The Plain Values Podcast EP #08 – Sam Burchfield on Sacred Music, Sacred Life

Sam Burchfield:

Essentially, I was trying to face death. I was running from it for a long time. And then I finally, when I did the MRI, and I’m like, okay, I just have to prepare for this to be cancer, for this to be whatever. It’s always, always better to lean into hope and beauty and truth. That’s the gospel. The thing about ai, the difference is it doesn’t have a story.

Marlin Miller:

Well, guys, it is going on midnight tonight. We just got done having a fantastic hour, Seth, what? Hour and 20 minutes, hour and 15 minutes with Sam Birchfield, a new friend, a musician, a fantastic singer songwriter out of North Georgia, and he came up, he had a show in Boone, North Carolina last night. He came up here to Ohio this afternoon, and we had 70, probably 65 to 70 people here, I think, and had a fantastic evening together. He puts on such a great show and just such a good heartfelt dude, man. It was just great. Everybody that was here told me, I think, told our team how much they enjoyed the whole time. So it was just wonderful. And Sam had, we had plans of doing this podcast tomorrow morning after the show was over and we had a chance to rest.

And he came up to me later before we started and he said, Hey, van broke down. It’s in Kentucky somewhere. And he said, would you mind if we did the podcast just after the show? We did it. It worked out beautifully. We had a great talk. Really, really a heartfelt and just a really good, authentic conversation about life and hard things and the struggles of being on the road and the songwriting and just all of life. Ai. Ai. That’s right. Exactly. Thank you. Really, really a fascinating perspective. Even on Spotify. I mean, Seth, what he said about Spotify really made me think of it in a whole new light. I’ve never considered it the way that he described it. It was just really a great conversation. Thanks very much for hanging out. You are going to enjoy a wonderful hour with Sam Birchfield the show.

There’s going to be parts of that online as well, and it was a great time, man. What a great guy. I am so excited to tell you that Berlin Seeds is sponsoring this episode. Berlin Seeds has become my wife’s absolute favorite seed place. Their store is wonderful. They have a test garden. They’ve been around forever. They do nothing but non GMO and heirloom seeds. There’s no gimmicks, there’s no, there’s no iffy anything at all. They are absolutely wonderful, and I know that you’ll love them. You can learn more about Brenton and his team at Berlin Seeds life and tell ’em, Marlon, in plain values sent you. If you want someone to trust you, man, you got to be real.

Sam Burchfield:

Oh, you let your, yeah, I let your guard down

Marlin Miller:

And just, you have to show them that you willing to do it first because if that first doesn’t ever happen, it never happens typically. It never happens. Well,

Sam Burchfield:

I think that just kind of naturally happens for me at shows where I feel I just love being honest. I love to try to go to the depths of what I think about something. And so when I’m talking about a song, I truly, and it’s been fun. There’s been times long time ago, I remember when 10 years ago I had a bad breakup and all the shows after that, I was just straight up guys. I would just go there. I would just go to the depths of where I was at, and I had a buddy that was playing with me during that time, and we just laugh after. He’s like, man, you really? Yeah, pretty dark tonight. And I was like, yeah, man. I feel things big. I think as an artist, I feel things big and so yeah, I like to just, sometimes I’ll be talking, I’m like, this is probably way too deep for most people that want to, you go to a concert, you’re like, we’re going to just listen to, so that’s not how you get at a Sam show most of the time. That is not what you get.

Marlin Miller:

Oh, man. Well, let’s go back. Let’s go all the way back. I mean, how long have you been playing music?

Sam Burchfield:

So I started playing music in fifth grade.

Marlin Miller:

In fifth grade,

Sam Burchfield:

Which I’m 33, so do the math. That’s a long time. And I started playing upright bass in orchestra and guitar, acoustic guitar at the same time. And that was just because my sister, one of my older sisters got an electric bass and I thought it was really cool. So I jumped in. I got addicted to guitar, I would say is addicted might be the right word. I would lock myself in my room, play things. My sisters were so annoyed. They’d be like, stop playing that same song, and I’d just be learning and trying to get faster and trying to, my fingers were hurt so bad at first from pressing down, and it was just like I would just found the thing. And then in middle school, one of a buddy who was a year older who played drums kind of was like, we should get together and jam. And so we got in the garage and just jammed. And eventually we had some other buddies and we had three guitar players and a drummer, which is not a very good sound, especially for middle schoolers. And we were looking around, well, we need someone to sing. And we were kind of like, does anybody do that? And I had no experience singing, but for some reason I was like, oh, well, I’ll try to come up with a song. So I went back and wrote a few songs and we started playing. And then once I started writing songs, I think that was the next level for me of just resonating with that.

Marlin Miller:

Did the songwriting come easily? Did it come naturally to you, or did you have to go to classes and

Sam Burchfield:

No classes? Nothing like that. When I think about it, and I don’t know if this is just something that’s always been enemy, but even at a young age, I loved building Legos like hardcore. I wanted to be a professional Lego builder before guitar, but when I built Legos, I would always take apart the thing you’re supposed to build and build something just crazy. And then I would truly play Legos. I would create these stories with when you see, and it’s fun having a toddler now to reengage with play in that way, to really let your imagination wild and make up stories and have these made up characters interact. And I think that same whatever that is carried over into songwriting. And so it didn’t feel hard. I do think one of the things I remember feeling early on is, which is funny now, is how do I say anything new? That was one of the biggest things that I remember. One of my first songs that I wrote was really heavy in talking about people dying and how do you, as a middle schooler, I’m writing this and just because I’m trying so hard to go somewhere new that I didn’t think was said yet. And it’s just so funny having written probably 500, a thousand songs, don’t even know how many songs I’ve written now that I was so worried about that.

But as a middle schooler,

Marlin Miller:

That was front of mind.

Sam Burchfield:

You got to be unique. You got to be different, new. And that my identity, I would say really formed around being the guy that was in a band that played guitar at that age. I’d go do the talent show and me and my band would set up somewhere on the street to play. Just anything we could do. Yeah, it was a fun, it was crazy looking back.

