Sami Braman is a Nashville fiddler who grew up in Seattle, who has her first album of original fiddle music, Riveter, set for release next month on Padiddle Records. If you recognize her name, it may be from her time with The Onlies, or playing with Willie Watson of Old Crow Medicine Show.
She tells us that the album title comes from her tendency to “rivet together” a wide variety of influences into her playing, including Appalachian, Norwegian, Cape Breton, Irish, and Pacific Northwestern fiddle styles.
A second single from the album is available today, a grassy tune called Barnimal, which Sam tells us comes from her college days in Washington state.
“I wrote Barnimal while wrapping up my senior year at Whitman College, during the first couple months of the pandemic. I was quarantining with my three housemates in our off-campus house called ‘The Barn,’ getting ready to graduate on Zoom, and we had all spent a lot of time together by this point.
I think the tune captures the rowdy restlessness of that time, and I dedicate it to those three friends (Claire, Malia, and Ray) for making that extreme uncertainty bearable, and even fun. In the key of B major, this is the furthest toward bluegrass this album gets, featuring solos by Frank Evans on banjo and Jake Stargel on guitar!”
To celebrate the single release, she has produced this live video of the tune with the same lineup, which also finds Emily Mann on bass.
Check it out…
Barnimal is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and from Sami’s bandcamp site, where you can also pre-order the Riveter album, which releases on April 7.
