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I was nominated for best pop act in the 2010 Pitch Music Awards. If you have a minute, I would appreciate your vote! I’m in category #18 (pop): http://polls.pitch.com/polls/kcp/musicballot10/

Thanks so much!

I’ve been recording a little and thinking a lot recently about my next full-length album. I know it’s really amateur to try to sound like someone else, and that’s not my plan with the next album. But I really can’t deny the inspiration that I’ve had from three artists in particular: Nathan Phillips, Aaron Roche, and Shugo Tokumaru.

Nathan and Aaron have a project together called ‘The Choir at your Door’ – I got their new album Work Tapes and have been listening to it non-stop for 1 month. If you want to hear it for yourself, I suggest ordering it here: http://www.aaronroche.com/. From what I’ve heard, anything that Nathan or Aaron (together or solo) have put out speaks straight to my soul. It’s truly beautiful music.

Shugo Tokumaru is a Japanese artist that I just heard about for the first time about 2 months ago. When I was in Japan last month, I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of his new album Port Entropy which hasn’t been released in the US yet. I guarantee that when it is, it’s going to blow up. His music is a crazy mixture of Sufjan Stevens, Daniel Johnston, and Half-Handed Cloud. It is definitely another one you have to check out.

Finally, I’m thinking about trying to gather up friends (and/or fans?) that want to partake in helping me create my next album. I’m planning on writing parts for strings, horns, a harp, a children’s choir, etc. etc. for the album. If you’re interested, please comment on here or write me at sam@sambillen.com. I’d love to get a lot of people involved!!

Thanks for reading. Make sure to check out that music I listed above. You will thank me!

My wife and daughter have been in Japan for the past 3 weeks visiting family and doing research. I’ve been working hard to stay busy while they’re gone so I don’t go crazy in our empty house – writing some new music, recording, playing shows, hanging out with friends, watching movies.

As I’ve gotten older, the responsibilities that come with being a father and having a full-time job have brought me to a point in life where I can’t play live as often as I did years ago. With that said, I thought I’d ‘give it a go’ while the girls were out of town, so I worked on setting some shows up. Somehow I got 4 lined up for the month of June. Three have passed already and the fourth is this Wednesday at the 8th Street Taproom in Lawrence. While I’m looking forward to this last show, I’m also looking forward to going back to my normal, old man life with my wife and daughter (and back to only playing out once every couple of months).

I guess I just want to say thanks to those of you that came out to the shows or hung out with me during this month of re-visited bachlor-hood. You helped make what could have been a real lonely time not so lonely for me.

On a side-note, if I can ever figure out how to de-code this Japanese DVD that I have, I’ll soon be posting some videos of my performance in Japan last month.