Samuel Koechlin was born in Switzerland. When he was eleven or twelve, his cousin introduced him to Nirvana. That began Sam’s interest in music.
At the age of 19, he moved to New York on a student visa and began his music career while studying. He had originally started with groups, but as this didn’t pan out, he tried working as a duo. When his duo partner did not show up for a concert, he had to perform alone. The announcer introduced Sam as Sam Himself. While all three of the subsequent EPs — Songs in D (2017), Nobody (2018), and Slow Drugs (2020) — were well received, it was during the making of this third EP that Sam began to find his voice.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Sam moved back to Switzerland, where he recorded his first album Power Ballads (2021). His single “La Paz” frequently played on independent radio and attracted the attention of the producers of And Just Like That… (a sequel to the Sex in the City TV series) who decided to feature it on the show.
While in Switzerland, Sam recorded his second album Never Let Me Go (2023). Unlike the first album, this one was recorded with a band. Sam also got a treat from his hometown, Basel. He was invited to perform with the Basel Symphony Orchestra and rearranged his songs to fit the classical concert format.
Sam is already hard at work on his third album Moonsongs (to be released in the fall of 2025). As we have gotten a taste of what is to come with two singles, “Dance With Me” (2024) and “Backstreets” (2025), it promises to be another success.
In this candid conversation, we covered Sam’s beginnings in Switzerland, his time in NY recording those three EPs, his first two albums, and his upcoming third album. I want to thank Nichole Peters-Good from Big Hassle in setting up the interview, but most of all, I want to thank Sam for taking the time to share his experiences and perspectives with me.
Jeff Cramer: Can you explain how you got interested in music?
Sam Himself: I don’t know if I can explain where my interest came from. I think I’ve always had one. I always liked to sing and liked to do performances and stuff. Then when I was maybe 11 or 12, a preteen, my older cousin, who was the coolest person I knew, he dropped out of high school. He started a rock band and he introduced me to Nirvana, the band. I was pretty much hooked right then and there. I guess that was the genesis of my own.
JC: That’s interesting because I’ve listened to some of your music and it certainly doesn’t sound like Nirvana.
SH: No. I appreciate that. It’s come a long way. I would hope that, not because I don’t like Nirvana, but because that’s already taken. So, I try to do my own thing.
JC: I understand that you were born in Switzerland. That’s probably where you are now and you also live in Brooklyn. Can you explain how both countries became your homes?
SH: I was born and raised in Switzerland and I grew up here. Then when I was 19 or so I moved to the US because I wanted to pursue music. Obviously, it’s harder now.
JC: I know.
SH: Back in the day you needed some kind of visa. You needed an alibi to stay. So, I went to school in the US, then continued music the whole time. Had to do obviously a bunch of odd jobs on the side after college to make ends meet and stuff. Always consistently built a life there. Started my music career there.
JC: And how did you come up with the name Sam Himself? Why that name?
SH: I guess a terribly silly story. I tried a bunch of nonsolo formations prior to starting a solo project. I never intended to go solo. My original idea was to start a band and then that didn’t quite shake out. Towards the end of the pre-solo period, I was down to a duo. We were supposed to play; I think it was in Brooklyn. I actually, at this point, don’t remember if this was Brooklyn or it was like Ludlow Street, downtown. It doesn’t matter. At any rate, I was there for the gig and the other person in my duo did not show up.
So, the guy who promoted the concert, he was like, “Well, you’re gonna have to go out either way.” He’s like, “It’s too bad, but you’re billed.” He announced me as Sam Himself as a joke. Then I played my show. It became a mantra, my war cry a little bit because it’s a situation where suddenly you’re thrown into cold water and you’re asked to do something you didn’t anticipate having to do on your own. Then I tried to find the potential in that, or tried to find the best of limitations of that, the freedom of that, and I guess the defiance of doing it myself in spite of someone else quitting on me.
JC: Nice. Talk about your first EP, Songs in D.
SH: The very first one I did with my producer, Daniel Schlett, Songs in D, there are songs that I still play live. So, there are two jams on there. One is “Out of Love” and the other one is “July.” I’m in a different register at the time. I just like singing very low and I was barely moving around because that wasn’t something I felt I guess super-confident doing at the time. So those were, I think, early indicators of there is something here, not just to myself. [Below is the official video for “Out of Love.”]
JC: Talk about your second EP, Nobody.
