Sam Lee

Sam Lee is a folk-singer, song-collector, promoter, radio host, TV personality, teacher and owner of a restless mind luckily powered with generous supplies of optimistic energy. He's a natural singer but the practice was new to him until his first encounter with folk-song some six years ago, an epiphany that compelled him to abandon his work as a visual artist, teacher of wilderness survival and part-time burlesque dancer and go in search of the last custodians of the living traditions, the Gypsy Traveller community. He spent a four-year apprenticeship under the legendary, late Scottish Traveller Stanley Robertson - last of the great ballad singers - becoming the musical 'next of kin' to Stanley's vast repertoire of songs which, with his band, he interprets using unconventional instrumentation and arrangements, challenging preconceptions of what 'traditional folk' should sound like.