bio

Sam Billen is a busy man. Between raising his baby daughter with his wife, working full time at the University of Kansas, teaching ESL at Washburn University, and running his business, FourBigWatts, he somehow finds plenty of time to dedicate to his passion – making music that moves.

After years of playing in a band called the Billions, Sam has journeyed off into a solo music career and is currently releasing his music through The Record Machine. Over the past couple of years, he has released a good amount of music: a digital EP entitled Tokyo Sessions, a full-length album called Headphones and Cellphones, a Christmas compilation (including songs by friends Half-Handed Cloud, The Paper Route, and Andrew Conner from Ghosty), a solo piano album called Death of a Saint, a constantly growing collection of his remixes and covers of the music that influences him in a project called Removers, and his most recent project, a Christmas album with his good friend Josh Atkinson.

Sam's next full-length is currently in production and is due out fall 2011. In the near future, Sam plans to release an album with his brother, Dan Billen (co-ex-member of the Billions). In the not-so-near future, Sam also hopes to release an album of old church hymns, a lullaby album, an R&B album, and an instrumental guitar/piano album.

 

 

Sam also runs a business with his friend Christopher Tolle (of the Belles) called FourBigWatts that creates music for film, advertising, video games and other mixed media. You can hear samples of this work and find out more info about this business at www.fourbigwatts.com