Marlin Miller:

So you grew up in the Carolinas,

Sam Burchfield:

Right? Yeah, Seneca, South Carolina, right. Upstate, kind of in the mountains. Okay. Little town, big town, yeah, maybe medium. I mean only. So my dad moved there to work at nuclear power plants. That was one of the bigger things that employed people. It’s an old mill town of the south, so there was a lot of poverty, also very diverse. There was a lot of African-Americans, Hispanics and poor, essentially redneck. It was just everything, which I loved. Looking back, I didn’t realize that that was a little unique for people. So I remember when we first got Chick-fil-A in high school, so it was small, but we had some things was you had to drive 30 minutes to go to a good movie theater. You had to drive 45 minutes to see an actual concert, that kind of thing. And again, I love that. I think I’ve spent some time in Atlanta after college and cities are great. I loved them, but I think I’ve always just felt that pull towards a smaller community and feels a little more stable, not as chaotic, and that can be fun. Sometimes you need that energy and it’s exciting. But yeah, not for me.

Marlin Miller:

So when Sam Birchfield really well, sorry, I’m making too many assumptions here. No. How did you actually catch the break, or what was the break for you and your crew? It’s

Sam Burchfield:

Funny. I don’t even feel like I’ve caught one really, and not to down myself for anything, but I mean, it just feels like there has been slow, steady growth over the past 15 years of doing this. I mean, I was playing in college again. I was playing in middle school. I put out CDs to my friends in middle school. I was over there shopping my CDs. I’d burn ’em myself and a sticker on ’em. Those things will get stuck in people’s cars because there’s a sticker that city won’t get out of my car now. It’s just, yeah, I did that in high school and I went to school.

My parents’ wishes I got some scholarships. I was a good student and they wanted me to go, went to University of Georgia, not for music, but just I got a PR degree just on the side that I’d never use, but there was a music business program there that I loved. And the town was so vibrant and creative, especially from being from Seneca. I mean, there’s six music venues and there’s bands every night of the week playing music. And it’s weird music. Athens is a very eclectic place. You got, I mean, the B 50 twos are from there and REM, it was so much newness to me experiencing a vibrant downtown that I could go to.

There’s a long story that I’m just going to summarize. I did do, I did a singing competition in college and I won it. This is just on a whim. I just did it someone, it was a college thing, and the winner got five grand, which I was like, that’s insane. So I won it and I was able to record my first album with that, the first one that’s came out publicly. And then I also auditioned at that time for American Idol. You might find that on the internet. I try to erase it from everything. I ended up turned it down. It is a long story that I don’t really want to go too deep into.

There was another opportunity happening at the same time, and there was all sorts of crazy legal stuff, but I was able to turn down that because it’s a really bad deal. And I was hip to that because of the music business program. I went to my professor, I said, here’s the contract. I got the golden ticket. Here’s the contract they’re giving me. He set me up with this amazing lawyer who pro bono was helping me. I’m 18, you’re a kid. I don’t know anything. But they’re like, sign this. And it’s like, if you sign it, if you win all your albums for the next six albums are theirs. And just insane stuff. And turned that down. And it had this other opportunity that was essentially a totally different thing. That was a record deal coming to me, found me on through YouTube or something. And a similar situation happened where that was a really bad deal, and me and some of the other guys involved were pushing on it.

And finally they were just fed up with us. They were like, we’re not going to deal with these kids that want creative control. No, that is not what we do. And they’re like, all right, get lost. And that all happened. I graduated a semester early in the summer, so that all happened between November and February. And they told me I needed to put my album out as soon as I could in order to still be viable for this deal potentially. So I put my album out early February that year, and then right after that, everything fell apart and they’re like, we’re not going to deal with this deal. So I found myself just graduated college, had no plan. I was waiting to see what this was going to happen. Hadn’t set up a tour or anything for my album. And I still had a semester of living in the college house I was living in with some buddies, which is thankfully cheap rent. So that was the moment that I had to just jump in, okay, I got to pay my bills. I actually started doing some house shows. I’d reach out to buddies in different colleges

And just drive up there, play for whatever. And just for the first in college and beyond, for the first, oh, I don’t know, two or three years, it was just me reaching out to hundreds of venues on my own. Just email, email, email, email. Get rejected. No response.

Marlin Miller:

They’ve never heard of you. Yeah, why would they? They’ve never heard of you.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah. They’re like, who’s this guy? I probably came across as unexperienced and young. It’s probably was obvious the way I was emailing. And some small percent would give you a chance in a small venue or a coffee shop or something. And I would just do that as much as possible. I also got plugged in with some guys in Atlanta that were doing a wedding band stuff. So I found something like, I can make a little more money doing that some weekends. And that was all I did for, I mean, I don’t think I got an actual booking agent until probably 2019 maybe. So just so DIY, and just doing anything I could to get the more people out of the show and all the while still trying to record records and self-fund records, and you got to write the songs and find the time to do that, which is the thing I love the most that I’ll do all day. I’ll just sit around writing songs, but to try to make money. And then through all that time, I met my wife. We got married. We were trying to figure out just again, how to live.

We were living in a rough part of Atlanta at that point because we couldn’t afford anything. And then COVID hit. And again, this whole time, my career is slowly growing, but I’m still just trying to get by month to month. And I put this record out in, I think February of 2020, a record graveyard flower, which was actually very poignant for the time about reconnecting to nature and to each other and our mortality. And then we have this crazy chaotic moment and people are secluded. And it was very interesting.

Marlin Miller:

It’s a morbid time, and you’re talking about the heart of it,

Sam Burchfield:

And that was just happened that way. Yeah, I think the year before that, I remember talking to my wife about what the next album, what I wanted to do, and she was helping me kind of think about it and think, what is really important to you? What are you really passionate about that’s worth taking all this effort? And I thought about it really deep, really, really hard, and came to that conclusion of just, well, I’ve always felt so connected to nature, and I’m so inspired by nature and I find the divine in nature. Then this idea of our disconnect from nature is our disconnect from ourselves and from divinity and just how it’s all connected. And I mean, she really helped me really artistically go into that. And that was also funny enough, that was the first record from when I put out records that I went back to just recording stuff in my room. Really. It’s funny that it became my most successful record. I thought I needed to go to these studios and spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a producer or go to this place and have a big band. And this one was me and one of my good buddies, Zach Wells, the first half was just in his apartment with my little, something like this, just a little thing.

