Sam Amidon

A contemporary folk artist skilled on guitar, fiddle, and banjo, Sam Amidon has earned recognition for both his own compositions and his inventive reinterpretations of traditional material. Although he occasionally blends the two approaches across his recordings, his most acclaimed projects—All Is Well from 2007 and I See the Sign from 2010—consist almost entirely of folk standards, with the sole exception of one R. Kelly composition on the latter. At the opposite end of the spectrum, The Following Mountain, his 2017 debut consisting solely of original material, paired him with veteran jazz players to pursue a more shadowy and exploratory sound. On 2025’s Salt River he wove together traditional pieces, later folk numbers, and songs first recorded by Yoko Ono, Ornette Coleman, and Lou Reed. Across these varied sources his characteristically layered, atmospheric settings feature a vocal style that remains soft yet resonant.

Born Samuel Tear, Sam Amidon took up the fiddle at age three. Growing up in Brattleboro, Vermont, under the guidance of his musician parents, he absorbed a constant stream of Irish and Appalachian folk. During his early teenage years he performed and recorded traditional dance music and avant-folk both with his family and with his own ensemble, Assembly. After moving to New York City he expanded his instrumental range to include banjo and guitar, soon joining forces with longtime associate Thomas Bartlett, known as Doveman, as well as Tall Firs, the Swell Season, and Stares. His first release, Solo Fiddle, appeared in 2003 and was followed in 2007 by But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted. The Valgeir Sigurðsson-produced All Is Well reached listeners in 2008. He later married singer-songwriter Beth Orton, and the couple raised children together. Family life did not slow his pace; 2009 brought the duet recording Fiddle and Drum with percussionist Aaron Siegel, while 2010 saw the return of Sigurðsson for the solo album I See the Sign.

Amidon made his Nonesuch debut with 2013’s Bright Sunny South, co-produced by himself, Bartlett, and Jerry Boys, and followed it a year later with the Sigurðsson-helmed Lily-O, which included guitar legend Bill Frisell. Omnivore Records issued an expanded reissue of the long-out-of-print But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted in 2015.

His first collection of entirely new songs, The Following Mountain, arrived on Nonesuch in 2017. Produced by Leo Abrahams, whose prior credits include Regina Spektor and Frightened Rabbit, the album featured veteran jazz drummer Milford Graves alongside the core trio of Shahzad Ismaily, Chris Vatalaro on drums, and Sam Gendel on saxophone. When Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique mounted an exhibition celebrating Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Amidon was asked to present a concert drawn from that collection. He and Ismaily captured several of the arrangements during a two-day London session, yielding the four-track EP Fatal Flower Garden (A Tribute to Harry Smith), released in late 2019. Returning to Nonesuch in late 2020, the self-produced Sam Amidon offered an all-covers set that revisited a largely traditional repertoire with the same central group from The Following Mountain.

Amidon next joined choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan for the 2024 stage piece Nobodaddy, which opened in Belfast in September; the following month he performed Bon Iver’s Sable, EP at its London release event at Justin Vernon’s invitation. After leaving Nonesuch he readied another distinctive covers collection. Produced by Gendel and issued in January 2025 on River Lea Recordings, an imprint affiliated with Rough Trade Records, Salt River gathered traditional songs, Irish folk pieces by Grey Larsen and Junior Crehan, and material originally associated with Ornette Coleman, Lou Reed, and Yoko Ono. Later that year the film The History of Sound, which follows two men preserving American voices and music from World War I, premiered; Amidon contributed to its soundtrack and trained lead actors Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor in ballad singing.