Sam Quinn learns to laugh at life's little problems

Thursday, December 9, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:00 am)
By CAROLE PERKINS

I first met Sam Quinn, the crooning storyteller for the now-defunct band, the everybodyfields, in 2007. Dressed in his signature brown pants and sporting neatly trimmed mutton chops, he and his former girlfriend and band mate Jill Andrews cuddled in a booth across the table. My hands shook as I took notes during their interview. I felt I was in the presence of musical geniuses whose whimsical songs from their three albums enamored me from the first notes.

Within the year, Quinn and Andrews parted ways.

Andrews embarked on a solo career, and Quinn stayed with Ramseur Records and started his own band: Sam Quinn and Japan Ten. In May 2010 the band released a CD, "The Fake That Sank a Thousand Ships" whose jacket Quinn illustrated with pastel rainbows and smiling dolphins. Quinn, who is an artist as well as accomplished musician, chose an interesting contrast to his morose but brilliant compilation of songs whose music and lyrics cling to your heart like barnacles slapped by life's salty waves.

The Tennessee native takes a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the album, recognizing the heavy weight of the songs needs to be put in a lighter perspective. He says it amuses him that it's so over the top.

"You have to laugh at yourself and all the little problems that you have when someone hurts your little heart," he says.

Raised by a largely female clan of sisters, mothers and grandmothers, Quinn started playing music as a young man as a place to escape the fate of working at Duracell or the local chair factory. He attended the East Tennessee State University, majored in English and met Andrews working as a camp counselor at a local Christian camp.

With the everybodyfields, Quinn's musical career took off playing in venues like The Kennedy Center, and in 2004, his song, "T.V.A.," won best in the bluegrass category at MerleFest.

As a solo artist, he starred in a YouTube video for a media push for the Avett Brothers' latest CD. (Quinn says that video is by far the most watched internet clip that he has ever been a part of, "which is cool because I was only doing what any other mildly trained chimpanzee could pull off shortly after waking up from a long winter.")

And now with Japan Ten, he recorded a live DVD in 2009, and their debut album won accolades from celebrity Lance Armstrong, who tweeted about the CD.

But Quinn says a while back he hit a juncture in his life and had nothing to lose by just seeing what happened when he let something go completely. (He does not elaborate.) He let his hair grow long and his beard grow bushy, looking something like a wooly booger, a Southern term for a hairy, scraggly creature. He found solace in being hidden and less approachable. (See photo inside the new CD.)

"I asked a girl to marry me, and she said, 'Yes,'" Quinn says. "I made her a ring from beating a silver dollar for days and damn near breaking two fingers and a thumb in the process.

"Now I can't get her to answer the telephone. That's real life. Who wants to live there?"

Recently, Quinn appeared in a music video with Andrews singing "Something Happens When We Talk," a Lucinda Williams tune. In what could be perceived as a symbolic return from a difficult time, Quinn's hair is neat and his mutton chops trimmed back to respectability.

Earlier this year, Quinn hit the road gigging after an extended stay at home in Knoxville, Tenn. That trip became meaningful in several ways.

"I hadn't been out like that in a long time," he says. "It was an immense brain-scrubbing session and an all-together conscience--shifting experience. I was weathered and blown free like a banner of equal parts hope and desperation."

With the last of his money from his trip, Quinn bought a pair of moccasins, drove through Wisconsin, sang doo-wop from a roof in Indiana, went to his niece's first birthday party and told his best friend Ryan that he loved him. He says he had a day so great he couldn't bring himself to tell his guitar guy, Nick, the best news he had ever heard for fear that it would turn everything around to talking about himself.

Then his van blew up. And he didn't even really care that much.

Quinn hopes the upcoming year will bring winning lottery tickets, a 65-degree winter and no hernias.

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com.