School of Song’s Sam Steffen talks going from folk fest volunteer to performer

Last year, Sam Steffen attended the Edmonton Folk Music Festival (EFMF) as a volunteer. But this year, he attended as a performer with the School of Song. 

“I thought it was great volunteering because you do have a volunteer shift, but then you get to see all the music,” Steffen said. “So far [this year] I’ve been backstage almost the entire time. It’s just a whole new side of things to kind of see the music from how it gets set up and what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Steffen only moved to Edmonton from the United States with his wife shortly before last year’s EFMF.

“I feel really lucky [as] a new person in town, to be doing this so shortly after getting here because I think Edmonton is full of amazing local talent,” Steffen said. “I know the folk fest can’t always host all local people so I feel really lucky to be a part of it.”

After moving to Edmonton, he played a lot of open mic nights and eventually met Rhea March. “She was running the open mic at the Rooster Kitchen on Whyte Ave,” Steffen said. “I think as soon as I met [March], she took me under her wing and introduced me to a lot of people in the community and told me where I should be checking things out.”

“I’ve had a lot of opportunities from knowing her,” Steffen said.

Every year the School of Song, brings four emerging, often Albertan, musical acts to EFMF. She told him about the School of Song and Steffen applied and got in. 

“The thing I really like about folk music is that it kind of feels like it’s music that’s for everybody,” Steffen says

Steffen’s parents played instruments and sang, which rubbed off on him. He took piano lessons when he was young and was in the school band in elementary and middle school.

He said he eventually stopped taking lessons after he realized “all of these songs are kind of made up with the same cords.” 

“I quit and just started learning stuff I wanted to learn on my own,” he said. “You also teach yourself things when you’re playing an instrument. It’s why you’re playing — it’s not work, it’s play.”

On how he developed his current sound, Steffen said he’s “always liked folk music and blues and the early country stuff.” He grew up listening to Lead Belly, Bob Dylan, Woody Gurthrie, and Pete Seeger.

“When I was starting to write songs, I really wanted to be writing stuff that kind of sounded like it was in that vein of things,” he explained. “And the thing I really like about folk music is that it kind of feels like it’s music that’s for everybody.”

“I don’t think of myself as a particularly great singer or even musician, but there’s a lot of folk songs that you can talk the lyrics instead of singing them or shout them.”

And the lyrics are typically where he starts when writing songs. “It starts with an idea, like ‘it could be cool if there was a song that was about this or had this as a title.’ So you’re kind of starting with one line and then can I figure out a way to make it rhyme and then can I build a chord structure around it?”

He said he leans into rhyming a lot when writing. “I know there’s musicians who don’t do that but for me, I find it to be a helpful thing when lines rhyme because then it at least limits the number of choices you have for a line or lyric.”

You can catch Steffen playing with Lori Reed on October 4 with the Northern Lights Folk Club.