Key to the Highway: Sammy Brue

Americana Highways

3 weeks ago

Americana Highways’ Key to the Highway series

Fans always clamor to learn more about their favorite, most beloved musicians and those who travel with them. There’s such an allure to the road, with its serendipity, inevitable surprises, and sometimes unexpected discomforts. This interview series is a set of questions we are asking some of our favorite roots rock Americana artists to get to know more about them and what they’ve learned and experienced on the road for music. We are sure they have key insights to share and stories to tell. Here’s one from Sammy Brue.

Americana Highways: How do you like your coffee or other morning wake-up beverage?

Sammy Brue: I always throw just a little cream in my gas station coffee, this combo compliments a cigarette just right.

AH: What’s the most interesting or strangest motel/hotel or place you have stayed (while on the road for music?)

SB: I have stayed at too many places that people would consider crazy. I’ve slept in a lot of cat pee, on a lot of solid floors, and half-century year old couches that have passed off as hammocks… But the strangest places I’ve stayed will always be a motel in the middle/outskirts of a major city that costs under $75. Unfortunately I’ve made that mistake more times than I’m comfortable to admit.

AH: If one CD is stuck in the player in the van for the entire tour, what do you hope it is? And why?

SB: If I had to choose one single CD, it would be Townes Van Zandt Live at The Old Quarter, Houston, TX. I feel like I’m studying and learning whenever I listen to it, so it never gets old.

AH: What’s one personal item you must have with you on your road trip?

SB: If I have my guitar, wallet, and keys I can take on the world

AH: What is your relationship with food? How do you handle this on the road, and what’s your favorite dish on the road, (or restaurant, and what do you order there)?

SB: A homecooked meal of usually anything always strikes me when I go on the road. Keeps me grounded and grateful.

AH: If you could pause your life for a few weeks and spend some time living in a place you only have passed through, which would you choose, and why?

SB: I went on tour with Rodriguez one time and we drove through a forest with no service for hours in Massachusetts. I can’t remember the name of the place we stayed but I remember a dog leading me through hidden trails in a forest and felt spirits that day.

AH: What quote or piece of advice have you gotten from someone on the road that has really stuck with you?

SB: While on tour with Justin Townes Earle when I was about 16, we had a break to go home for a week or two and I hurt my wrist skateboarding with my friends in Utah on the tail end of that break. When we went back on tour my hand was swollen and we kept it in a soft cast to be safe, Justin asked what happened, I told him and he said “You are a working musician, if you broke it, you wouldve been out of work for months, music is your life now.” I played through the pain with a smile on my face on that show and put the skateboard away when I got home, and I have been living by those words ever since.

Find Sammy’s new album The Journals (inspired by writings of Justin Townes Earle) here: https://www.sammybrue.com and tour dates here:

See other Key to the Highway interviews here: https://americanahighways.org/category/interviews/key-to-the-highway-series/ (click here for: Todd Snider Todd Park Mohr Jim Lauderdale Vince Herman Jimmy Smith Ben Nichols Bruce Cockburn Charlie Musselwhite Nicki Bluhm Jim White Danny Barnes Patterson Hood Jerry Joseph BJ Barham Rodney Crowell Elizabeth Cook Tommy Womack Eric Ambel, Dan Baird, Robbie Fulks, Malcolm Holcombe Jon Langford Steve Poltz, Lilly Hiatt Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Sadler Vaden )