And the second half of the record was just back in my house in Atlanta. And so anyways, I put that out, I feel good about it, and we’re getting ready to go on tour. We jump in the van and we’re going out the coast in New York and starting to tour down. And this is early March of 2020, if you remember. We’re in the middle of that. And just the plugs getting pulled and even, I mean, people on the tour getting sick. It’s like, oh, this, we’re hearing all these rumors of what’s going on, and then you’re just like, south by Southwest is canceled. And that’s the moment where, oh, this is something. So our tour got canceled in the middle of it, drove home, and then everyone, that experience was its own thing, just being isolated. But it did help me, I think, wean myself off of playing those wedding band cover gigs that paid well. I think it forced me to take the space to realize I got to stop doing that. It’s keeping me from the thing I love, even though it’s better money, I need to pursue this passion and force myself to do it in a way that is financially more

Successful. So yeah, that’s a fool history we’re going in. Well,

Marlin Miller:

Let me go back to something that you said. You of course remember when Oliver Anthony exploded onto the scene.

Sam Burchfield:

Sure, yeah.

Marlin Miller:

What I find unbelievable about that guy is so he records the record on an iPhone. Oh, yeah. Drops it onto YouTube and it goes to number one on every chart there is. And I think it was Rogan that told the story. I’m sure you heard it. Oh, yeah. I was to that one where he said he turned down seven or 8 million contract in order to keep his creative, all of the creative freedom. And my hat went in my hand just like that, because I thought 10 bucks says I’d sign on the dotted line in two seconds. You would. Well,

Sam Burchfield:

It’s like if you notice, I

Marlin Miller:

Mean, the temptation would

Sam Burchfield:

Be real. Temptation would be real. The temptation would be massive. But if you think about it just logically, and that was, it’s basically I relate to that in the sense of you have to at some point, are you betting on yourself? And that was the conversation I had in those early days was, okay, if you don’t think you’re going to be able to keep going and do well, then yeah, sign a deal with someone that’s going to give you some money. You’re going to prop you up or whatever. If you believe in yourself truly, and you’re persistent and you work hard, then bet on yourself.

Again, I don’t feel like I’ve had a big break. I mean, I call myself a middle class musician where there’s people that are hardcore fans and come out of shows and share the stories, but I’m just trying to, I’m scraping by paying a mortgage. I mean, I’m blessed to even have house me looking back to me as just out of college, dude would be like, holy crap, you’re doing it. You have a house and a family and you’re still doing, I mean, so I do want to just acknowledge doing what you love. I am very blessed there. This, it wasn’t like an Oliver Anthony like, boom, then it happened. But I do look back and the fact that I maintained my creative ownership of my songs and didn’t sell that away is the only reason I’m still able to do this. Because over time, as Spotify developed and became a thing,

And people have all sorts of opinions about it, but as that became a thing, it was the first time I started to see passive income because of the way the streaming model is set up. And at first it was very little. It’d be like, oh, 500 bucks this month or this. But it grew to the point, and my song lies to the honeybees just kind of kept growing. And again, wasn’t a reason. There wasn’t a viral video. It just a slow, I think the way I like to think about songs and music and not to discount luck and fortune, I mean the Oliver Anthony thing, incredible artist, incredibly potent song, but timing, even with it all it, it’s lightning strike. That stuff doesn’t happen and you’re happy for it. But one of the ways I’ve thought about as a writer, as an artist is you think about things that are just inherently good and over time, I do think they are appreciated. I think about Chick-fil-A sandwich, think about an iPhone. I mean, you don’t really have to market those things that much. You just word of mouth. People are, Hey, this thing works really well. It’s great. And so I think about it with music and with these songs. I just try to write a better song every time I write a song. And I think the thing I have learned that I haven’t always done well is to trust myself and my instincts.

And the more I do that, the more it seems to resonate with people, the more I’m honest and authentic. And eventually you do that enough, something’s going to come back around. And so for that song to do that and that I trusted in myself and didn’t give up my creative ownership, my equity in myself, that’s the only reason that I can do this. Now I make enough from that where I’m paying my mortgage, I’m taking care of things from this, just make royalty money,

Marlin Miller:

Which then gives you time to do what you’re best at. Exactly. And you literally get that locomotion or the locomotive going, yeah, I mean, oh man, A wise mentor of mine said, once you get the big old train a rolling, you’ve got something moving. But to get it going is what stops most people because it’s work. It is hard, and it’s funny, it’s hard. And like you said tonight at the show, there’s always a sacrifice

Sam Burchfield:

In the

Marlin Miller:

Years of, I can relate with all of this, and it’s not easy. And a lot of people just simply are not willing to pay the sacrifice,

Sam Burchfield:

Pay the cost, and it’s easy to see even people that are technically overnight successes like a Anthony, well, it’s easy to say that, but you don’t see the decade of him writing songs and him playing guitar and him

Marlin Miller:

And barely making it.

Sam Burchfield:

And even just pursuing, he’s clearly pursuing deep thinking and truths and wrestling with things. And Chris Stapleton, I mean, everybody knows, wow, he just kind of popped out of nowhere. But he was doing it for 15 years. And so it’s funny. It’s just funny how that is. I think that’s all across the board, all industries, all walks of life. It’s just interesting in music because it’s inherently this public figure type thing.

Marlin Miller:

So let’s talk about how the music business has changed. So I mean, obviously AI will get there because I mean, AI is just this hurricane of everything all rolled into one. But let’s go back. You are young, you’re 33, soon to be 34 when you were 18. So let me tell you a story. I got a buddy who he and his wife were offered a pretty serious deal down in Nashville, and he said, Marlon, he said, my wife and I prayed about it, and we turned it down and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t just pass over that. Tell me why. And he said, we’d been around long enough. He said, we saw, and I’m trying to quote it, he said, we saw the CD underbelly of the music business, and he said, it scared us and we didn’t want to go any further. And they literally turned around and walked the other way. What is it like today compared to 15 years ago?

