Project Description

Interview with

SAM HARRIS

from

X AMBASSADORS

by Brittany Long

.

.

A powerful and anthemic musical experience delivered with awe inspiring precision, American rock stalwarts X Ambassadors celebrate the release of their much awaited second studio album Orion by locking in four huge dates in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Coming nearly five years after the success of their much-loved debut album “VHS”, this latest LP demonstrates a band at the peak of their powers – something that audiences on this side of the world will behold for the first time as the band play their debut Antipodean shows in February 2020.

Formed by brothers Sam and Casey Harris in 2009, X Ambassadors have proved a durable and exciting force in American music over the last decade. They have collaborated with the likes of Rhianna, Eminem, Imagine Dragons, Jay Z, Travis Scott, The Weekend, Ellie Goulding, and Maren Morris.

Now for the first time in February 2020 at these huge shows, fans from Australia and New Zealand will be given the opportunity to watch on as X Ambassadors deliver a high energy experience filled with soaring vocals and perfectly structured instrumentation.

Hailed as “The Ones to Watch” – Billboard.

.

.

.

Good Morning Sam, It’s Brittany from AMNplify. How are you?
Hey good morning to you too, how are you doing?

Good thankyou, and where do I find you today?
Well you find me driving in god awful traffic in Los Angeles coming from a meeting at Interscope on my way to another meeting, we’re trying to cram all the meetings in our last couple days in town before we come out to you guys.

Yeah that’s very exciting. So you guys are about to embark on your first East Coast tour of Australia. Are you excited about it?
Yeah, oh my god, beyond excited, I’ve never been to Australia and I’ve wanted to go for so long, so many of my friends and so many of my other colleagues have gone and they say it’s incredible. I’m really excited for the coffee, I hear you guys have a mean coffee scene there.

Yes haha, well I’m from Melbourne and the coffee scene is pretty mean here I hear, I don’t drink it personally myself but from what I’ve heard it’s pretty good, best coffee in the world apparently.
Yeah that’s what I’ve heard too, good for you for staying away from the caffeine.

Haha, so where are you looking forward to playing the most?
I’m equally as excited to play Melbourne and Sydney. Again I’ve been to neither place in my life and I don’t even know what to begin to expect so I’m just excited to be there.

It’s all about the adventure and excitement of going to a new place right?
Yeah definitely.

So will you guys have any time off when you are in Australia? And if so, is there anything that you would really love to see or do while here?
I wish we had more time off but you know we’ve been so horrified with what has been going on with the fires over here so while we’re in town I want to do whatever we can to pitch in and pay our respects to everyone who has been working tirelessly to help save the animals and the wildlife and the environment, and people too. So I think that’s top priority for me. 

That just gives you an excuse to come back then right. Yeah that’s amazing and a really beautiful gesture. Absolutely Australia has been through some turmoil and devastation the past few months, but I continue to be blown away by how people come together in times of crisis and especially by the support among the music community.
It’s incredible though to watch you guys all come together in the face of this, you know it’s inspiring for us back home with the shitstorm that is happening politically. It’s really inspiring to watch.

.

.

So what do you love most about touring and what do you miss most while you are on the road?
Oh God,  I love playing in new and exciting places for people we’ve never played in front of. I mean this is the tour I’m the most excited about in awhile because we’ve never been to a lot of the places that we’re going to like Australia, like New Zealand and Asia and Eastern Europe, so that’s always a real thrill. You know just getting in front of a physical audience and performing there’s nothing like it, the energy you know it’s intoxicating. I’m going to miss, God I just got a dog, and my wife, my wife is a writer and a filmmaker and she lately has been home a lot because she’s writing a script and working from home. So it was the perfect time to get a dog and we got this beautiful, beautiful guy his name is Prince. Gonna miss the shit out of him and her obviously too, I always miss her, but she will come over to visit. Yeah, you know it’s nice to feel like a human being again when you’re home for a minute and get into routines; eat at the same places and get to see your friends and you know that’s stuff that I really cherish. But I probably wouldn’t treasure it as much if I was always home so I guess that’s the flipside to you know being gone a lot that you really get to appreciate when you are home. 

Yeah of course. Also you know the new friendships that you’re about to make, and to me there’s something so incredibly special about being part of an artist’s debut show in Australia.
Yeah, I’m very very excited about it. We have some new material that we’re excited to play for our fans and yeah it’s going to be great.

Amazing. So speaking of new material you guys released your second album last year. Did you feel pressure to try and ensure that it was just as good as your first album? And why was there a nearly five year gap in-between albums?
Absolutely. It was a four year gap, but still it was a long gap. There was totally pressure, I mean we had a lot of different changes too. One of the members of the band left and that was a big blow to us and we kind of had to readjust after that, and my brother had a son, and got married, I got married too, so this lifetime took over, and also we were just on the road for like three years straight after VHS just came out and we decided not to take time off and focus on finishing another record. So there was mounting pressure from all of it and also just lack of time. But you know I think with Orion we’re really really proud of the work that we put into it and the songs that came out of it, it’s very much of a proud moment. It’s funny talking to you now about it though because I’m literally just leaving a meeting where we played our whole new record, we have a whole other record that’s completely finished and we were sitting down and talking about that. So this you know kind of opened the floodgates for us, it took us a minute to like make music and put a whole body of work out again but now that we’ve done that I think it’s just going to be a flood of new music for us. We just feel very creatively inspired and yeah. So we’ve got an EP coming out in the beginning of March and a new album out hopefully by the end of Summer/ Fall. We’re not making any promises but that’s the plan.

Oh how exciting! Sounds like your fans have a lot to look forward to! That’s amazing! So can Australian fans expect to hear some of the new unreleased material to be debuted on tour at your upcoming shows?
Yeah, absolutely. You guys are going to be the first ones to hear a lot of it.

