Yuri Sendzimir/The Mirror
On the day of the StagStock concert, writer Morgan Lang’14 was able sit down to talk to Sam Adams to talk to him about visiting Fairfield, his songs, his career choices , and his love of the Red Sox.
Is this your first time at Fairfield? Have you ever been here before?
No, I came here once and got mad drunk when I was in high school and ended up in the girl’s bathroom.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that’s the only other time I’ve been to Fairfield, but I’ve been here before.
And getting to some of your music, what is some of the inspiration for your songs and when do you write your lyrics? Do you have a routine or anything?
I mean, originally when I, like, started, I would sort of just put on a beat that I liked, and I was producing. But I was using other people’s beats, so I would just write and record and record, you know, like right in my room. Nothing too fancy.
“I Hate College” was actually never recorded in a studio; it was just recorded in my room and it was never mastered either. And inspiration-wise, everything, you know, things I see, mainly now these days just my whole experience, traveling, meeting people, meeting other artists, being able to perform. You know, sort of the adrenaline you get on stage, the adrenaline you get off stage … and as you become more comfortable with yourself in the studio, you just sort of start to get in like a zone.
You went to Hobart and William Smith College? What made you decide to go there?
First. Soccer, I got a scholarship for soccer but then I transferred to Trinity.
What made you decide to transfer?
Well, it’s just in the middle of nowhere, and I wanted to pursue music more and being close to Boston and New York, its like I have it all.
And did you just graduate from Trinity College?
I didn’t graduate.
Oh, you didn’t? What happened?
(Laughs) I was like two credits short because some of my transfer credits from Hobart didn’t[transfer over].
(One of his friends who came along for the interview interjected,“ You need to get a degree!”
Adams laughed, answering, “I don’t want a degree.”)
Is what you’re doing now–is this what you always wanted to do?
Yeah, I always had dreams of doing music, some kind of entertainment. I was always the little clown running around the house doing little things. But yeah, I wanted to be a performer, I didn’t know I would become an artist; I always thought I’d become a producer or something, but um, very cool, you know.
Did you actually “hate college?”
No, I just hated work, you know? Like going to listen to the teacher talk about like women, gender, and sexuality when I’m never ever going to use any of that…I mean maybe later in life… no I didn’t hate it, I just hated school, school work was the worst.
And you’re obviously a Red Sox fan. Are you attending any games this season?
Yeah, I hope so, I mean I’m glad I didn’t attend any of the f***ing nine games that we already lost, but yeah of course, when we get off tour, we’ll probably go to Fenway for sure.
I read that you bypassed major record labels and marketed yourself on Facebook. How did you do that?
We just started touring. When we had “I Hate College,” it allowed us to go to colleges and tour. I mean we had just like six songs or five songs, so we would just go do s**t on stage and then do “I Hate College” and that was the whole draw of the show.
It started out with like 150 kids and then 300 kids, and we were playing at frat parties, anyone who would open up their basement for us to play. Slowly but surely, our Facebook following went from 3,000 to 7,000 to 10,000, and then we dropped our album, and, you know, all 15,000 of our fans bought our album in the first week.
So, for people in hip hop and people in the music industry, to see a huge amount of people buying [an album] and then you don’t drop the 30 % that you usually do when you release a record, it just brought this huge buzz. It was like, ‘who the hell is this kid and … how did this happen?’ It was just like the domino effect; people heard about it, and word of mouth just totally spread. And we just used Facebook, and now we use Twitter a lot, but Facebook was critical in us achieving success.
What opposition have you faced to get to where you are today, and how do you deal with negative criticism?
Negative criticism is whatever, you know. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions–just Facebook and Twitter make it much more heard. But negative criticism – we don’t really pay attention to it, it’s sort of invisible to us. We try not to read mostly anything that’s written about us, interviews, anything, because we know who we are and if the interviewer doesn’t… why dwell on it?
You’ve said in previous interviews that with all this success, you just want to keep your head and stay humble. How do you do that?
The same way I’ve always been doing it. Traveling around with your best friends, you know, most of my best friends work with me or for me, and it’s amazing.
If I sort of get out of line or start acting like a f***ing b***h, they’re right there to tell [me]. Our fans–we love our fans more than anything, always will, so [we] just making sure that [they’re] the number one priority because we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without them, you know.
Do you have any advice to college students right now?
In terms of music or…?
(at this point Sam Adams cut off and said, “Good song! That’s the one, that’s the joint” referring to a song that was soundtracking in the background. He then turned and said to the interviewer, “Sorry, ADD. )
(Laughs) What?
Do you have any advice in terms of following your passions?
Yeah, just go with your gut. If you want to do something and you think you can do it, work with it. There’s so much to learn about everything–like when I started out, I didn’t know anything … and you couldn’t teach me what I’ve learned in the past year in twenty years of school, you know. So just keep your eyes open, always be open to learning. You don’t really know s**t, but you can learn s**t.
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