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah, well, again, it’s hard for me to have as much perspective on 15 years ago, I was just an outsider. I was just an indie outside dude doing your own thing, just rogue. I did interact. I interacted with some insanely high level people during some of those deals and negotiations. And I will say they did not come across as good people. I mean, clearly they were there to make money. They weren’t focused on what the message is or what the art is. It was like you’re in a factory that makes songs that people that are catchy that people want to hear.

That was the impression from those people. And I think that’s how a lot of the big industry stuff, big country, big Christian music too, CM music, we’ve got a formula, we’ve got a cookie cutter thing. We can pump this and we’ll make money off of it. Even if you’re a church, people will just be like, well, this can be our little label as a church, and we’ll do this and it’ll go on Christian radio. I mean, so I saw that. But when I was starting out and that music business program, I remember our professor coming in when Spotify just became a thing. And so it was really beneficial in that regard to have him give me his experience of what the industry was and where it was going was so useful. And really what was happening, which I think you’re seeing in all sorts of different industries, is taking power away from a few big industry corporate heads, the gatekeepers of the industry and shifting it where if you had before a financial curve of where the money goes, you had all the money for a few artists at the top, whether it’s country, pop, a few rock artists, the big names for most of history, that’s how music was.

You had the big names, and then a steep curve of you’re not going to get very many people that are just a guy with a guitar who can make a living doing that. So what Spotify did, and the idea of streaming, which still has its flaws, but what it did was level that out a little bit. I think the internet essentially leveled that out a little bit in the same way that it allowed just anybody that works hard to open up a coffee shop or to have a blog or write reviews for something. I mean, even plain values, the internet, that so much more growth than if we’re 50 years ago and you got to go find someone to distribute your paper magazine. I mean, that’s how music was, is you had to find someone who would get the word out and distribute your music, either radio or physical vinyl where no one would hear it at all. And now you’re Oliver Anthony. You post a video on your phone and it’s good and resonates with people, they can instantly just boop, it’s everywhere. And Spotify is a way to monetize that in the same way that YouTube is a way to monetize that. And videos not a perfect way, but better than you have to go to a label executive

And they will sell your records and give you a cut.

Marlin Miller:

So let’s pause there for a second. I have a Spotify account of course, and I enjoy it, but I’ve never thought of Spotify being for you what a substack is for a writer or a Patreon is for a videographer guy, the content creator. I’ve never seen that. I’ve never equated the two.

Sam Burchfield:

Well, I mean, this is a hot take for a lot of people because a lot of people, people are anti Spotify right now. Why? Maybe that’s a dumb question. Don’t, well, people obsess over the per stream payout. They’re like, you listen to my song and I’m getting 0.01 cents. That’s ridiculous. You listen to my song a million times and I’m getting $10, whatever it is, right? It’s like, okay, well, valid point, but let me make a case for it before that. If someone in the digital realm before that, if someone, let’s take iTunes world, someone buys your song, you get a dollar, that’s a lot for them to buy your song, you get a dollar. You maybe keep 67 cents off of that. Realistically, how that model worked,

Let’s say they are a super fan now. They buy your song and that one song, they listen to it every day because they’re obsessed. They love that song so much. They listen to it every day. You still only make one time 67 cents if they listen to it every day of their life. You’re making more over time. But more beneficial than that even is the social element of Spotify, the algorithm, which that’s I think where you get into some ai is the algorithm fair? Is the algorithm. I think a lot of people’s frustration is this is the algorithm doesn’t seem to allow for someone to just pop into Spotify and have lots of listeners. I don’t think it rewards that kind of novelty. I think it rewards consistency and longevity and I don’t know how it works, but the point being is that person listens to their song every day. Spotify starts to see that, or even just them telling their friends, and you start to have this little nodes of like, oh, now it’s sharing that song to their friend because it’s a smart thing. It wants its listeners to be happy and find new music that they love. So if something’s obsessed with a song, it’s going to share that compounds, and that’s what’s happened with some of my music.

I witnessed it happen. And the iTunes thing, and I remember a little bit early on with the iTunes thing, it was like, you have an album come out and people buy the songs. You might get, I made a thousand dollars this month because I sold all these records, and then the rest of the year it’s nothing. No one’s just actively going to buy music except maybe when it comes out. So yeah, I mean ultimately it’s been beneficial to me. So I’m biased and I’m pro Spotify right now, but I think they have all sorts of statistics of how it’s more people are making more money than ever before in the industry. And it might be like you got however many thousands of artists that are making more than $10,000 a year off of Spotify, and that’s impactful compared to the iTunes model or having to go through a record label.

Marlin Miller:

Well, it allows more to create more music. I mean, effectively, that’s what Substack has done in the writing world where they’re pulling some of the best writers out of a cubicle from the New York Times, and those guys are now, instead of making 80,000 a year sitting, writing for them for the times, they can take their audience to Substack and they can grow it into a lot more.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah, the idea is it’s just more scalable than other models, and I think what you’re always going to have is there’s always going to be people frustrated with the current system if it’s not working for them.

Marlin Miller:

Doesn’t that come back to what you said, write a better song?

Sam Burchfield:

I mean, that’s the harsh thing, but I mean, this is the thing. There’s almost, like you said it, there’s too many good songs now. There’s an infinite amount of good music and good songs out there to be discovered. I don’t think you could listen to it in 20 lifetimes. So at the end of the day, you just have to create the art that you want to create that resonates with you. Try really hard to find your audience that loves that and then try really hard to grow it. I think if people expect any of these services to be an instant hit, like a TikTok viral video, that’s not how it works. I think it’s because there’s so much, it’s probably harder to find your audience. And I would say probably part of the reason I have had success is because I was putting stuff on Spotify super early and I was releasing records every year. If I could putting music out, I was in on it early and just consistent of releasing music. So if I had a hundred fans from doing my shows that really liked a song and they kind of kept doing it, it was able to grow.