SH: Nobody I have a weird relationship with. I don’t ever wanna unrelease anything or suggest anything of that version. I do think I maybe jumped the gun production-wise a little bit on the second EP. Just even though it turned out some reliable radio tunes that are still in rotation to this day, which is awesome and I’m grateful for it.
I definitely like veer into over-correction a little bit, which is something I tend to do, which is, I guess, a way to keep things interesting. I started out super-mellow live and chamber poppy and then I went into pretty polished or radio-friendly territory with the second EP. Then, you know, continue back and forth with the albums. But yeah, I learned a lot with every release, including the one you brought up, Nobody.I definitely wouldn’t wanna miss the lessons that it taught me. [Below is the video for the title track “Nobody.“]
SH: Then tried to balance, tried to split the difference on my third EP Slow Drugs. During my third EP, my producer came up with the genre for me and he called it “Fondue Western,” which is a riff on Spaghetti Western soundtracks. I don’t know if he saw that. I think he was maybe just messing around with it, but I like it because it’s like my dual cultural backgrounds as it were. I feel – in Switzerland, I feel American, I guess. Fondue obviously is our national dish here. It’s almost like a cheesy mess. So, I really liked it for that reason and it just stuck like any silly denominator. It’s just for a lack of better words.
JC: That’s cool. Was there a particular song that gave this “Fondue Western” that made you think, “This is it. This is what I’m meant to do”?
SH: Definitely. I think the song “Slow Drugs” off my third EP, that was the one where I think even the very moment in the studio, we were goofing around and my producer said that. It was when we were recording lead guitars over that song. Lead guitars, not to get all creepy on you, but the guitars literally – not literally – the guitars metaphorically reminded us of big, long creamy, just cheesy strands of something melting, fondue-like textures, if you will. I guess it started from there. Then I feel like that song was pretty much, which was a game-changer for me, not just in terms of Fondue Western genre, but in terms of finding my voice and my aesthetic production-wise. [Below is the video for “Slow Drugs.“]
I also have to mention my great collaborator and mentor and good friend, Denitia Odigie. She’s a country singer now and fully killing it in Nashville. At the time she was in New York too. Lent her just beautiful voice to that song for harmonies and background vocals. So that, I guess, power-charged my knack for collaboration, which I really try to emphasize. So, I guess in a comfortable outcome and in process how we made the thing. That was a really, for me, very influential project.
JC: Yeah. For the first album, Power Ballads. Is there any song you wanna talk about on that one?
SH: Around that time, five, six years ago, things started picking up back here in Europe. So, after feeling like I’d become really American by my standards over the better part of a decade, I revisited my Swiss roots, if you will, and my place of origin and the music scene around here and reinvesting in that. So, now I’m in a place where I feel comfortable to say I’m a hundred percent of both, if that makes sense.
I guess the one that might stand out most to a casual listener is “La Paz” off that record. I started writing that song when I was traveling in South America. This was a while ago. I was driving through Peru and for a culmination of reasons, some of them − including local produce − and something had like side-effects. I got it into my head that I had to drive south through Peru and then make it across the border to Bolivia into La Paz.
For some reason I was running out of time. I was running out of money. I was like, “I’ll just keep driving. I’ll go to La Paz.” I never made it there, but I – through the drive, I started building it up in my head as this mythical destination where I could chill out and get off the road finally. I wouldn’t have to sleep in my car and it would be this oasis of recuperation and peace. It remained a fantasy. So that became that song.
JC: You got one of your songs featured on the Sex in the City sequel, And Just Like That. Talk about how your got their attention.
SH: Well, it’s one of those things. When the e-mail first came in about HBO being interested in one of my songs for a soundtrack, we were pretty sure it was Spam. It was this close to be remitted to the Junk folder, which would have been a tragedy. I think my theory of the case is that maybe the savvy music people over there have their ear to the ground in terms of independent radio stations.
KCRW featured that song pretty prominently, I know, a while before, and made it to one of their pop songs of the year it came out. So, we were really glad to get a ton of radio support in the US. I spoke internationally and got a lot of credibility from KCRW. I think they’re great staff. So, my theory, this is not proven, is that through that avenue of indie radio it came to the attention of the music production team over at HBO Max. It might be a totally different origin story. They never disclosed that. [Below is the video for “La Paz.”]
JC: Now let’s talk about Never Let Me Go. What I wanna talk about is what were your feelings there and, again, what stands out as a track to you for that one?
