Wisconsin Songwriter Sam Ness catches up with Teri Barr on Max Ink Radio

The truck pulled over to the side of the road, said where are you trying to go?

So I throw my guitar in the back, say hell I don't know

Well I got things to see and I got itchy feet, I hit the road

And I got nowhere to be and I got this hunger in me

The song you are listening to right now is called Alexander

and it is done by singer songwriter Sam Ness

and Sam joins us to talk about his music, what he is up to

and of course the mom cares 10th anniversary

Say no thanks so much for joining us

Thank you very much for having me back on the show, it's been a way too long

A way too long, absolutely

So this song Alexander, what is it about?

I wrote that when I was hitchhiking through the outer hebrides outside of Scotland

I was 18 and I was wandering through kind of like the west coast

and I met a guy in the hostel, we shot some pool and he said

hey I've got a hostel out in the hebrides, you should come visit

And a couple days later all the money that I had saved up was gone

You know I was 18, I didn't know any better, I spent it all on pints and fish and chips

I had like 40, 50 pounds left, I was like oh I should be able to make that work for the next three weeks

I was walking down the middle of town in open and something caught my eye

It was the headstock of a guitar that was shiny, it was like a tuning machine that had glimmered

like something out of a movie right it's like a cliché

And I looked at the price tag and it was the exact amount of money that I had left

And so I spent the last dime I had on this guitar

and I spent the next three weeks hitchhiking through the hebrides just kind of trading songs for food

and places to stay and making friends as I went

And it was such a great time

That song was kind of an ode to that trip but also for the inspiration that pushed me to go out

What a beautiful story

You did so much of that over time

Of course you did so much busking

We've always talked about your experiences traveling the world and being a busker

Are you still going to do some of that or do you feel like maybe that's a little bit in the past now?

Actually recently some of that has come back up

Festivals that I've been lucky enough to work my way into have been trying to reach out and do more stuff with pro buskers

I think that there's been a really cool push online lately that recognizes buskers as independent talent

A lot of them their craft is street performance

Like if you put them on a main stage that's not where they feel at home

And I was that way for quite a while

And so to appreciate and respect them as an art form in itself I think is really cool

It's also a really strange time right now

You know, economy is tough all over the world

And post pandemic a lot of buskers had to find a way to make it work that wasn't busking

Because there wasn't a lot of tourism around

There wasn't a lot of people out on the street with extra money

And sadly a lot of the people that were pro buskers for decades just don't do it anymore

And the scene has shifted a lot

I still have such a passion for playing in the street and it really fills my battery quickly

So I try to go down and do it in Madison

When I can I have a special spot actually on the wall behind me for a bulletin board for all the street performing citations that I've gotten

And it's only growing, you know, so I'm not gonna stop

Well, we know you hope to make money a little bit of money when you're busking on the street

But in many cases you ended up paying out the money because you got a citation

Yeah, not uncommon just take it with some humor and usually give the officer as a free CD and on we go

Sam for the president of the buskers union I like that

Okay, so now the big question

What have you been up to and I know you're working on some new music so yay

I am actually the last time we chatted I think was about four or five hundred josego

So I've been busy since I last saw you since then the last year I have bought a home where I'm sitting now in what will be my studio

A lot of the new music that I've been working on has been about my search for home

You know, I love the road I sincerely love being out and traveling

But when it's one long road without any kind of interlude it can get a little dizzying

It's easy for my social battery to kind of burn out

So now that I've found a place and I've kind of been a recluse for a few months all of a sudden my battery is filling out my musical battery is filling

Just shifting perspective and trying to write about it now that I'm here and some of the shifts that I have found

My creativity is kind of blossoming and you know blooming again

Dance your question a lot of changes and a lot of them are just around finding a home

Well, you seem so happy and I can't wait to hear this new music that is blossoming out of everything that you're going through

Which is really obviously great things right now so I'm glad to hear that

Yeah, thank you, you know, I wanted to find some more beautiful that the scenery would find its way into my music

I think I found it

So thank you for being excited with me

You know, for people that maybe are listening to this and haven't had the chance to actually see you perform or even really know who you are

What would you tell people about your musical career?

When did you actually start playing?

Yeah, I think I was probably 14, 15, I started playing guitar. I was playing piano before that but I was always really bad at it

I circled back on that later and I am now currently a student of piano again trying to find my way on that instrument

But yeah, I started playing guitar, I shared writing songs in high school and got involved with a lot of theater stuff

And that was kind of my first big push into really, really falling in love with performing itself

Did some musicals and show choir and things like that and went to Sock Prairie High School and then I got a really strong program

Really pushed me and I thought that that's what I was going to pursue until I decided randomly to cancel all my plans to go to college to pursue theater

And someone I never met before bought me a one-way ticket to Scotland

I ended up in Scotland with about 200 bucks and my guitar that ran out pretty quick

I was couch surfing and sleeping in the woods and sleeping under bridges and doing that whole thing until I learned how to be a busker to survive

And fell in love with performing as a solo artist and I never really looked back

I've been doing it ever since, I came home just to work on an album, started developing a career here in the Midwest to fund that album

Have branched out on many adventures since and the theme throughout my music is about travel

But adventure about finding home wherever you are and always trying to face the horizon with optimism when possible

Well we have this amazing opportunity coming up at the end of this month

At the Momma Cares, it's the 10th anniversary celebration

I guess I want to know why did you say yes, why are you involved in this Momma Cares show?

I know people directly that have been positively impacted by Momma Cares

I love that my job allows me to support benefits or charities

But this is something that's very specific and it helps people in our community

Yeah, I think it's going to be a great time also, great time with great music

I saw the other folks on the line up and it is going to be a heck of a show

It's the Momma Cares 10th anniversary, it's March 30th

It's at high noon saloon in Madison and along with Sam

We have gin, chocolate and bottle rockets

Love them

And the Jimmy's

The Jimmy's

Yeah

That's a super bill right there I mean

I would say and Sam you have to stay because they're going to do an all-star jam with the Jimmy's

Any chance I get to sit in with Mr. Jimmy I'll be there

We will be looking forward to it

Now before we let you go

Wow

This song is gorgeous but what do you hope people get from it?

I've had so many people ask me questions that I never would have imagined

Where questions people would get from that song

Not just like, oh who's it for or what was this specific imagery

What I wanted that to represent was the concept of love

When I was writing that song there was a question that I had at the time kind of been repeating to myself over and over

When faced with a decision what is the most loving thing to do

And if love was here what would love tell me

And so I decided to give love its own embodiment

And it's an incredible song

I really do believe that anyone who hears this song can find something for themselves out of it too

Yeah I hope so

Everyone once again, Sam Ness

Here is his song

She is love

Sam thanks so much

Thank you Terry

I'll see you at the Mama Carey

Sometimes I find silence

In dark and deafening rooms

The neon serves its purpose

I fill the space above a stool

Sometimes I hear whispers

In a cacophony of noise

She teaches me of kindness

Who I've never heard her voice

She's the memory of a story

Someone told me long ago about that dream

She's the place that feels familiar

And I know I've never seen

Sometimes I feel invisible

Or the elephant in the room

She points my eyes towards the sky

And says sometimes the stars feel that way too

Sometimes I get restless

And I'm driving down the road

She calls my mind singing love of mine

Through my van's radio

She's the memory of a story

Someone told me long ago about that dream

She's the place that feels familiar

And I know I've never seen

She is love

She is love

She is love

Love

She is love

She is love

She is love

She's the memory of a story

Someone told me long ago about that dream

She's the place that feels familiar

And I hope one day I'll see you