But yeah, I just think it’s, regardless of what the model is, you got to work hard and you got to find a way to make it work if you’re going to make it work, complaining about it and band, just people being like, we’re protesting Spotify. It’s not fair. Or because it’s allowing people, I mean, people got mad that Joe Rogan had a deal. Essentially it should be a free speech platform, whether it’s podcasts or music, and you put anything you want up there and if human beings want to consume it and it, then great. And that will even to a fraction go back to the people that created it. I think where it’s getting a little weird is labels, once it has grown, they are starting to put their claws in it and they’re trying to have a hold on the big playlists and who gets on it, and it’s turned into a little bit of that gatekeeper game of the right people. Maybe you’ll get a song on this playlist or this, and then the AI thing, which is very new on in the Spotify realm. There are bands that are, as far as everyone could tell, AI bands with millions of plays and listeners. There’s speculation that I don’t, Spotify has denied this, but there’s speculation that Spotify created those AI bands. So it’s like you’re going to create something that you profit off of multiple ways, multiple ways, multiple ways. They’ve denied that, but I mean, man,

Marlin Miller:

That’s

Sam Burchfield:

Great.

Marlin Miller:

Okay, before we jump into the AI thing, and I do want to get there. Tell me about your folks. Is your mom, your dad, are they super creative? Because it seems to me you have two sisters.

Sam Burchfield:

Yep. Two older sisters.

Marlin Miller:

Two older sisters. No brothers.

Sam Burchfield:

No brothers.

Marlin Miller:

It seems to me that you grew up in a family where every ounce of creativity was encouraged and just said, Sam, just go. Just do, just be.

Sam Burchfield:

I think so my dad is 100% engineer brain, just not musical

Marlin Miller:

High detail.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah, I mean nuclear engineer. So he had to be just like the man is a genius, honestly. He’s brilliant, but not in the creative realm. Loves music. I mean, always just, he’ll light up. Listen to a good Johnny Cash song or Willie Nelson song. My mom, I didn’t realize how creative she was growing up, but she’s now an author later in life decided to start writing books. She is an incredibly creative, and I think thinking about that, I was talking about the idea of play just as a kid. I think she helped cultivate that in us just seeing her interact with my kids. It’s like, oh, it, wow. Yeah, mom is really creative. Wow, she’s in it. So it wasn’t like they were pushing creativity. They let us do what we wanted. My dad’s big thing was, work hard, do your best, whatever you’re going to do.

So I think they were excited that I had just found something that I was mean. I was working my butt off. I was putting in the hours, and so they were all about that, and I think they were a little hesitant about what was going to happen after high school and going to school, getting a degree. I think they wanted me to have that as a backup plan or whatever, but I think once they realized that I was just in it, they didn’t push hard on me to not do music, which I appreciated. I think I was very blessed. My parents are awesome. They’ve been super supportive, and they also, again, they stepped back when they needed to. They didn’t help me with music. They weren’t trying to micro, I see that with parents sometimes with who have kids that are doing music. They want to be the roadies that, oh, we’re going to get you this gear and we’re going to help. Too much help. I really had to, I mean, they did help. I wanted a guitar for my birthday, and there were moments where they’re like, if you’re really passionate about this and you meet us here, we’ll meet you here and you need this gear or whatever. But it was always like, you’re doing it on your own way. So I was super appreciative of that.

Marlin Miller:

This podcast is sponsored by my friends at Azure Standard. A while back, I had a chance to sit down with the founder, David Stelzer, right here at the table, and we had a great conversation. I love the Azure story. They started out as farmers back in the seventies, and I think in 1987, they began a nationwide food distribution company. And guys, they are non GMO organic. They do it right. They do it so well, and you can get a truck to drop food right in your town. Check ’em ou*@***********rd.com and tell ’em Marlin and Plain values sent you. Let’s jump into ai. Okay? Yeah.

Okay. Let me bring you a little bit of context for why I really care and why I want to talk about it. I think in the publishing world, dude, I think our Napster moment is years gone by. I think that moment happened years ago. What concerns me about the future of where I think we all see the AI could go as far as just simply sucking the creativity out of everything is exactly what happened here tonight. There’s something so real and something so genuine and authentic. When you get a bunch of butts in chairs and you are there and you’re playing and you’re there and you get to tell the stories behind the songs, and it’s this awesome interaction. There were families there that were grieving the loss of a child, and you played a role in that. Obviously it’s a slow, painful healing process, but you played a role. You gave them a bit of a reprieve tonight, and I know that they absolutely loved it because they told me. They told me they had an absolute blast. How do you see ai? So, okay, I’m sorry. I’m going to back up. Will this ever end? Will this evening ever end?

Sam Burchfield:

No, I think it’s the most human thing we can do is gathering, sharing stories. I mean, story is the basis of everything. Talking from have religious audience, talking from the gospel, the story, the word, I mean, the fact that speaking something is what creates the idea that your life lived out is a story. The life of Christ is the gospel story. So that’s what I mean when we gather, when we speak our actual voices resonating and speaking and putting words together. It’s creation and being, I know we’ll have people listening to this who are not in their room with us, and that’s this cool version of technology that allows for that to happen, and that is great, but I don’t think anything would replace being our physical presence in a space together and sharing story, never going to go away. I mean, some people, if you look at some of these like Wally, my kid likes Wally, you look at stuff like that, the movie where the humans end up being crazy overweight in these floating chairs with just the screens.

I mean, that’s crazy accurate how close we’re getting. So I think we’re at this crossroads, and maybe it’s not a crossroads where you can only go down one road, but I think there’s these two combating things, and I don’t even want to say they’re good and evil or they’re, it would be easy to be like AI is evil going to, I don’t know that. It just is something, and I think it’s helping us learn and grow because of how, in the same way that our iPhone, there’s a lot of good things that come from it, but just the fact that it’s there helps us learn and grow because we want to push away from it. If that wasn’t this thing to struggle with, I don’t know that we would be trying so hard to run the other way. And I think what’s happening now is you have, I mean in the past 10, 15 years, there’s been such a movement and plain values is embodying this from the copy of that I got to read, there’s this push for locality in our food, in our education systems, in our communities.