SH: Yeah. Never Let Me Go was my second album that I made and released. Within, it felt like a very short time after the first one, which I guess is a pretty common narrative. Basically, you have your entire life for your first record and then you’ve got more or less 12 months for your second. That rang true for me. Even though I didn’t feel like I had my whole life for the first album too as I had been turning out these EPs prior to, as we just talked about. Never Let Me Go was like – a big part of it was being able to tour again.
My first album I recorded more or less on my own at home and then the last 20, 25 percent with my producer, Daniel, at the studio. We weren’t able to have musicians. We weren’t able to track live because of COVID at the time. Never Let Me Go, that was different. I fully wanted to seize the opportunity to have a drummer back in the studio, have a bass player back in the studio. I can play it the way we would play it live because I was touring a lot at the time. So, a big part of it was imagining how we are recording this and how it is gonna sound on the stage where we’re playing for people.
That was very refreshing and I guess from, again, the difference between album one − which is pretty solitary, maybe a little claustrophobic and introverted production − to swinging in the opposite direction. We’re now going to live sounds, et cetera. Then, with my third album that’s coming forth, I’ve had to take the best of both worlds, I guess, and synthesize the parts I like and the parts I’m interested in now into my next direction.
JC: During that time, you collaborated with the Basel Symphony Orchestra. Talk about that collaboration.
SH: That was cool. That was a milestone for me. They approached me for two collaborations, one was a scope of a music festival here that we, I think, rearranged. I think there were four or five songs even on the first batch and then we did a bunch more for a second collaboration later in the year. Yeah. That was my hometown symphony orchestra with like state funds approaching us asking if we were interested in rewriting some of my tunes for a full symphony orchestra, which is actually wild and a crazy honor to be able to do.
One of my good friends was the arranger of a part of the tunes. His name is Mark Baechle. He’s from here as well. He’s, to me, a big deal. He won an Emmy. He does these scores for major motion features. He got an award. It was out of the kindness of his heart to help us with a lot of those arrangements. So, I don’t know if you’re into classical music and instrumentation in that regard, but it’s totally wild. It’s awesome if you’re only used to – I guess in my own humble way it’s all bass drums. So, keyboards is my horizon of pretty and suddenly you have all these strings. You have percussion possibilities and stuff that you never even knew about. [Below is the video for “Mr Rocknroll.” Then after that is “Mr. Rocknroll” with the Basel Symphony Orchestra.]
JC: Let’s talk about your recent single “Dance with Me.” The one thing that’s interesting about it is the part you say right after “Dance with me. It’s all right. It’s all right.” It’s a little unusual lyric to say, “Dance with me. It’s all right.”
SH: Not to be that grammar guy, but I do say, “Dance with me like it’s all right.” So, it’s a matter of acting as though everything were fine or maybe forget the dire state it suggests they are and just one last time with feelings, so to speak, go and move close together in a rhythmical motion and recapture each other as if nothing happened as if it was gonna be all right. I also tried to incorporate some of the lyrical lines of some other idols of mine.
I tried to enact obviously Bowie and also Dylan. “Don’t Think Twice,” that’s one of my favorite songs of all time.” Don’t think twice, it’s all right.” Yeah. Lyrically, it’s interesting that you’re bringing this up because one thing I’m learning or I keep figuring out is that I never wanna fully know what a song is about or the one thing a song means to me in my favorite song. I obviously do. I wanna get to the bottom of it. I wanna figure out the terms of a phrase or the context and even the graphical trivia of the artist that may have influenced some of the lyrics. But for me, the most magical, powerful jams are always the ones where there is this core of mystery or poetic obscurity, if you will.
Not to say that I’m just gonna ride or die, string words into a little meaningless construction that sounds good or whatever. I take pride in really, I think, putting out these songs that are, to me, they’re not only about one thing. A lot of the lyrics are kinda origin of them and my thinking at the time. But I love that you have your own moments of, “Wow. This stands out to me,” or your own interpretation because that makes it a collaborative thing. It starts meaning something to you. That’s where it gets interesting. [Below is the official home video for “Dance With Me.”]
JC: Now I wanna talk about “Backstreets.” That was the first song I heard from you, “Backstreets,” when I went on that. It was interesting you mentioned Nirvana earlier in our interview because there were a few other people I was thinking of a little bit. I don’t know if you mentioned them or not. I was thinking of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Lou Reed kind of feel when I heard that.
