Sam Bradley is a decorated member of the illustrious Brit Pack. Sam’s smooth voice immediately draws in the fan, but the first few chords he croons of any song captivates even the most acrimonious of listeners.

Amber, owner of the Twi-blog Eyes of Amber, recently sat down for a chat with Sam before his performance. In her own words, here’s Amber’s report:

The first time I heard Sam Bradley sing, I was intrigued. As I dug deeper into his music, I became a fan. When I had the opportunity to see him perform live with his band, I jumped at the chance. (His band is made up of Mark Kerrey, Jeff Riedlinger, and Dave Meszaros.) Sam Bradley and The Men kicked off a U.S. tour along with Pilot Speed supporting Thriving Ivory. On July 6, I caught up with them at a show at Capone’s in Johnson City.

The first question of course was about the most pressing matter in the mind of all Sam fans: The upcoming album. While he didn’t have a definite date, Sam said it will be coming out this summer. It’s going to be an EP with five recorded songs and possibly some live songs as well. At first, it’s going to be released solely in download form, but he plans to make a vinyl of it as well. When asked why he’s forgoing the traditional cd route for the moment, Sam says, “I think it’s an interesting idea of having no physical form of cd. Also, I’d like to wait until a full length album comes out to release a cd.”

If you follow Sam’s MySpace or Twitter, you’ll know that he has a special place in his heart for not only Nashville, but the entire south. When I asked him what it was about the area that he loved so much, I couldn’t help but laugh when the first two things he listed were the hospitality and the accent- two things that the south is famous for. The irony of someone with his beautiful accent saying that he liked the southern accent was certainly not lost on me. “You know, it’s a musical city. I obviously have an affiliation with music,” said Sam. “…the landscape, I like the lusciousness of it. I love the food as well.” Sam has been known to take a picture of his lovely southern meal and send it out on his Twitter account. He continues, “Yeah, yeah, I love the food. I like lots of things about the south. I just like the general feel of it really.” It’s always interesting to find out what someone else finds intriguing about your home.

And speaking of home, Sam explained how he came to live in Vancouver:

“Well, okay so, I was supported by my mum at the time and I was 16, 17 and my mum was in a little bit of a financial difficulty in London and London’s a very expensive place so basically we came on holiday. We went on holiday to Vancouver, we have family there. My mum is Canadian. And we went to a country music festival and we got back from the country music festival and went to the city of Vancouver and she said well how ‘bout for fun let’s go look at some houses. And so, for fun we went and looked at houses and we found an amazing house and she said shall we do it? And I was pretty unhappy with my, not unhappy, just frustrated and I think I just needed an excuse to do less because it was about that time where I started to have to do something in my life and I wasn’t really quite prepared for that yet so I thought if I moved that bought me some more time so I said yeah, let’s move. And my sister said yeah let’s move. So we moved, that’s why.”

There were so many things I would have loved to discuss with Sam from his musical influences to our mutual love Johnny Cash, but of course he had a show to do so our time was limited. I let my curiosity get the best of me and decided instead to ask for the story behind his song Soho Whores.

“Well, the actual story is not as good as the one I’m about to make up right now (laughs) ah, no. Okay, so basically the story is, of that song, I love the area of Soho in London and that is kind of the uh, there’s a lot of prostitution that goes on there and there’s a lot of disgusting men that walk around . We were on our way back from Soho from a pub, me and my friend Marcus, and we had a sort of a see who could write a song quickest kind of a thing happening on the back of the bus. That was what I wrote and what he wrote was something else. I can’t remember what it was. Yeah, so that’s really the story.”

This particular song seemed lyrically different from most of his other songs. When asked about this, Sam responded, “Yeah, there’s a little bit of, yeah. Just wait for the rest of the songs. No, I’m joking.” He laughed when I told him that was the song I always skip when my children are in the room and I have his MySpace streaming in the background. In an earlier interview Sam had mentioned that Sea Blue was one of his favorite songs. With all the new music that he’s written and performed, is that still the case?

“Um, my favorite song currently, we’ve just learned together, it’s called Even Thought of Leaving and I’m really happy with the way it’s sounding and yeah, because it’s fresh we really like playing it as a group. So that is my current favorite. But I don’t really have any favorites. I have some definite dislikes, if you’d like to write that down.” Leaning over so that his mouth is only a couple inches from the microphone, Sam very loudly says, “You Think You’re Free.”

Of course the room broke out in laughter. I told him I liked the song, and asked if he really disliked it that much. He assured me that he really disliked it and thanked me, saying that a lot of people do like the song, “I wish I, I wish I had of picked a different song to write, I think. But, saying that, I did it, I was really happy with it at the time. It’s four years old now, it’s one of the first songs I had written so maybe I’ve just moved on and maybe it’s not a dislike for the song but maybe I’m just detached from it.” Is it possible that he’s simply matured beyond it? “Perhaps, or maybe I’m getting more immature and,” stomping his foot, “I Don’t Like It

Finding out that Don’t You Dare is one of my absolute favorites seemed to genuinely surprise Sam. “You like that song?” he queried. “That’s great! Not many people do. I get a lot of, a lot more negative feedback than I do positive on that one. I don’t know why. Why, well, I do know why. It’s not the happiest of songs, but yeah, thank you. That’s cool, that’s good to hear.” A song doesn’t have to be happy to be beautiful.

Sam Bradley and The Men are certainly an impressive bunch. This is a group of extremely talented guys who love what they do. They are down to earth, very funny, and seem to be laying back and enjoying the ride. Sam actually asked if we were going to stay for the show. The answer to that was a resounding “Yes!”

Their performance was phenomenal. They played some of Sam’s fan favorites such as Too Far Gone, Whiskey, Derek and Soho Whores, but they also treated the audience to some music written by other members of The Men, which was incredible.

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