SAM KRÜGER
SONGWRITER
BIOGRAPHY
LONDON
In a modest home in London Ontario, in his teens, Sam was inventing melodies and songs on his mother's old and unfortunately out-of-tune piano. A dozen music lessons later, he was playing some version of Fur Elise and Hungarian Dance #5. Though it wasn't until he got ahold of his sister's neglected birthday present, strumming his first chords on a plastic guitar-in-a-box that something felt like it clicked.
The year after high school, Sam's older brother and sister had moved out, suddenly a basement room was liberated, moving quickly, he made sure it transformed into a practice space. This is when he started writing dozens of songs while studying his favourite songwriters. He borrowed a drum kit from a friend, a bass guitar from a cousin, and bought his first "pro" electric guitar, a used and beat-up and chipped fender strat in cream - from the guitarist in a Paul McCartney cover band. The digital folders from this period hold 50+ songs, almost all of them unreleased. They served as a training ground.
Soon, Sam recorded and released his first EP, Moving So Slow, although he was unable to find a footing in the cultural scene of his hometown. It was time to move on. Sam was relatively fluent in French due to an earlier cultural exchange on the coast of France, and so the cheapest culturally dense Canadian city was calling his name...
“In 2016, I had spent enough time working the over-night shift at McDonalds. I took a 4-day trip from my hometown of London to Montreal. The short trip was enough to convince me to move there the next month. With some clothes and an acoustic guitar, I quit my job and left – landing by chance, a literal spiral staircase away from my new musical neighbours in a locally famous band. It wasn’t long that I started to release some of those songs that I wrote over that filthy McDonalds grill.”
MONTRÉAL
Since then, Sam has played shows around Canada, from Montreal to Vancouver. He has played in bars, in living rooms, on the tops of busses, in cafes, in laundrymats, and in magic festivals in the forest.
In 2018, Sam released his first single and music video. Baby Don't Worry, a doo-wop 50's/60's pop-inspired song written over the grill years prior. It was followed up with his EP "All Sick Again" and a string of full band shows.
In January of 2022, his next single, an Otis Redding cover: These Arms of Mine, which feature the vocal talents of his own mother.
In April of 2023, his next EP, all acoustic, "The songs I write in my bedroom". He played the release on his birthday, ironically performing the acoustically recorded songs with a newly christened band of fantastic musicians. The EP charted on college radio, and received Sam's first airplay on CBC.
