20 Questions with Sam Lee

Sam Lee1. What is your most inspiring song on your new album?
It’s got to be ‘My Ausheen’ (my Old Shoes), as that was learned from my teacher, the late great Scottish traveller Stanley Robertson.

2. If you could meet three people (they can be dead or alive) who would they be?
Joni Mitchell, song collector Alan Lomax and Ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultz.

3. If you weren’t singer what would your profession be?
I’d be an anthropologist.

4. What does this year have in store for you, can we expect another album release in the near future?
Definitely for a new album, probably recording this over the next 12 months, and loads and loads of concerts. From here on we will be gigging loads over next nine months.

5. You are clearly inspired by travelling, if you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?
I’d love to spend more time exploring the Amazon.

6. How do you think your Mercury nomination will help escalate folk music as a genre?
Far more people are experiencing my album and folk song for the first time and not looking elsewhere for more folk music to enjoy.

7. What has been your proudest achievement in the music industry?
I think being the first ever British folk artist to get to number one in the world music charts (in its 21 years life span).

8. Who do you predict will take 2013 by storm?
This is the Kit – musically speaking.

9. Greatest night of your life?
I am hoping it’s yet to happen, but I’ve had fun trying so far.

10. Who would be your dream headline act at a festival?
Fela Kuti.

11. What’s your favourite poem, and why?
The whole of Hejira by Joni Mitchell.

12. What is your greatest ambition?
To discover unseen Paleolithic cave art.

13. Tell us a secret you have never revealed before…
My mother once dated Pavarotti.

14. Who made you the best cup of tea you have ever tasted?
Grandma made it best.

15. The best song in the world is…
The song of nightingales in the woods in May.

16. If you could be any character from a fairytale who would you be?
I ‘am’ the big bad wolf.

17. Who or what has been your greatest muse?
The sun, I never can’t smile when it shines.

18. What is your party trick?
I can swallow lit matches without burning my mouth.

19. If you could be a superhero who would you be?
I used to love my Spiderman suit as a kid, so I will have to choose him. I still love climbing trees.

20. What advice would you give to students interested in the industry?
Look at it as a life long relationship and not an industry, you have to make it your passion first and then a career.