I mean, even on a government level, there’s this like, oh, we got to take care of our own. We got to try to take care of these little communities that we can, the push towards family. But this is happening while there’s the exact opposite push happening too. The push for individualism away from families, push towards all this technology, you don’t know where it’s going to go. But I do think I know where I want to go. I know what I am drawn towards. That’s what I mean. I know what I’m drawn towards, and it feels like that is what humanity is being drawn towards, and it’s hopeful. I don’t think people should think about AI in this terminator fear-based thing. It just is what it is, and it’s going to be what it is. I think the thing to pursue is hope in goodness and beauty and truth, and pursuing that in arts, in the food, in the communities, in our families.

That’s all you can do. And then if AI can serve that great, I have used it before to, honestly, I’ve used it for medical things like, Hey, chat, GBT or whatever, I’m dealing with this thing. It’s just Googling right now. It’s just a way to do that, and there’s going to be people that use it in insane ways. There’s people that are going to make bands and put ’em out on Spotify, and you’re going to listen to ’em and not know they’re not real, but you’re not going to be able to see ’em at a concert. You’re not going to be able to hear their story. They don’t have a story. I think that’s the thing about ai, the difference is it doesn’t have a story. It’s in the same way that your phone doesn’t have a story or your toaster doesn’t have a story. I mean, I know they’re intelligent and they’re going to probably have walking around robots. I mean, honestly, they’re going to have, it’s crazy to think in my lifetime. Yeah, they do already, but it’s going to be this common thing where you’ve got seven iPhone, you just have a robot butler over there that’s waiting on, and I’m not going to be the guy to have that, but someone’s going to have that. And you’re like, okay, alright. But there’s not a story there. I mean, that’s such a basic way to

Marlin Miller:

Just

Sam Burchfield:

Hone in on it.

Marlin Miller:

It’s interesting because I’ve got friends who will go all in. They’re just all in. I love it. This is great. Then I’ve got other friends and probably if I’m just being real, I tend to be more of the side where I’m like, I’m just not going to touch it.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

I feel that. I just don’t like, it makes me uncomfortable, but I also realize that there’s a balance between being a total utter like a Luddite, and you say, well, I’m going to reject all things technology because that’s not reality. That’s

Sam Burchfield:

Reality. There’s this, yeah, I think we all talk and muse about, well, we could just go back to the stone. It thinks would be better if we just, I mean a version of that where people are really going off grid, off grid homesteading and limit technology or get one of a dumber phone.

There’s versions of that, but cat’s out of the bag now, and I think we just have to lean into our humanness and I don’t know. I know for myself personally, I, I struggle with the idea that I hate being on my phone, but I rely on it to do my job, to get the word out to people. I think I daydream about a day when I have enough Spotify numbers that I can just burn my phone and he’s like, all right, we don’t have to worry about promoting things as much anymore or whatever, but I can’t do that and I have to find this way to balance it, which humans have always had to find a way to balance technology and nature.

Marlin Miller:

Well, technology of the old was just different. It was just different.

Sam Burchfield:

It was just different. I mean, my wife always all about, she is on the side of excitement about AI and doesn’t think it’s going to take away our creativity, but thinks, and I actually agree with this to a degree, AI right now kind of does a lot of dumb tasks that people don’t want to do. If you think about it, I think AI is going to be really good at making crappy pop music. I mean, think about it. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be great in making dumb little posters that it is just like the stuff that’s the fast fashion type stuff, the stuff that’s just the, but the thing that it will probably someday be able to do but not do very well, and it’ll be very difficult for it to create something that has emotion and story and that is continually pushing to a new place because it’s inherently pulling off of things that are already created.

Marlin Miller:

It’s not doing anything new

Sam Burchfield:

Just

Marlin Miller:

Like

Sam Burchfield:

You

Marlin Miller:

As a kid. Well, right? I mean,

Sam Burchfield:

I guess people, AI professionals will be like, yes, it is doing something new. But it is, as I understand it, it’s able to, you say, Hey, create a da Vinci painting of my dog. It’s going to go look at all the DaVinci paintings and gather all that data and look at all the dog paintings. Then it’s like, we can do that, but it’s not this thing that can create from nothingness in the way that the human brain can or the human body for that matter. You think about a baby mean, just a miracle of life. These things that, I think what it is is it’s made a lot of us appreciate our humanness in a way, and so that I’m like, that’s a blessing. It’s a blessing that AI has appeared now to force us to change a little bit.

Marlin Miller:

And I would want to add really quickly, I think AI is rekindling our desire to connect it is making us sit down and say, I miss talking to my friend, literally. And that’s where it is. That’s where life is in the relationship and meeting a new friend. Do you know I read a stat, this is a couple years ago, it’s probably worse than what I’m about to share. Oh, god. But I read a stat that most people, the average guy in America, this at that time, literally made a new friend every five years. It was something unbelievable, and I’m probably off of my details, but it was unbelievably bad. It was horrifically somber. Most people don’t make a friend in a year, and that is beyond me, man. I mean, that’s got to be hell. It just has to be, not that they don’t have friends and all that, but to not make a new friend. Are you nuts?

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah. Five years is

Marlin Miller:

My goodness, my goodness. I think,

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah. I mean, we’re just so isolated and so alone. Lonely. Yeah, everything. Sorry. Yeah, no, really, it gets really dark and depressing pretty quickly. But again, I do lean into the hope of things, and that’s one of the beautiful things about what I do. Getting to put on concerts and be so I get to be in these moments of connection more than a lot of people probably when I think about it, and it seems like more so than ever before of my touring life, people are stricken with emotion really at concerts. I think because we’re so isolated, so in our virtual phone worlds and all that our souls are, it’s like this recognition that something really visceral and honest is happening

Marlin Miller:

And that heart is missing. They get there and they’re almost overwhelmed with what they’ve been missing. That’s amazing.

