Sam Haine

Having played with a band in the near Impenetrable London music scene for a few years we decided to have a crack at the North using Manchester as a base for operations. Within two years and after limited success, the other band members peeled away to pursue other careers.
I fell in love with the more open, have a go attitude of the Manchester music scene and decided to stay and pursue a solo career.
I created an alter ego Sam Haine (a name derived partly from a pagan festival similar to Halloween and partly from the French for hate) which helped me to invest emotionally in the songs whilst maintaining a healthy distance from the subject matter. For a while I toyed with the idea of performing with a band but decided it distracted from the intimacy and personal nature of the songs. The sound I have is produced by the high treble of a tele sent through a warm five watt valve amp. There is a lot of space between notes in many of my songs and the tele seems to highlight this emphasizing the solitary nature of my performance and eliciting empathy from the audience. Kurt Cobain referred to the comfort in being sad which is probably the best way to describe it.
The real catch of the music is in the performance though. If an audience is loud I play quieter, if I feel I've drawn an audience in enough I try to shock them awake. I really try to get an audience on a level with me and I take more pleasure from silencing a room full of people or provoking emotional response then i ever did from making an audience dance or cheer.
My influences are: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Neil Young, Ralph McTell, Owen Pallett, Arcade Fire, Pere Ubu, Prince, Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, James Taylor, The Deftones, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, The Knife...
If I had to give it a genre I'd call it Heavy Folk.