The Strumbellas: Into Dust Tour with special guest Sam Burchfield
The Strumbellas
The Strumbellas know that misery loves company, and that if we’re together, even in dark times, there’s some joy in that. Their songs of suffering and celebration date back to their 2012 debut My Father And The Hunter, and the band have obsessively chased big hooks, group vocal exuberance, and folk-rock propulsion through their 2016 breakthrough Hope to 2024’s Part Time Believer. The Juno and iHeartRadio Music Award-winning group’s new song Hard Lines gives listeners an urgent, new take on their iconic mix of intimate feelings with stadium folk sounds.
Determined to use every tool in their arsenal to write a good song, The Strumbellas started by looking inward: random song titles, non-sequitur ideas, scraps of paper, and voice memos of half-sung melodies came from everyone in the band. They then connected with their favourite collaborators, songwriters and producers anywhere from their home in Toronto to Vancouver, Nashville, or LA, to create demos that ranged from campfire-chord whispers to radio-ready productions. The long list was then whittled down by the band along with producer Chad Copelin (LANY, Sasha Sloan, Colony House), who recorded the band at his studio in Norman, Oklahoma. Copelin’s finely honed sonic instincts bring out a newly textured, insistently edgy side to The Strumbellas’ alt-folk stomp.
“We’re living in a lonely world,” says keyboardist Dave Ritter. “Whether it’s work or our home life or our screens, life seems cut up into smaller and smaller pieces all disconnected from each other. Hard Lines is about picking your way through the rubble of contemporary life and the hope that we can build things together again. It’s something we’re reminded of when we gather to write or rehearse songs, and when we get to play for people, that music brings us together, gives us some moments of connection that are hard to find these days.”
The title of Sam Burchfield’s latest album, Nature Speaks, is both a statement of belief and an instruction: to listen carefully, to feel the world move through you, and to heed its loving nudge.
Recorded in just five days at Studio 1093 in Athens, Georgia with co-producers and collaborators Ryan Plumley and Jason Kingsland (Delta Spirit, Youth Lagoon, Deerhunter), the upcoming album is Burchfield’s most stripped-down and spirit-forward to date.
“Just before we recorded, I was in New York City on tour,” Burchfield shares. “My wife was at home, pregnant with our second child. I was taking a walk through Washington Square Park, feeling this hyper-vivid awareness of the beauty of the city, and at the same time, this intense pain of being away from my family.” In that moment, a man sitting at a public space piano began playing the song Burchfield’s partner walked down the aisle to at their wedding. Coincidence or cosmic wink, it stirred Burchfield’s soul. “It felt like walking through a portal.”
For Burchfield, like many of us, it took a moment of poignant distance to illuminate his place of utmost belonging—back in the Blue Ridge Mountains, among his family. And with that radical clarity came a revitalized artistic confidence, a turning point in accepting and trusting his own musical intuition, the intuition from which Nature Speaks beautifully emerges.
Burchfield grew up in serene Seneca, South Carolina. His instinct to write was there from the start, his itch to share was unrelenting. He spent his childhood setting speakers up in parking lots and coffee shops, playing with whomever would join him on “stage” to whomever would listen. At college in Athens, Georgia, he found the scene he’d been trying to create for himself. Opportunities emerged in rapid succession. Burchfield won a songwriting competition, recorded his first EP, and found himself suddenly entangled in sparkly offerings from network television and major labels, chances that ultimately felt more like a detour than a dream come true.
“It was honestly insane,” says Burchfield. “Things felt a little out of my control. I had to really lean on people I respected, whose wisdom I trusted—teachers, friends, family.” Burchfield recognized early on the indispensability of creative autonomy, and the sources of support that kept him grounded. “My community gave me the courage to walk away from paths that didn’t feel right.”
He’s been building a catalog since 2014—originals, concept works, and live recordings. “I think there are like, four or five albums out there at this point?” Burchfield questions, endearingly unprecious. He is as sincere and unassuming as his guitar-playing—earthy and affectingly to-the-point. “Truthfully, it’s been a long journey toward artistic identity. I’ve learned a lot about living into yourself, discovering who you are by simply being.” Nature Speaks is no doubt Burchfield’s best offering to date, largely due to that resonant sense of self.
The album came together during a momentous new phase of fatherhood. “There is always something to sacrifice in the present in order to create a future,” Burchfield says. “And in many ways, I used music to parent myself through all the changes.” Burchfield impulsively penned and tracked the stunning album closer “Morning Light” at home, around three o’clock in the morning. The song softly buzzes with the white noise of a sleeping household, a lullaby of its own kind. “I was writing a message of comfort to myself when I needed it,” he says. His vocals are hushed and heavy with the weight of profound transformation, a soothing surrender to the life that lay ahead.
The theme of commitment glitters throughout Nature Speaks. Standout single “Stay (Betty Blue)” is a tender and arresting tune of devotion, a vow of stability against wavering mental health and the general fragility of life. Burchfield wrote it for his wife—a musician, painter and poet—on their anniversary. “You don’t know what you’re going to have to confront when you enter a relationship. We all have different battles to fight.” In his sandy, evocative vocals, he makes the colorful promises that account for real love: And if you get lost on the other side, I’ll plant roses in your mind / If you go mad and hurt yourself, I can lick your wounds until you're well.
Burchfield’s sixth release is a source of sacred calm in an overwhelming world, a generous invitation into a rooted life: a family’s unconditional love, a hometown’s soothing mountainscape, a sturdy salvation in knowing who you are. “Capturing and connecting with humanity is why I make music,” says Burchfield. “This album is more human than anything I’ve done before.”