SH: Thank you. I appreciate all those references − Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits. Definitely, for a long time, very formative influences and just heroes of mine in terms of their lyrics and their unique styles of delivering stuff. So that’s high praise. I’ll take that. “Backstreets” − I guess, it was a song that for this third album my producer and I were both like, “Oh, so now we know where this is going.” Because we both travel a lot, we tend to, in the preproduction phase, we send demoes back and forth.
I’ll come up with, on that, to a song more or less. We’ll flush out and I’ll send it to him and he’ll send it back. So we’ll talk about it. So, a lot of it is done remotely. Then in this process a song can change a bunch from A to B, from the finished tune to a finished project. Product, sorry! Not so much for “Backstreets.” But “Backstreets,” the first version I sent to Daniel, I’m pretty sure was in the same range, same tempo. It had a lot of the same hoops, flourishes, and textures as the final song. So, it was crucial in its function as a second song to where I wanna go. So that’s why it’s important to me.
It’s a very personal song in a sense that it speaks to maybe feeling both at home, but also not at home − by definition, in more places than one at the same time. Feeling like you, on the one side, have this whole life in both places and all these memories and all this history, but then also realizing that those places obviously move on without you if you don’t go there for a time and people change, things change, and places change. Then they also stay the same in these weird ways.
You feel both – I don’t know. You see the passage of time and how what was once future turns into memory. You also feel like no time has lapsed at all when you return. That’s a very strange twilight zone, maybe a little jet lag feeling that I was trying to convey on “Backstreets” with all the joys and sadness of that. [Below is the video for “Backstreets.”]
JC: So, what can we expect for this third album? We’ve already had a taste of it with “Backstreets” and “Dance with Me.” What’s more to expect on that album?
SH: Well, eight more bangers. I think there’s definitely variety. I wouldn’t suggest that those two gave the whole range away, the whole spectrum that the other tracks are gonna be. So, we’re in for some surprise, but also I think I’m returning to some of my stronger suits vocally. Not suggesting I’m reverting back to my comfort zone, but I’m definitely doing more singing again and more comfortable, customary lower baritone or even bass range.
Some of the tracks have live drums on them, but a lot of it is studio beats that Daniel and I put together. We have a phenomenal bass player on all the tracks, Josh Werner. He really carries those tunes. So, his melodic kooky bass lines are all the stuff. So you can be excited for that. Everyone always says that about their newest thing, but it’s my best thing yet. It’s the thing I’m proudest of and something I will always be glad to associate with this project, this like … this is something I think I’ll always be excited to share and play live.
JC: When can we expect this album to be released?
SH: In the fall. We’re taking our time with it and letting the singles play out on radio. So yeah. We’ll have a couple more singles before then and right now we’re looking at September.
JC: And you plan to tour on this album?
SH: Yeah, we are. We just finished the first like of, I guess, ten-ish shows or so in late February. Now we’re gonna do some smaller showcases for the summer. Then it’s really picking up again in the fall and into the winter, so right around the release of the album. So, stay tuned for that.
JC: You’ve had a remarkable time for these several years now. I guess my final question is gonna be, what is your reflection on all this journey to where you started and where you are now?
SH: Wow. Well, you’re right. It’s been a journey. It’s ongoing. I’m getting better at this, but it continues to be a challenge to pause and reflect and just be grateful and also remain ambitious and hyperactive and engaged and stuff. That’s a delicate balance especially on a solo project where I’m independent and obviously have a great team. I have phenomenal collaborators, as I’ve expressed, but it’s still the buck, for better and worse, stops with me.
So, I have a ton of respect of presenting that type of lesson of taking a step back and revisiting past, I guess, moments and developments, accomplishments. I don’t wanna become lazy or apathetic or navel-gazing, so to speak. It’s been wild. Maybe one major takeaway for me is that – this sounds so banal, but it’s really true and it’s really, I think, a good message for up-and-coming musicians or people who are just starting out to really internalize – there are so many moments when I was sure. I sort of like reached the glass ceiling. I hit my limit in a way and it never was the case.
Only way I didn’t expect in a sense when the pandemic hit, but then that opened a whole door for me here in Switzerland. In Europe, where you put something out and then, two years, it’s part of this major soundtrack. If I tried to hustle that and tried to force that into existence it never would have happened, but just putting things out there and allowing them to take on a life of their own and retaining by and large a lot of faith and optimism about the process. These incredible, career-changing things keep happening in ways that I couldn’t have foreseen.
So that is humbling, very exciting and definitely a hopeful thing that I try to keep in the back of my head even when things seem to slow down or I feel like I’m hitting a dry patch or something. It’s like that experience is always there.
