Singer and conservationist Sam Lee blends environmental activism with enchanting folk music in live show for 'songdreaming' tour
These days Sam Lee is just as likely to be spotted in the thick of some English woodland or addressing a crowd about the importance of nurturing nature as he is to be found playing a concert. The singer, song collector, conservationist, activist and concert promoter released his fourth studio album songdreaming back in March to wide acclaim, but as Lee spends two months every spring on his annual ‘Singing with Nightingales’ pilgrimage, London fans have had to wait several months before hearing it live.
This much-anticipated London album launch at the Round Chapel in Hackney felt like an apt choice, given that this is Lee’s stomping ground, the equivalent of a home game, buzzing with fans, friends and family.
The spirit of Lee’s nocturnal nightingale gatherings was very much in evidence in the deconsecrated, Grade 2-listed chapel, with recordings of this endangered bird playing through the PA system and the pulpit underneath the spectral-blue lit organ adorned with verdant foliage, lending an almost pagan, spring festival feel to the event.
Lee has called songdreaming “a manifesto of what songful activism and environmental attention-raising can sound like,” and the opening number ‘Green Mossy Banks’ quietly set the tone. With Lee sat in front of the leafy pulpit playing a shruti box, it’s a gentle and understated start, with James Keay, Lee’s long-time collaborator, playing some very Arvo Pärt-like piano, before the rest of the band – Misha Mullov-Abbado on double bass, Louis Campbell on electric guitar, Joseph O’Keefe on violin and Joshua Green on percussion joined in. This is followed by ‘McCrimmon’, a song Lee originally wrote for the film The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, having borrowed the melody from an old Scottish lament. It’s a sumptuous ode to nature featuring Lee’s soaring vocals repeating the refrain ‘In awe, in awe,’ above the deep thrum of the double bass.
The opening track on songdreaming is ‘Bushes & Briars’, Lee’s interpretation of a song Vaughan Williams collected in Essex. As Lee explained, it’s a very personal song about his “rather unusual appreciation” for the nightingale or “wonder bird,” as he calls it. As its numbers are rapidly declining, there’s uncertainty about how much longer we’ll hear the nightingale sing in our countryside, so ‘Bushes & Briars’ is a lament for what we are losing. The imploring sound of the violin and Campbell’s thrashing guitar really lent a sense of foreboding and urgency, as Lee sings ‘Sometimes I think we’ve gone too far to turn it round in time.’ Then it’s ‘Tan Yard Side’, a Traveller song that’s become a fixture at Lee’s 'Singing with Nightingales' evenings. Nightingale season may be over but luckily for us Lee has recorded their song on his phone so their exquisite sound filled the space as he sings ‘When the small birds they do whistle and the nightingales, they do sing.’
Before becoming champion of the nightingale, Lee spent years connecting with the Traveller community around the UK and Ireland, so nearly every song he sings has a backstory and he diligently name-checks the person who originally taught him the song. So there’s Freda Black who taught him ‘Bonny Bunch of Roses,’ a rousing Napoleonic war song, and the Penfold family from the West Country from whom he learned ‘Meeting is a Pleasant Place’. As he introduced this, Lee explained how it served as the orientation for the whole album; the role songs play in how we connect to each other and how when we sing a song about the land, it ties us to it. It’s one of the standout numbers of the night, along with ‘Sweet Girl McCree,’ a gorgeous Irish ballad that called for some participation from the audience, who don’t need much prompting. Perhaps no surprise, given Lee was one of the co-founders of Fire Choir, a North London-based community choir. The whole evening felt very much like a community event and a large part of Lee’s charm, besides being an incredibly expressive singer and passionate environmental activist, is that he brings the communal spirit of a folk singalong to whatever stage he performs on. This gig marked the end of the songdreaming launch tour, with Lee and his band heading next to Glastonbury – arguably the biggest communal folk gathering of all.
Emergence Magazine’s film The Nightingale’s Song about Sam Lee is now available to watch here
