Music Q&A:
Sam Way

What informs your music and songwriting?
Relationships, feelings, stories – my own and other people’s.

How have you evolved as an artist over the years?
I guess the evolution is constant. The process never stops. It’s all an exploration, an organic, one-step-at-a-time approach to music and my musicianship. I’ve grown largely through meeting and working with new people. When I look back at my early work, I guess it makes me smile/laugh. I have changed – everything else has too.

What are you up to at the moment artistically?
I’m taking a brief break from a songwriting project I was working on – I was writing a song a week for a year – but I need to get the 10 songs I created down in the studio as roughs before I move on. So now just focusing on the release of the mini-album Archetype, which drops 22 September.

What’s on your rider?
I once asked for vodka, gluten-free sandwiches, Jaffa Cakes. Sometimes what happens to me after I play is I have this adrenaline dump – you crave a release – and so that night ended with me throwing up in Bristol train station, missing my last train back to London and getting a £180 cab ride. It’s embarrassing. So what’s on my rider? Anything but vodka.

Tell us your most embarrassing or surreal experience.
I was doing this radio show – normally I’m pretty chill and chatty but for some reason I was quite out of breath walking into the studio because I had parked a little far away. I totally lost the ability to talk. I watched myself fall into a silent hole, live on air. I turned bright red and then suddenly exploded into a bizarre apology. The rest of the interview I babbled rather philosophically without ever really answering the questions at hand.

What song do you wish you’d written?
Phoria, Saving us a Riot – legit my favourite song for the last year.

What’s your worst lyric?
I once created a song called Eggs and Bass. The first verse went like this: “How do you like your eggs? Scrambled? How do you like your bass? Filthy? How do you like your eggs? Over-easy? How do you like your bass? Grimey? How do you like your eggs? How do you like your bass? How do you like your eggs? Eggs and bass and and eggs and bass.” All my mates request that song specifically when I play live, because it really does make you laugh out loud. Let’s just say, though they may bring a smile to your face, those lyrics ain’t going to change the world.