Every once in a while, an artist comes along that stops me dead in my tracks. In today’s digital, sometimes overproduced world, it takes a truly captivating voice to cut straight through all the chatter and buzz in order to real a listener in. So often we’re drawn in with the grandiosity of a song that we completely miss the musical brilliance found in the honesty of an artist.

I recently had the chance to meet one such artist: Nashville’s very own Sam Pinkerton. I had heard plenty of great things about her as an artist and a person prior to asking her to play a Cause A Scene show during the last part of January, and I could not be more thrilled that I did. It says a lot about an artist when you’re able to look at their fans and be able to feel their level of adoration for an artist simply by the way they engage with the artist on stage.

Watching the capacity crowd at Red Earth back just a few short weeks ago, Sam’s fans would have said all I needed to know about her as an artist, even if I hadn’t been blown away by her music. As I watched Sam perform and studied the crowd, one thing was obvious: this girl pens every word of her songs from the heart, and her songs speak volumes in the lives of her adoring friends and fans in ways that simple words can’t.

Sam is hard at work finishing her debut album right now, and recently released a video from the studio for her song “Stay Here” with another Cause A Scene favorite, Judah and the Lion, bringing a splendid texture to Sam’s song. Not to mention the fact that Sam and Judah’s voices mesh flawlessly together. The first time I saw “Stay Here”, I was finishing up a long, arduous day, hoping for a better, brighter tomorrow. The song proved to be a powerful exclamation and reminder for me that joy always arrives in the morning.

Thank you, Sam, for sharing that joy with the world.

– Larry Kloess