said, “I feel like as with any place that you live in your whole life, it’s easy to take [the natural beauty] for granted.” // Photo: Raunie May Baker
AL: Do you have specific places where you like to draw inspiration from, whether that be other artists’ music that you listen to, or things that you like to read?
SL: I feel like [my inspiration is] coming from all over the place all the time. A lot of the time, it’ll be how I’m feeling, or just what I’m thinking about, like recurring thoughts. I’m like, ‘Okay, there’s something there.’ Things that are going on in my friends lives, or people around me. Generally speaking, I tend to draw from real life situations, feelings, and scenarios.
For this next project, I’ve been thinking a lot about the energetic worlds that a song can create, or that an album can create. Whereas going into the last one, it was sort of song by song: ‘What do I want this to feel like?’ Just [focusing on] one song. But it’s interesting thinking of the world that you can create within an album.
AL: What is the upcoming project that you’re working on?
SL: It’s in the early days still. I’m going to start recording in June when I get home, which is exciting. I’ve been writing slowly over the past two years. For so many people, there was this grand pause. I mean, obviously, [the pandemic] was difficult for many reasons and in varying degrees for different people, but I tried to lean into not feeling so rushed, allowing myself to not write, if there wasn’t really anything coming out.
AL: I know your previous album, Little Disappearance, started recording in early 2019 and came out in late 2020. Do you think that pandemic affected the creative process, having it in the middle of when you began recording and when you finished?
SL: The majority of the record was already made before the pandemic, with the only exception being the last song that I recorded for that record, which is a song called “Keeping Time.” That one, I actually recorded in June of 2020, so it was early pandemic days. We were able to sneak it in and make it happen.
There were a few different things going on in my life around that time that made the rollout of the album move a little bit differently than I was expecting, but I don’t think pandemic necessarily affected the creation. It was already mostly done. If anything, it mostly just affected the rollout, and how it was shared. At a certain point, I was like, ‘I think I just need to share it.’ It was a very strange time, everyone was like, ‘Maybe this will die down in a bit, maybe just hold off, and everything will be back to normal in a few weeks.’ For myself, and for so many of my peers, there became a point [where I said], ‘This isn’t going anywhere.’ You either sit on this thing that you made for who knows how long, or you just choose to share it, and move [forward].
During the pandemic, Lynch’s partner started doing cold plunges, allowing her to explore more of British Columbia.
“We went to the Capilano area to do cold plunges. He also built a full-fledged dunk tank in our backyard out of a garbage can, and he would fill it up. It was quite cold in the winter, and the top would freeze and he would have to chip it out to get in.”
Although she appreciated visiting Capilano, Lynch was less interested in diving in herself. “I was like, ‘I’m going to hold the towel. I’m going to have hot tea over here [instead].’”
AL: How did you get into writing music and realize that this is something that you really wanted to dedicate yourself to?
SL: I’ve been writing songs for a long time, since I was young. It wasn’t really until after I graduated university and had a little bit of space from everything that had been structuring my life up until that point, where I just realized, ‘Oh, there’s this one thing that’s been pretty constant throughout my whole life, but I’ve never really given it a chance to be in the front seat.’ It wasn’t until after that, which was a very clunky and uncomfortable time. I was like, ‘Who am I? What am I doing?’ [That was] about five or six years ago.
AL: Do you think your creative process has changed as you’ve gotten older, or the way you approach making music?
SL: Totally. And I anticipate it will be [changing] forever. I just feel like there’s an endless amount of things for me to learn. That’s part of what’s so exciting and also so scary about pursuing a career in the creative arts. Yeah, so I think it’s definitely changed. I feel a lot more open to collaboration now than I did at the beginning. I hope that I’m forever rediscovering and reinventing and the way that I go about making music.
AL: Do you have any dream venues that you would love to perform in?
Lynch at the Chicago House of Blues on April 12th, 2022 // Photo: Alexandra LeBaron
SL: Some of the venues that we’ve played on this tour were some bucket list venues. But to be honest, I feel like a bit of a fraud to say this, but I don’t necessarily think of it that way. It’s not necessarily about the specific venues. To me, the win would be to be in a place where you could play those venues. The specific venues would be the cherry on top, but it’s more about being in a place in your career where your music is reaching people and connecting with people, and you have the ability to bring 1000 people together into an event space. The historic nature of a venue would be fun, on top of everything, [but it’s not the most important thing].
AL: What has been your favorite show to do, out of any tour?
SL: I played a show at the Vogue, I guess three years ago. The Vogue is a soft-seater theater in Vancouver. It’s this classic, beautiful, stunning venue. I was opening the show for one of my favorite artists, [Natasha Bedingfield], and I remember at the time, just feeling [in awe]. That one of the first moments where I was like, ‘Whoa, I feel like I’m actually doing this,’ and that this wasn’t just a pretend thing that’s all going to disappear in a second, which I still feel like sometimes. I remember seeing some of my favorite artists play there when I was younger, before music was really a big thing in my life. So to be on stage, it felt very surreal.
Sam cites the Vogue theater in her hometown of Vancouver as one of her favorite venues. She opened for Natasha Bedingfield here in 2019. // Photo: WikimediaCommons
AL: Who are some of the artists that you think of as people who you’ve looked up to or influences on your own music?
SL: I feel like there’s kind of like two different camps of people. Growing up, I listened to Avril Lavigne. I had my pop punk phase, as so many of us did. And then, high school was when there were a lot of local bands that I [listened to]. It made it feel so much more tangible, because they were real people that were from my city. It made it feel less far away. I listened to Dan Mangan, Said the Whale, Mother Mother, these bands that now good things are happening [to].
AL: You mentioned that a lot of your inspiration is drawn from your own thoughts and feelings. What is the experience of sharing your deepest emotions with the world?
SL: To be totally honest, it’s something that when I first started sharing music, I didn’t even have a second thought about, because it’s just the type of songs that I’ve always written, so it didn’t feel so vulnerable. It wasn’t really until this record that I shared, and having conversations with people, [that I got] that question of, ‘How does it feel to be so emotionally naked?’ So now I’m thinking about it. Being around more musicians and witnessing the way that that other people’s writing process occurs, it just has made me think more about the intention behind it all. I think a lot about the responsibility of the artist. A friend of mine has a song about it, essentially, ‘Who am I to make you feel so bad?’ Because I’m choosing to share my deep, emotional [experiences], and this is the way that I process it, but then for that to then suddenly be on the lap somebody else … I feel like it’s just a fine balance, and it’s something that I’m reflecting on in my own work. Because not only is it that you’re taking your stuff and putting it out there, which can be really healing for not only yourself, but for other people who see themselves, but it’s also like, ‘Do I want to be singing about this every night? Do I want to be putting it out there for people to inquire about if they want to?’
AL: Yeah, and I don’t think that there is a definitive answer, necessarily. But I know it’s something that anyone who creates anything has to reckon with.
SL: I’ve been finding that, in writing for this next record, there’s a part of me that’s wanting to just say things so plainly, and so clearly. And then there’s also this other part of me that thinks, maybe I want to hold a little bit back. Well, maybe not hold back, but just frame things in a different way.
AL: Do you ever see yourself collaborating musically with the people you’re currently on tour with? Is that something you guys have already done?
SL: I have collaborated with a few of the people [I’m on tour with], more for their projects, but I would love to [collaborate more with them in the future]. I really respect everybody that I’m working with right now, personally and professionally. It’s a really lovely group of people.
Alexandra’s Sam Lynch Picks:
Darkest Places
Off the Rails
Keeping Time