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Sometimes it takes a bit of struggle to get the creative juices flowing, and this is the case with singer/songwriter Sam Welch, who has used navigating difficult life experiences to create an inspirational new album titled Attics.
“I’ve had a lot of issues related to emotional dysregulation in my life,” Welch explains. “When I was 19 years old, I had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized for a little while. I write about dysfunction, whether it is emotional or spiritual.”
Attics is collection of songs about spiritual healing and the process that comes along with it. Welch has encountered major obstacles along the way, but he takes pride in managing to recover and continuing to recover.
“There is some element of light beyond the darkness and giving people hope,” he says.
The album is composed of eight songs, with several tunes standing out as cathartic to Welch. “The Other Mother” pertains to having a Mother Nature in this world and also the next, and it goes over the notion that we are going from one mother to the next mother. “Jerusalem” touches on the idea of having faith and that there is a transcendent world, while “Cat on the Mend” is about a cat going through recovery.
“One of the animals I take care of had some serious issues and she recovered from her medical condition this past year,” Welch says. “It was a transformational thing for me to experience with her healing. I also suffered an accident when I was in the studio a year ago, developing tinnitus, so part of the process has been working through that disability, having faith, and maintaining a positive attitude.”
“The Attic” is a metaphor for the next world, setting up an idea about the future and if there is such thing as an afterlife. One line in the song pertains to a “bible with a broken binding” is a metaphor for lacking spiritual wholeness. Welch uses plenty of metaphors in the song, including the idea that “life is just another yard sale.”
“It’s like we’re just here kind of selling our wares,” Welch says. “I have this idea of what kind of value we put on life.”
He sings:
When you’re living in the attic
You’ve got to listen to the static
Life Ain’t automatic
And you’ve got to be pragmatic
The album has an ethereal sound to it, fitting the transcendent vibe that it carries throughout. Welch explains that his creative process involves writing the lyrics separately from the music itself, and he uses a program to create multiple vocal harmonies and make a signature sound.
“It’s called vocally resonant music, which is basically using a lot of vocal harmonization,” Welch says. “I also use a software that allows me to use instruments that are electronically generated through a keyboard.”
Welch grew up in a musical family in Cambridge, Mass. and played the piano as a child before singing in chorus in high school. He went on to perform with a men’s acapella group in college, and started writing music of his own about 25 years ago resulting in 15 albums to date.
“I didn’t really start writing music until I was about 35 years old,” Welch says. “Part of the thing with being in an institutional environment after the nervous breakdown was that recovery kind of took a while to get back on track.”
Welch enjoys writing about how emotional dysfunction can overlap with spiritual dysfunction, and looking at the world in a natural space.
“I am Unitarian and we are really big on nature and natural holistic wellness,” Welch says. “I write a lot about natural order and disorder, harmony and disharmony, and always contrasting the two.”
While he is inspired by his own life experience, he also reaches back to music by The Band in what has helped lay the foundation of his style. He says they have a spiritual approach to music, in a wistful and sad tone with a lot about looking at the past and finding the future.
“They definitely inspired a lot of my spiritually based songs,” Welch says.
Welch tends to produce one song per month, and right now he is working on a redux of a song called “Chocolate Hospital,” which is a tune off a previous album titled The Republic that is about institutionalization.
“It is the idea that mental health can actually be something where people can find it to be sweet and not bitter if you explore it a little bit,” Welch says. “It is a very unheard of metaphor, but it’s kind of a humorous song in that way.”
Be sure to check out Attics and other work by Welch, available on his website and all major platforms.
