We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sam Robbins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Hey! I started fairly young – I was working at a frozen yogurt shop in my hometown of Portsmouth, NH when I was 16, just playing acoustic guitar and trying to write songs and play as much as I could. I worked there two summers, and in the winter of my junior year of High School, I was asked to play a PAYING GIG! A Christmas party for my friend’s parents office. I showed up and played christmas music for a few hours, and at the end of the day he gave me $250. This was an unbelievable amount of money. From there on, I played a few more events like that, and then I decided to head off to Berklee College of Music in Boston after high school. While there the first year, I used several websites like Gigsalad, Gigmasters (now called The Bash), as well as the Berklee gig directory to find a restaurant that needed live music on Saturday nights. For three weeks, I played every Saturday, and from there I was able to tap into the bar music scene in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I was able to get on the roster of a large bar booking agent in NH, and ended up playing hundreds of cover gigs in the years that followed – bar room, private events, corporate events, weddings, etc. This was a great training ground and a great way to learn how to perform and become a better player. I was attending Berklee during this period, and following my graduation in 2019 I headed down to Nashville. This was a seismic shift for me – leaving the world of music I had known and the network I had built. I arrived in Nashville and immediately dove in head first. After six months of co-writing, playing around town, meeting people and basically doing what I call “The Nashville Thing”, I was unfulfilled, and not making any money at all. I met with a great singer songwriter Liz Longley, who explained to me that there was a whole world of folk music, folk audiences and venues out there that seemed like they may fit me like a glove. I began exploring this world online through several bookings websites and fell in love! I had played venues like this in New England, but there was a whole national network and community that I had never explored.. This was February 2020! Obviously, I couldn’t book music and couldn’t get out very far. But I took the COVID lockdown as a blessing – I was able to go into a little cocoon and figure out more of what I wanted to do. Now post-COVID, I’ve been able to travel, tour and make a living playing these venues and festivals and I absolutely love it and love the community.

Obviously, being a musician isn’t exactly a business in the traditional sense. Being an artist full time is crazy! I think one of the things that I’ve found that has helped me a lot on my journey is choosing an audience. I spent a long time trying to appeal to everyone all the time. I think in today’s world, where we’re all in our own personal media bubbles, this turned out to be a losing game for me. Now, I try to hone in on a specific audience. Even just one person! I want my songs to communicate directly and be as uniquely me as I can. It was a hard realization and is still hard for me to remember that by design, I’m going to alienate some people. But really, i think when I was trying to appeal to everyone, I was appealing to no one.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a singer songwriter, in the vein of classic writers like James Taylor and Jackson Browne. I tour and play small venues around the country. I’m big into storytelling, audience interaction, etc. I also write and record custom songs for people, bringing to life their experiences and ideas in song. In music, I love when songs capture the reality of feelings – I love music that isn’t exactly happy or sad, but it’s a between feeling. Nostalgia is one of my favorites. I try to create this kind of energy in my music – trying to use a brush that has many colors on it. I feel like this really illustrates life. There are rarely black and white feelings or situations.

I like to speak plainly in my music, and try to stretch out what people’s definitions of folk or americana music might be. I want to get directly to the heart of the situation, and go from there.

I love getting to know people and communities. It’s one of the reasons I love traveling so much – I’m able to tap into real communities, and hear real people’s stories. This all feeds into the songs, and it’s a never ending circle.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I definitely had to unlearn were that there were any rules. I spent a lot of my life in school, including music school, which was great in many ways, but there were rules that I was told must be followed in a music career, spoken both explicitly and implicitly, that were thrown around constantly. As soon as I got out, I felt these rules begin to break down. In 2022, there are NO rules when it comes to music. There is more opportunity than ever before, and I truly believe it’s the best time in human history to be a musician. There are so many ways to build an audience of your own that will support you, no matter how small. The rules from 20 years ago, even 2 years ago, aren’t always valid.

I’ve found that seeking more and more attention, often an implicitly suggested idea in being a musician, wasn’t working for me, and I saw that it wasn’t working for my peers as well. I saw that the people around me that were doing what I wanted to do, i.e performing for audiences that they have built over time, were doing in it a small way. It was one at a time, person-by-person. I believe that we’re back in the days of patronage, pre-recorded music. Finding an audience to support you is key, rather than just trying to amass as much attention as possible seems to be a winning strategy in today’s music world.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

To support artists, I think people can start to think smaller. As I’ve said before here, I think the days of having a music career be synonymous with having an attention career are coming to a close. I’ve met so many amazing patrons of musicians in my travels. house concert hosts, fans of festivals, fans of individual musicians, people who run venues, and so many more. These people are focused on their immediate community of musicians and listeners, and they work hard to build it.

Ari Herstand, the author of “How to Make it in Today’s Music Business” had an interesting story on this, where he describes the situations of someone loving a small coffee-shop or chain that is successful in a town. It has many employees who are paid well and the owner is making a good living from it. This is the case for many, many, musicians out there, who are smaller, but doing fine. Now, imagine if someone was at the coffeeshop and thought “well it’s not Dunkin Donut’s, so it there’s no way it’s successful”. That idea around musicians is still around today, but it’s changing. I think people can continue to think smaller and focus on their community of artists, and it will continue to fund a thriving indie artist community!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://samrobbinsmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samrobbinsmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamRobbinsMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDCpjK2fJMwNqlSdbgZ7pbg

Image Credits
Libby Danforth Anneliese Sarah Photography Joni Lohr