Sam Burchfield:

I think so you can tie that to the decline of, I think churches in that too. I mean, it’s a similar thing. You’re gathering, you’re searching for truth, which I think good music, good art is doing that. It’s searching for truth and you’re in this physical space of people, a vulnerableness to it. I don’t know. I think they’re sort of tied together. There’s sort of this very similar parallel thing that happens, and I think for people that are very absent from that or just don’t have that community and are able to go to a concert, it is this, there’s a spiritual element to it. There’s this real feeling of transcendence, bumping into it. And it’s interesting because I guess it’s like, and I have some songs sort of about this, that there can be worship and there can be interaction with the divine, obviously outside of the building of the church, which I think most people would agree to, that the church is not the building. The church is the people. The Holy Spirit is something that moves between us and is alive in people and space. So yeah, it’s just interesting. I think that that is so empty for a lot of us and that even something like going to a little concert, even if it’s not singing about God necessarily, they’re singing about their humanity. I had a hard day. I mean, those are the moments, those vulnerable moments where we resonate, where we feel seen and where we see each other.

Marlin Miller:

Do you think the iPhone, I’m just trying to process through exactly what you said. The iPhone in a way seems to be a way, which I’m not on social media at all. I’m not anywhere, bless you. I’m not. I just don’t want to do it, but I have a lot of friends who are on it all the time, and what I see, what I sense is this nonstop comparing to everybody around all the time, and guess what? They’re never going to measure up. It will always be beautiful or someplace else. And it seems like if you’re constantly looking at this, you’re never going to be okay with yourself ever. and the reality is, I’m as messed up as they come. You’re as messed up as they come, and that’s okay. We’re all screwed up, we’re all sinful, we’re all, and that’s all right. He loves us anyway. But if you’re looking at the wrong thing, it just becomes really hard to find joy. And then you go to a place where there is joy and I mean, I can kind of understand what you’re saying, that people are really overcome at times with emotion.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah, it’s

Marlin Miller:

Amazing.

Sam Burchfield:

Yeah, it’s interesting with the phone thing, if you think about it, it is, you’re looking at something that’s not looking at you. That’s a weird thing. Even I heard a good quote one time in regards to nature, letting nature witness you, which is essentially letting God witness you, accepting that you are beautiful enough for the mountain itself to gaze upon. You got himself to gaze upon you and be like, wow, that’s beautiful. We look at nature, we look outward, and we’re at that beautiful tree. Look at that river, look at that. Look at this other person even,

And we don’t allow ourselves, which is an act of vulnerability, allow ourselves to be witnessed, to be, I mean, that’s really accepting God’s love and grace. That is the feeling of that, to accept yourself to be totally witnessed and acknowledged as beautiful. And so then the irony of looking at this black box where you might see a beautiful mountain on there, you might see a beautiful human being. You might see, even hear a beautiful, some words like something inspiring, but you are not allowing yourself to be seen. It’s not looking back at you, even when you, I’m going to post a video, so I’m going to take a video of myself. Then you’re just looking at yourself. Sure, later on, maybe someone will see that, and there’s this fake version of that. There’s a fake version of being seen. You’re not being seen in actuality. It’s a concocted version of you. It’s what you think looks the best in the best light or what you think you want to say, but having a real conversation or standing in front of a mountain or a lake, that’s just where you’re, there. It is you and you have to accept yourself.

Marlin Miller:

You said upstairs earlier that you want to talk about the hard things. Do you have a favorite story of one of those moments at a show where you bear part of your soul and something comes back around and

Sam Burchfield:

It happens a lot? Honestly, really, it’s like the beautiful thing of, wow, holy Spirit or synchronicity, whatever you want to call it. Something that for myself, just an interesting moment that, so I have a cyst on my neck that I discovered a couple years ago, a year and a half ago, and I was sort of avoiding it, didn’t want to acknowledge what it could be for anyone that has health, so I think that’s this thing where I’ll just not pay attention to it and it won’t be there. It’ll go away.

Yeah, it wasn’t going away, and my wife kind of finally was like, you need to see somebody. I’m worried. And I was on the inside very worried, and so I finally went, got an ultrasound. Well, we don’t know really what it could be. Here’s some things it could be, and you need to get an MRI. So I get the MRI the same day I get the MRI have to leave for tour, just lined up. The only day they could see me was like, all right, well then I jump in the van and drive off through Texas, I think going up through Colorado and I don’t know the results and honestly, I have a record that I’m putting out this fall that in most of the songs on there I was wrestling with. I was trying to walk through that potential pain essentially. I was trying to face, I was trying to face death, the fear and everything that goes with it.

I was trying to, at some point I, through my songs I was writing and through just me talking to people, I was running from it for a long time. Then I finally, when I did the MR MRI and I’m like, okay, I just have to prepare for this to be cancer, for this to be whatever, and just stare it and look at it. Just acknowledge that my body is going to wither away. Just these things we ultimately have to face and reckon with. And so I was doing that and then, I mean luckily it wasn’t cancer. I got the results. It’s a hypoglossal duct cyst. It’s still something that I’m trying to figure out without having to cut my neck open. Obviously kind of an important part of my body from what I do, but I lost my voice right after that. MRI probably because of the MR, I lost my voice, got sick.

We’re on the road. I’m having to sing everything. I’m singing down in the Johnny Cash to get through the shows. I mean, it’s awful. I get to Denver and I just tell people, guys, this morning, I wasn’t sure if I had cancer in my throat, and I am so blessed to have found out that it is not cancer, but a lot of people don’t find that out. A lot of people don’t have that end up that way, and so I was just open about it and the crazy thing that it worked through. I mean, I know people there were impacted by that. I don’t always hear stories of how or why, but then a crazy thing happened where I, this text from a person I knew from years back who happened to be at the show, I didn’t see this person say, Hey, talking about that thing on stage, I’m a functional medicine doctor and I will just for free, give you some care about this.

