Ganavya & Sam Amidon - "Would Be Better"
On this day, the winter solstice brings us the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Our opportunity as humans to stare into darkness and reflect on our lives. Acclaimed singer-songwriters Ganavya & Sam Amidon present to us a pair of tranquil songs that were written out of loneliness and a yearning to find ourselves back home. "Would Be Better" and "Willow Street" (feat. Sam Gendel) act as a warm hug during our personal metamorphosis. The tracks were recorded at LEITER's Funkhaus Berlin.Â
Ganavya writes:
âYou are sweetheart older brother,â I had written to Sam early last year, after he quietly and lovingly held me as I cried over the phone about not being able to be there for my parents. The first occurrence of the word âfreedomâ is, perhaps, the Ancient Sumerian word âamaragi,â which means âreturn to Mother.â Freedom, what takes us away from family / what returns us back home.
Maybe we can make a song, Sam suggested after I cried. Just ten minutes after hanging up, I sent him a long poem. Less than twenty minutes later, the poem had a guitar part. Sam honed into two lines, simplified it and in less than thirty minutes, unbelievably yet truly entirely over a text-message thread, the song âWould Be Betterâ was fully born.
But I had no idea when I would see Sam next, so we let the song be. Text messages might be the letters of our time â and if I didnât have them to look back on, I would have forgotten the next part of the story.
A week after we had written this song together on text, when my last sigh was a simple update on where I was â âBourges to Parisâ â âWell, shit. / Iâm coming to London. / How did that happen?â Sam responded: âWell, shit! Thatâs wondrous news.â âIâm singing for something called LaterâŚwith Jools Holland,â Iâd written. Sam, sweetheart older brother, immediately sent me some of his favorite Jools moments, starting with Mary Margaret OâHara. Brothers teach you things. I, severely homesick, did not want to stay at a hotel, and stayed at Alev Lenzâs home the weekend of LaterâŚwith Jools Holland instead. Sam came around and Alev helped us make a demo of our song. For a year, I held the demo close, an antidote to something unnameable.
This song was a cry to the Gods to fit the world âin six neat streets.â That I was in London, singing in a room with Sam within a week, is proof that someone, somewhere, is listening to our cries.
But the text message had a second guitar melody, and Sam and I always knew the two songs needed to be together, âWould Be Betterâ and the unnamed second song.
This past summer, on short notice, Sam flew to Berlin on a day off, and we recorded the two songs at Funkhaus in a few hours. We knew what to do with âWould Be Betterâ, but the second half was a guided spill, a confession, that fit the contours of Samâs guitar line: âAlone, alone / If Iâd only known / Iâm alone.â No, instead, I finally arrived to âIf Iâd only known / Home is every heart / Iâve ever loved / Iâve ever known.â Words fell out in real time. When the time came to name the second song on the session, I shrugged and asked Sam what the street of his family home was: âWillow Street,â he said.
âEveryoneâs home, we are complete / would be better.â We couldnât have imagined. A month after recording âWould Be Betterâ and what would be called âWillow Streetâ, I was on my regularly scheduled tour route â one that was to pass through Brattleboro, VT, where Sam was unexpectedly flying to as well. Samâs beloved Father was about to die. Though I knew Samâs family was nearby (theyâll make you pancakes! he promised), neither of us had expected to see the other in Vermont. It wasnât planned.
A bit dazed with the surreality of it all, we took a picture beneath the very sign that read Willow Street. We âmy husband Felix Grimm (whose friendship with Sam is older than even my own), Sam, and I â were quietly sitting on the porch of the Amidon family home on Willow Street. Later that evening, after I drank tea with Samâs mom and heard stories of how Samâs beloved father was pulling pranks and correcting Samâs singing until the very end, I walked just ten minutes with Felixâs hand in mine, past the Willow Street sign, to the venue.
Sam showed up to the gig with his brother. Epsilon Spires, the venue, was once a church, I learnt: the very church that Samâs father and family had spent many Sundays singing together in. The next day, I saw an old video of a young Sam, Samâs Beth, Samâs father and family all singing at the church, before it became the stage Iâd have my show on.
I know some of this is hard to follow. Itâs hard to fit it all in words. Itâs easier to fit it into song. I think Sam understood this after I cried to him, gasping for air surrounded by tenderness and a feeling of failure, when he quietly responded with âmaybe we can make a song.â I wonder if song was born when language couldnât fit everything.
This is a song that was born from loneliness, such loneliness that even the one song became two, as if they needed to keep each other company. Itâs a song that brought my brother to me, not once, but twice. Itâs a song that brought me to London, and then later to Willow Street.
The best collaborations are excuses to spend time with people you want to learn from. Sam Amidon is my sweetheart older brother, and Iâm grateful I get to learn from him.
âWrite for the world you want to see,â Wayne Shorter said to me once. So I did: I wanted the world to fit in six streets, and with the help of a brother, I wrote a song. And then suddenly, the world did.
Iâm still on the road. Iâm still traveling. But I am learning from people â brothers like Sam â how to come back home, how to fit everyone Iâve ever loved into my pocket, no matter where I go.
Sam Gendel, who figures into the story with Sam Amidon and my husband Felix, is a story for another time. Today, all you need to know is that Sam Gendel fits into our small six streets, too.
And if you want to, so do you. Always. Here is Mother.