Wow! That’s even more special and even more of a reason for people to get along to your debut Aussie shows!
Yeah.

.

.

So you have collaborated with some amazing artists including Lizzo, Imagine Dragons, Eminem and Rhianna. What was it like working with them?
Well you know of those artists you’ve just mentioned the only ones we were really in the room writing with, well Dan from Imagine dragons we’ve worked together with in a room before, but the songs that came out that we were featured on together that was just through email you know, and same with Rihanna and Eminem, those were all, I’ve never actually met either of them. But yeah it was very cool to be a part of all of those projects. The Rihanna song ‘American Oxygen’ took about a year to write and I loved having that song come out for her, I think it was such a bold statement. It was her first kind of you know political leaning song which means a lot to me, anytime a pop artist gets involved in politics I think that’s a good thing for them to speak up for causes that they really believe in and about social justice. But with Lizzo we were in the room together from day one you know that was like back in May of 2018 we had a session with her. Just because I was a fan of her EP ‘Lizzo Bangers’ and then of ‘Coconut Oil’ and I was like ‘this woman is incredible I have to write with her, I have to work with her’. So we got in the room together and you know on that first day we wrote a song called ‘Jerome’, which you know last night won Best Traditional RNB Performance at the Grammy’s.

Wow that’s absolutely incredible!
Yeah it’s so cool. I don’t like to brag about things but that’s something that I will definitely brag about because it was so amazing!    

No please do brag because that’s a huge achievement and definitely bragworthy! Congratulations!
Yeah, thankyou. It was very cool to see that song you know take flight the way it did, and to watch her take flight really, I mean like all credit goes to her, she’s incredible and what we delivered with that song and eventually later on with ‘Cuz I Love You’ and the other song we did ‘Heaven Help Me’. I mean like it was all of my dreams come true as a creator working with someone like her that was so herself and fearless and willing to take risks, so it was amazing to work with her. 

.

.

Yeah incredible! How awesome to be part of something like that! So let’s get a bit personal for a minute. Your brother Casey is blind and has been from birth. What obstacles has he faced throughout his music career and have you guys experienced discrimination because of it? The reason I ask is because I am a photographer in a wheelchair and this subject is close to my heart.
Oh wow, yeah for my brother it’s always been a struggle for him being on tour, especially early on when we were touring around in a van and trailer and only had like maybe one crew member. You know we were always in loud, dark venues where he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and you know we would be rushed on and off stage by promoters and by the other people who we were opening for, and who couldn’t give a shit about him or us or anything so that was always a challenge. But you know as we’ve grown as a band some of those things have gotten easier, like we have a little bit more room to be, he doesn’t have to try and set up his own stuff in the dark by touch, you know we have someone setting up the keyboard for him and you know helping us navigate through the venues. But yeah early on it was always really tough, and then on top of that you know he’s such a perfectionist with his playing, and he said this to me before that in part it’s because it’s something that he really feels that he is, he feels like the thing that he can really do completely on his own and if he ever missed a note during a show he would be extra hard on himself. So emotionally it was hard for many many years and now thankfully we’ve reached a point where we’ve played so many shows and you know we’ve grown as a band and we have a bigger fanbase and the ability to tour in a little more comfort but you know there are always challenges. You know it’s just something where not a lot of thought goes into preparing a space for someone like my brother to enter and he knows that and it’s also frustrating for him at times to feel like everyone has to accomodate for him too. You know that’s another thing that just drives him crazy. So yeah it has its challenges but I wouldn’t change it for the world and I know that he feels the same, and we are always down to take on these challenges and you know he’s a big inspiration to me and to so many other people now. 

Yeah I really empathise with him. I think you know this industry already has its own challenges for one and then to have more personal challenges on top of that, Casey really is an inspiration and I absolutely love seeing people overcome challenges and inspire other people. Again like I said I’m a photographer in a wheelchair and I often have to butt shuffle up several stairs just to be able to even get into a venue to shoot. But you do whatever you have to do to keep being able to follow your dreams right.
Yeah definitely. We are always advocating for our shows to be in places that are handicap accessible and that don’t have like ‘oh my god the treachery of lugging our gear up these flights of stairs for my brother, and like trying to lead him’. He jokes around that he has like a forehead and shins of steel and he’s not kidding like I think he said he’s lost all the nerve endings in his shins from bumping into like low objects for so many years, so yeah. You’ve gotta laugh at it sometimes, we all do.

 Exactly right. Yeah you really do

.

Fan Faves in a Minute:

Food: Pizza
Icecream: Pistachio
Movie: It’s a Wonderful Life
CD vs Vinyl: Vinyl
Artist: Prince
Biggest Inspiration: Bruce Springsteen
Dream place to tour: Australia
Disney Film: Fantasia

.

Well thankyou so much for chatting with me this morning Sam, I appreciate the time you’ve taken to chat with me and give me an insight into your career. I’m looking forward to seeing your debut show!
Thankyou so much. We look forward to seeing you there. Take it easy bye.

.

X AMBASSADORS
AUSTRALIAN HEADLINE TOUR 2020

            Thursday February 4th  – Auckland, Powerstation 18+

Thursday February 6th- Sydney, Metro Theatre 18+ 

Friday February 7th- Melbourne, Croxton Bandroom 18+

Saturday February 8th- Brisbane, The Triffid 18+ 

Tickets On sale now from HERE

.

.

AMNPLIFY – DB

Brittany Long

Hi. My name’s Brittany Long. I’m a photographer on wheels from Melbourne. You’ll catch me taking photos and interviewing. My happy place is in the photopit where you’ll find me singing and snapping away.