We can approach this from a holistic thing. I know you’re a musician. I don’t have a lot of money to throw at this health problem. And so for the, I mean literally just had a Zoom call with her last week and she’s been just this incredible blessing of helping me work through, not just that, but just general health, just figuring out deficiencies and what supplements and just taking care of my body when I’m on the road and it’s like, man, I’m not expecting when I’m vulnerable on stage, I’m not expecting that to come back around like that. And it was this moment of like, wow, that’s such this unexpected blessing. And if I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable, essentially, I wasn’t explicitly saying, I have a need for someone with healthcare help, but I was by being vulnerable, voicing a need. And if you don’t voice a need, you don’t ask. You can never have that answered, but man, yeah, honestly, sometimes I get messages from people and it’s almost like too much to handle being not, it’s a stranger who is sharing something intense and I try to really give, even if I’m at a show talking at the merch table, I try to give everyone all the time and attention I can. If they want to talk about something heavy, I want to be present. It’s hard with the internet that happened. One other story around just vulnerability and honestly just obviously God working, not me, not me, was

I had someone, I had a fan reach out and say their dad had a brain tumor and was sick and just saying like, Hey, he really likes your music. Could you send a video of you playing a song? And I do, and around that time I had just kind of recorded this, a song my wife wrote and had already put out, but it’s just so beautiful. I was like, I want to record this. It’s called All Is Well, the chorus is All is well, all is fine. Be gentle, be kind. And I just like, Hey, here’s this song. I just recorded this from wife and I just want to send this to you. I know that this seems like a thing and I just felt it was on my heart to just send this to you. And she’s like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.

She was very grateful and then she had reached out to me a few weeks later. She let me know that her father had passed away, but she sent me these videos of him and the family listening to this song and just mourning as he’s on his deathbed and this just insane moment of obviously that’s not about me, it’s not about the song. It’s like, what a blessing and thinking about the technology thing, this is where we get to, let’s not just paint it all bad because there are things and blessings and ways that God will work through these things that we can’t even comprehend. I mean, to be able to have music from anywhere in the world at any time in these precious moments, to be able to talk to a loved one on the phone when you’re so far to be able to see, I mean for me being able to see my kids when I’m on the road and be able to FaceTime my kids and see them, just that there’s these blessings and these ways that technology is used for good and that we should just push for that and not get drowned in the fear of why it’s like the apocalypse.

AI is the devil and it’s going to, I mean, you can go down that path and I’m not trying to judge anyone that’s going down that path. I’m just saying that it’s always, always better to lean into hope and beauty and truth. That’s the gospel. That’s the way we should push forward. That is the way, and I think that’s what we have to do right now. It is crazy. It’s crazy and getting a lot worse,

Marlin Miller:

Just getting crazier. Yeah, I agree. Last question. Okay. How can we pray for you and your family?

Sam Burchfield:

Oh man. Yeah. I mentioned this in the show. I won’t go too much about it, but obviously it’s really hard for me traveling. I would ask for discernment around where the sacrifice is for me as a father because it’s really hard to be gone. And I’ve always said, I’ve said this from

Very early on, I would drop music in a second if I needed to. I’m not letting this be a thing that’s like I’ve seen too many older people that have thrown themselves at something and it’s wrecked their personal lives. That’s not it. I do feel called to write songs and I do feel very used in a good way often when I’m at my best in moments like tonight where I know that there’s important things happening for people’s spirits, but man, it’s hard to be gone and it’s hard for my wife, praying for her, praying for, she deals with some anxiety and some just, everybody I think nowadays deals with that. And I think that’s just this thing we’re having to figure out and walk through as a family, just like every father, every family out there. How do you balance time with your kids and time working where you have to be away revision for the future, but also just living in the present moment? It’s the plight of man, I guess. Like the toil. Yeah, that would be it. Discernment and just health. Yeah, I feel very blessed. We have family close by and just the fact that we have a home,

Like wow, it is wild that we have a home and I’m playing music and it’s crazy. So I feel very blessed.

Marlin Miller:

That’s cool. I hope you know how much I shared parts of our kids’ story with you earlier and there was a little bit of me that felt bad for you tonight when you were playing a few of the songs and our kids were jumping around. That’s great. It was wonderful. That was great. But yeah, I was hoping that it wasn’t too much or anything, but thank you. You have no idea how much they enjoy music, how much they enjoy your music specifically. Dude, they are so fired up. They’re so fired up. It was

Sam Burchfield:

Great. I love that. It was great. Thank you for sharing that. It’s a blessing. I don’t take you lightly.

Marlin Miller:

Thanks, man. Thank you. It’s fantastic. This episode of the Plain Values Podcast is sponsored by my friends at Kentucky Lumber. When Derek from Kentucky Lumber and I first talked, one of the first things that we talked about was his story of their family and their business and how that all came to be. And what I found really quickly was massive similarities in their family stories and Lisa and I, our family story from the adoptions to the business side of things. It really comes down to Derek and his wife and Lisa and I basically saying the exact same thing where we basically said, Lord, if you want us to adopt and foster children, you’re going to have to bring us a bigger house and a bigger income. And that’s exactly what happened in Derek’s case. Two weeks later, a guy approached him about buying his business and his home. In our case it was a little different a couple years later, but he provided everything that both of our families needed to live out the calling that he had put on our families to care for the children that he was going to bring us. And I adore that.

Having the faith to step out and say, if you want us to do this, you got to provide the way. There’s something so great where you give. Not that we don’t give the Lord the opportunity to do something, but I think is especially wonderful when you have the attitude that you have to do this in a way that I can’t take any of the credit. It is literally so cool and so absurd in a way that only you can get the glory. And I just love that. I love Derrick and his family. They are the kind of people that I want to do business with. And I have a feeling you’re going to find the same thing. You can find th**@***********rs.com. So hold my hat in his book, Rembrandt is in the Wind, Russ Ramsey says that the Bible is the story of the God of the universe telling his people to care for the sojourner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow, and it’s the story of his people struggling to find the humility to carry out that holy calling guys. That is what plain values is all about. If you got anything out of this podcast, you will probably love plain values in print. You can go to plain values.com to learn more and check it out. Please like, subscribe and leave us a review. Guys. Love y’all. Thanks so much.