What's Up?
Too Hot To Sleep, the debut record from accordionist and pianist Sam Reider is the music that gets stuck in your head and keeps you up all night.
Reider, who has built a cult following leading regular midnight sets at one of the oldest dive bars in Brooklyn, conjured the music out of his insomnia. “I’ll come home at 2 am after improvising wild music all night and then lie awake while fragments of melodies run through my mind. Sometimes all I can do is get up and go to the piano.”
What emerged is a record and an ensemble that breaks down any remaining boundaries between jazz, folk, and chamber music. The closest points of reference may be the Punch Brothers or the Goat Rodeo Sessions, but Reider reaches far beyond his roots in American music to draw on melodies and rhythms from around the world.
Beginning with an almost Morricone-inspired western piece, “The Murder,” the album follows a narrative of a journey through the underworld. From the blazing-fast “Swamp Dog Hobble” to the Klezmer/Balkan-tinged “Skeleton Rag,” the band’s virtuosity is totally captivating. Reider returns to his jazz roots in the title-track, “Too Hot To Sleep,” an otherworldly, Strayhorn-esque duet with crack alto saxophonist Eddie Barbash.
Reider is joined on the record by a group of young acoustic musicians in Brooklyn called The Human Hands, some of the best and brightest from the worlds of jazz and roots music: Alex Hargreaves (Live From Here, Sarah Jarosz) on violin, Eddie Barbash (Jon Batiste and Stay Human) on saxophone, Dominick Leslie (Hawktail, Ricky Skaggs) on mandolin, Roy Williams (Stephane Wrembel) on guitar, and Dave Speranza (Jim Campilongo) on bass.
Life & Work
Bio:
Sam Reider is an American accordionist, pianist, composer, and singer-songwriter. He’s been featured at Lincoln Center and on NPR and collaborated with pop stars, jazz and folk musicians around the world. Reider is the leader of a “staggeringly virtuosic band” (RnR Magazine) of bluegrass and jazz musicians based in Brooklyn called The Human Hands.
Following the release of their critically-acclaimed record Too Hot to Sleep (2018), Sam and the Human Hands have appeared at major festivals and venues throughout the US and the UK and performed live on the BBC. Irresistible melodies, fiery improvisation and otherworldly sounds collide in what Songlines Magazine has dubbed "mash-up of the the Klezmatics, Quintette du Hot Club de France and the Punch Brothers.” Too Hot To Sleep features Eddie Barbash (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jon Batiste and Stay Human), Alex Hargreaves (Turtle Island Quaret, Live From Here, Sarah Jarosz), Dominick Leslie (Hawktail, Ricky Skaggs Band, Deadly Gentlemen), Roy Williams (Stephane Wrembel), Grant Gordy (David Grisman Quintet) and Dave Speranza.
Reider grew up in San Francisco, the son of a musical theatre composer and klezmer musician. He began performing at a young age, and was interviewed on Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz” on NPR when he graduated high school. At Columbia University, he fell in love with American folk music. While writing his senior thesis comparing the songwriting of Woody Guthrie and Ira Gershwin, Sam began studying bluegrass and old-time, transcribing the fiddle melodies for the accordion and learning to sing the songs. This set him off on a journey that has taken him from back porches and dive bars to concert halls and major festivals in practically every state in the country.
Representing the U.S. Department of State as a musical ambassador, Sam has travelled to China, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Estonia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, carrying his accordion on his back everywhere he goes and collaborating at with international artists. Sounds and stories from these travels frequently serve as the inspiration for Reider’s compositions, which together form an ongoing musical travelogue.
As a side-man, collaborator and recording artist, Reider has worked with artists including Sierra Hull, Jorge Glem, Phoebe Hunt, Courtney Hartman, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, T-Pain, David Amram, Nellie McKay Ranger Doug, the Brother Brothers and more. A passionate educator, Reider leads ongoing performances for public school students throughout the New York City area in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has designed curricula and taught courses at the Stanford Jazz Festival, San Francisco Jazz, and other private institutions around the country. More info on Sam’s education work.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
North America Booking:
Myriad Artists
Trish Galfano: [email protected]
919-967-8655
UK & Ireland PR and tour consultant:
Brookfield Knights
Loudon Temple [email protected]
+44 (0)1505 706346
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"The perfect distraction for insomniac bluegrass fans" - Songlines, Top of the World
"A staggeringly virtuosic band" - RnR Magazine
"Too Hot To Sleep is simply stunning, one to get utterly lost in." - Northern Sky Magazine
"He's got rhythm. And for someone his age, plenty of soul, too.” - San Francisco Chronicle
"Dashes of folk influences from around the world are sprinkled into its string band aesthetic.. Reider’s accordion is the unyielding anchor, giving a dose of soulful, raw timelessness, but with a modern crispness and confidence.” - The Bluegrass Situation
“It is always moving to see fellow musicians playing with such passion, thank you Sam Reider!” - Taraf de Haidouks
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).