folk holidays

A BRITISH FOLK ARTIST AND HIS PAINFULLY UNSETTLING VIEW OF A WORLD ON FIRE

SAM LEE AND THE STUNNING, INTENSE BEAUTY OF HIS MUSIC

He’s been to the Folk Holidays Festival three times, and each time, someone wanted to take him home. And who could blame them? A humble, constantly smiling guy, Sam Lee happily chats with festivalgoers, and when he’s not sitting under a tree in the castle park with a book, he’s wandering through the surrounding forests with others.
Few would guess he’s actually a major star in the folk world—a respected activist whose sincere love for nature and grounded connection to Mother Earth is believed by nearly everyone who’s met him or heard his music.
When you finish listening to Sam’s 2023 album songdreaming, you just stare ahead, unsure what to do with yourself. It’s not the first time—fans have come to expect this from him—but this time, it’s as if words can’t quite reach the epic urgency of his environmental anthem.
Sam regularly brings a conservationist reverence for nature and a fascination with tuning into its sonic frequencies. When he said that songdreaming is unlike anything he’s made before, we should believe him—because in the next breath, he admitted he poured into it his life experience, his fears, his love, the state of the world, and more vulnerability than ever before.
“I long for every album to be full of forests—and for every forest to be filled with music. That’s my vision.”

Photo: Dom Tyler and River Avon Portrait