
Sam Weber’s new album Get Free will be out February 4, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Sam Weber has already logged more miles as a gigging musician than most of his peers will in a lifetime, earning enviable accolades along the way. He first picked up the guitar at age 12 to form a rock ’n’ roll band with his father and brother in the living room of their family home. Sixteen years later, having collaborated with Grammy winners and with extensive international tours under his belt, the Canadian-born Los Angeleno goes forth with the same intention and mantra as when he began: “Music is an emotional conduit between people and allows us the opportunity to share moments of truth and unity. In an age where the ritual of music-making can be a solitary exercise, I want to live my life to remind everyone that playing music as a communal and spontaneous practice can be healing and powerful.” His new album Get Free will be out February 4, 2022 via Sonic Unyon Records. (Sam Weber, 2021)
Sam Weber’s storied exodus from his homeland of Canada to find new footing and opportunity in America resonates like a classic story of pain, loss, and rebirth. That narrative thread is woven throughout his new record, Get Free, offering a warm, intimate, and multidimensional portrait of the 28-year-old singer-songwriter. With this new collection of material, Weber reaches fresh emotional depths, commanding more expressive personal moments than ever before—at times within the margins of a single verse. Weber gave fans an early look into Get Free ahead of its February 4 release with “Money,” a breezy, piano-meets-fuzz bass rocker seemingly about what it means to grow up and be faced with the need to leave Neverland—or at least the non-fictional equivalent of it. Fans can hear “Money” now at this link and pre-order or pre-save Get Free ahead of its release right here. Weber also recently shared with his fans a lyric video for album track “Here’s To The Future.”
Following the success of 2019’s Everything Comes True—which was recorded live-off-the-floor in the iconic B room at Hollywood’s Ocean Way Studios—Weber ended up taking a necessarily-different route with Get Free. “I wrote most of this music before the lockdown happened,” he says. “We wanted to go into another beautiful L.A. studio with another super band to record these new songs, but when all the plugs got pulled, we were sort of left holding nothing but the material. My partner Mallory Hauser was keen to rally and share production duties with me to make the most of what we had, which was liberating somehow: to have this logistical ceiling on how we could record or approach these songs in our living room. We were forced to be as creative as possible with what we had. I think it was the best thing that could have happened to us.” Mallory Hauser is a solo artist in her own right, performing and releasing music under the name Mal. The two met in Los Angeles in 2018.
Weber and Hauser tapped Grammy-nominated engineer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas) to mix the album, having collaborated with him on the Juno-nominated Bahamas album Sad Hunk. “I really love [Get Free], don’t get me wrong…but it sort of sounds janky…in a good way! Because our only option was to make it in our house, it gave us permission to let it be what was going to be and not get wrapped up in the details, and in turn, I think that allowed the veil between the performances and the hearts of each song to be very thin. Robbie sort of saved the record fidelity-wise; we gave him some questionable rough mixes with the room mics cranked up so loud. What we got back sounded way rad.”
Certain songs contain a particular sense of grandness across Weber’s recorded catalog. Moments that feel lofty, yet devoid of pretentiousness. With more of these moments present and tangible on Get Free than any other of his releases, the listener can effectively observe Sam’s emancipation. With this record, he assumes a creative identity unique to himself.
days
hours minutes seconds
until
Get Free release date