Sam & Ruby

Nashville-based duo Sam & Ruby are a blend of R&B, folk and pop. Their newest album The Here And The Now is due to come out in August 2009. Recalling that moment, almost a decade ago, when she first heard Sam perform, Ruby says, “I saw Sam before Sam saw me. I walked into this club and Sam was playing. It took me about 2.2 seconds before I thought, I want some of that. I felt really lucky and blessed to be there that night. I had been brought there by mutual friends, so we talked afterwards and I basically said, ‘let’s hang out.’” “That was the beginning,” says Sam. “We became friends. In Nashville it’s so normal that everyone plays music, so that was always part of the deal. Then I got to see Ruby do a show and she just blew me away. Part of it was that we would go to each other’s shows and cheer each other on. We were fans of one another’s music.” Ruby, who was born in Ghana, has spent most of her life in Nashville. Her father, a computer scientist, was recruited by a Tennessee-based firm, and he moved his family to Nashville when she was just three. As she recalls, “When I got here, I remember taking walks with my dad, just me and him, and I would be singing little songs about the flowers we’d see or I’d be singing on my parent’s coffee table when their friends would come over. Nashville was a great place to nurture this thing I had in me all along.” Meanwhile, Sam was growing up under very different circumstances in Green Bay, Wisconsin: “James Taylor was probably the biggest hero in our household, but then my brother had all this funk stuff – Parliament, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, Prince.” Sam formed a band in high school and, by the time he’d finished college, it was practically a career: “We just became a full-on bar band. We were the band in Green Bay, Milwaukee, playing weddings, all that stuff. But I always felt, is this it? Is this what I want to do? We were making good money and the college crowd party atmosphere made for good times. I made a contact in Nashville after getting a CD manufactured down there. The guy from the company called me and said, ‘Your CD sucks but we like your voice. Would you like to come down and record in our studio and get a little better demo?’ That was my first taste of Nashville. Seeing that, and just feeling the energy here, I decided right away, this is where I needed to be.” It would still be several years before Sam & Ruby officially became a duo. Sam left Nashville for New York City to work as a solo artist, sticking it out until after the September 11th attacks. Ruby released a solo album, Smoke and Honey in the UK, which reached Top Five on the British pop charts with a song called, “Sugah.” Just as Ruby should have been savoring this success, record label snafus left her high and dry in Nashville. That’s about when Sam came back into town. So they combined their complementary talents, and the track “The Here And The Now” was born, laying the foundation their partnership. A chance to perform at the 2005 South By Southwest music festival in Austin officially made the pair into a duo. A year later they were invited to play at Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans where they also decided to record an EP that would contain, in more rudimentary form, some of the tracks that would eventually make their way onto their debut full length. They cut, mixed and mastered everything in a one-bedroom apartment. That EP led to a publishing deal, access to better recording facilities and, finally, to a deal with Rykodisc. In between, Ruby co-wrote “Heaven’s My Home,” a Tracy Chapman-like tune which Canadian country-folk band The Duhks garnered a Grammy nomination for their rendition of it. More recently an early version by Sam & Ruby was featured in the Queen Latifah-starring film, The Secret Life Of Bees. Now Sam & Ruby have reclaimed this tune for their debut album, The Here and The Now.