Additional Information
SamWoy, the alias adopted by Montreal-based songwriter and producer Sam Woywitka, offers a tantalisingly weird and wonderful experience on his debut record, Awkward Party. Released under Woywitka’s own Hidden Ship record label, the album traverses a dizzingly expansive landscape, from inviting downtempo electronica to energetic garage punk.
PAN M 360: Thanks for being here Sam. Awkward Party was a really great listen, there’s a lot going on, a lot of different influences come through but I really felt there was something tying it all together. Was arriving at your sound, some common ground between all your influences and life experiences take some work, or did you have this vision to begin with?
SamWoy: I would say that I didn’t really have a vision and things sort of came to be. I didn’t deliberately try to tie things together but since it’s me kind of steering the ship that’s what makes it all work together. But like I was not really trying to do anything with this record per se. You know, after the pandemic, I was just like, I want to do a record with my usual stuff but also some party tunes. And not to get too heavy with you, but my music and creativity all stems from a pretty severe brain injury and that has kind of been the guiding factor through all of this. I got hit on my head so hard that it kind of changed everything about me and I’ve been on this journey ever since. You know, I am the awkward party.
PAN M 360: Well in a sense that comes through on the record. I could tell that the music came from a deep place, even without knowing your story, and it really was refreshing to listen to something so honest.
SamWoy: Thanks, I’m really glad to hear you say that. Art is all about honesty. With this project I wanted to tap into my roots, you know, and at times it felt like I was having a conversation with the 17 year old version of me.
PAN M 360: And what were you listening to at the time?
SamWoy: I was listening to a lot of Slayer, a lot of Agent Orange. I was listening to…well what the hell was I listening to when I was 17? D.O.A. Lots of thrash.
PAN M 360: You know on ‘Hate Me’ I thought I could hear some Nirvana coming through.
SamWoy: Nirvana, yeah, totally, even though I feel like I was even more hardcore when I was younger. I was into some very extreme stuff. But you know as I’ve gotten older Kurt Cobain has become such an inspiration for me because I can just really appreciate how simple he kept everything. But yeah, I don’t know, tons of influences but I was more of a thrasher for sure.
PAN M 360: Well, that’s funny to hear you say, because even though there’s some hardcore stuff here, it’s not particularly thrashy. But your work and experience as a producer definitely comes through here. There’s a lot going on in the music and you gave all the elements a lot of room to breathe despite all the chaos. Would you say you have a particular production style, or is there something in particular you strive for in your mixes?
SamWoy: Weird. I’m usually trying to keep shit weird. And I feel like most artists that come to me, it’s because they know that I can help steer them in a less mainstream direction and get them thinking outside the box. But then again sometimes I feel like people think that’s what they want but after a while you realise they didn’t actually want to go down that road. But if I were to describe my sonic textures, it’s like I’m painting a really dark watercolour painting, where there’s a lot of dark purple and blue and green, like the Northern Lights or something. But I like the analogy of a watercolour painting, because it’s not very defined and things are dripping into one another. If you listen to my music on different headphones and stuff, you’ll probably hear different stuff like that.
PAN M 360: Well, there’s a lot of detail in your music so I’m not surprised to hear that. How do you go about translating your album into a live performance setting like you did on tour?
SamWoy: It’s way more punk, like there’s way more of that energy when we play this material live. Originally I thought it was that we were going to play with backing tracks and use samplers and do some modular synth stuff but finally we ended up being kind of like, we need to rethink just how we’re doing this. And basically the approach we’ve taken is to recreate all the lines on the guitar on the bass and just bring the energy levels way up. The songs are in their raw form.
PAN M 360: I’d love to hear what you do with White Dog.
SamWoy: Well okay, so that is one that we’re not playing live all the time. It’s definitely a sampler one and yeah it’s hard to pull that one off. It’s a trippy song and it’s all in five and stuff. But you know, with ‘Awkward Party’ and most of the others, we’re doing like sampler versions plus just kind of jazzing over top of all of it making it as crazy as it can be.
PAN M 360: It’s really cool that this is your debut album considering you’ve been in the profession so long. How does it feel to make the transition to an artist yourself?
SamWoy: Yeah well I finally feel like I’m doing what I meant was meant to be doing the whole time. But it’s also fine because, well first of all, I’m not the best player around. And like I can get by fine and I can put a song together but there’s been so many production tricks and tips that I’ve learned over the last decade from producing music that all my albums would have sucked up until this time. Now I can produce stuff like I’m just producing like I would be if I was producing someone else, you know?
PAN M 360: That’s what you’re doing with Hidden Ship right? Could you tell me a bit more about that.
SamWoy: I guess that’s the umbrella we use for our sonic experiments. It’s funny how that came to be. I always felt that Montreal doesn’t really do writing camps like the way they do in L.A. Originally I just wanted to have like a little label to do some songwriting camps with people at the studio, and by the time we started doing FHANG with Mishka, we’d already kind of halfway set up this label. I finally got it together for the SamWoy release and now we’re going to who knows where. But it’s nice to have one space where people can find everything we do.
