The story of the Louisville-native Sam Varga’s journey to becoming a musician begins with an influence that a lot of millennials can find relatable. “It was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, Alcatraz level, and you drop in and you just hear, [Mimics the bassline to AC/DC’s “T.N.T.”] Oi! Oi!,” Sam tells Post-Burnout of how he got into music.

 “And that was the first time I ever heard something like that, like this riff-driven rock, and I think, from hearing that, two or three months later, I saw Freaky Friday, and I was like, ‘Guitar. That’s how you play “T.N.T.” Lindsay Lohan showing me the way. I’m off to the races. I want a guitar.’”

Sam began listening more intently, dedicating his time to learning the instrument, writing, and playing in bands. The music he now creates incorporates a medley of interests from his childhood, including pop punk, emo, country, and hard rock, with Sam admitting that he no longer knows what the hell to label it.

“It’s interesting, man,” he says of his sound. “It’s very experimental. I hope that it never comes across as inauthentic. I started playing music in 2004, when I first started playing guitar, and I learnt guitar through classic rock, you know?

“I learnt guitar from all the shredders, like Angus Young, AC/DC. Slash, Guns N’ Roses. And then I got really into Avenged Sevenfold and Guitar Hero. So, I learnt a lot of chops from them, and that’s how I got proficient at my instrument.

“But the thing that turned all my lights on was emo music. There’s just this catharsis to it. And then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not a guitar player; I want to do that!’ The songwriting just became everything, and whenever my little emo/Warped Tour band fizzled out, it was kind of like a Plan B: I’m going to move to Nashville and write songs.

“And, after a while, I got impatient that I didn’t have a publishing deal, so I was like, ‘I need the credit score. I’m going to go hit these things myself.’ I was doing this hybrid country/punk thing.”

In the summer of 2017, Sam fulfilled his self-made promise and packed his bags to move to Nashville, with the intent of networking and expanding his project; something that he found relatively easy. “There’s no shortage of talent in Nashville, that’s for sure,” he asserts.

While the pandemic kind of affected this goal, one of the silver linings from that time, Sam finds, is that the city has become much more socially diverse since. “I would say right now is an extremely special time in Nashville,” he says.

“I think Nashville finally has the diversity that it’s always touted. A lot of it happened… – however you think about it. For better or for worse – …because of COVID. Whenever you have people moving…because Nashville didn’t really shut down! We didn’t shut down!

“But there is a very, very large, popular street, here in Nashville, that stayed open for the party pretty early on in COVID, and we had a lot of traffic, and a lot of people in that time found Nashville, and you have this creative exodus that’s happening from Los Angeles, coming here, and from New York, and, with that, comes a lot more diversity.

“I think whenever I first started off, it was hard to find a rock write, and pop was this very niche, cool thing that everybody wanted to do. And, nowadays, I have, sometimes, different rites twice a day. I’ll have two country writes, a rock write, a hardcore write, and two pop writes, all in one week, and I think it’s for the better.

“I think getting to wear different hats, this being a melting pot, a burner for all creative energies, is amazing, because, first and foremost, Nashville is a songwriter’s town, so it makes sense that songs are being written here, no matter what they are. So, to answer your question simply, I think Nashville can finally say that it has the diversity of genres that it’s said it’s had for the past twenty years.”

Having lived in Nashville for eight years and releasing music for five of those, Sam also feels that the city has influenced his craft. “I think it’s two things: I think it’s what you move to this town with and what you move to this town as is the special sauce,” he explains. “That’s the special thing that people can’t take away.

“So, it’s important to know what that is, and it’s important to hold onto it. You also have to let this town make you better: a better songwriter, more open. For me, I really loved getting to experience different music, different sounds, because, as I’ve said before, it’s all about the songwriting and the lyrics for me.

“Having those different sonic templates are tools in your belt, you know what I mean? I’m hard-pressed, every single song I write, to not have pedal steel in it. [Laughs] I have to know when to use it and when not to! And, you know, there’s also ways to do exciting breakdowns, like you would see in emo music, with an acoustic guitar and a banjo. You know, figuring out how to have those dynamics happen acoustically was like my Rubik’s Cube/puzzle thing to piece together.”

As an example of this expansion, Sam released his first politically-charged song, “Minute Man,” fittingly enough, on July 4^th, American Independence Day. Despite the title potentially alluding to the militia from the American Revolutionary War, Sam claims this wasn’t his intent.

“It’s not where I’m pulling from,” Sam explains of the title. “It means, ‘Hey, just give me a break. I just need a minute, man.’ That’s how I used it. I pulled that from my mom’s hometown. My mom’s hometown is in Higginsville, Missouri, and if you were to pull up a map of the 1950s through the 1990s, where all of the nukes in the United States were, you could basically just draw a circle in the Midwest, and they were all there.

“So, you’ll be driving through my mom’s hometown, and there will just be this fence, just sitting in a field, that’s overgrown and completely flat. It’s like, ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s an old missile silo.’ And they’re all over the place, but the missiles that they had in those silos were called Minuteman missiles.

“They were the transcontinental ballistic missiles that were supposed to go over, ‘in case,’ to Russia, and those missiles were named after the militia men, but it’s this kind of nuclear fallout song, so it’s like, ‘Oh, what if we could bring the Minutemen missiles into this? That would be cool.’ So, that was the story behind using that title.”

Hitherto, Sam had avoided incorporating politics into his music, but felt that it had become essential to express. “It just became so pervasive,” Sam explains. “You used to not talk about religion and politics, but now, whenever I go out with my friends, we’re talking about religion and politics.

“I don’t know if that’s just my group, but you see the news every single day, and it’s like the world’s ending every single day, and I have these impassioned political conversations with my friends and my family, and it’s always there, it’s always looming overhead, and I just got to the point where I was talking about it so much that I had something to say about it.

“Normally, as an artist, you don’t want to touch this political thing over here, because you’re going to lose fifty per cent of your fanbase, and I was just kind of angry at the whole situation, the whole landscape, and I felt like… – I didn’t feel like; it’s real – …that we are being pitted against our neighbour for someone else’s political gain, on both sides of the aisle, and everything’s terrible all the time.

“‘Do I have time to do what I want? Do I have time to fall in love? Is it appropriate? Is it appropriate that I’m writing songs? Should I be packing up my go bag? Should I be packing water? What the hell am I supposed to do right now?’ So, I just wanted to write a song that said that.

“‘Let’s write a real bummer of a song that’s a snapshot of what we deal with every single day, and also make it fun to listen to.’ So, my hopes and dreams for this song is that people would listen to it three or four times, and be like, ‘Oh! Ohhh! That’s what he’s talking about! I just thought this was cool,’ you know?”

But for Sam, this song doesn’t necessarily set a precedent for his future material. “Dude, I got a lot out of this!” he says. “I got a lot out of writing this song. I’m having a blast promoting it. It’s definitely kind of broken the ice on me talking about social stuff. It’s kind of a case-by-case basis; if I feel something pop up, I’ll write about it. I’m not really scared.

“I don’t necessarily feel like I need to pick up this flag of ‘This is what I’m doing moving forward!’ I think I’ll just keep writing about life as it happens to me, and I’m certain there will be more of this in the future. [Laughs] Yeah, I’ll take it as it comes. If there’s another thing I want to say about the world we live in, I’ll say it. I’m probably going to write some more songs about girls before we get there! [Laughs]”

“Minute Man” is the latest single off Sam’s upcoming EP. At the time of publication, the EP’s title is yet to be announced, but Sam tells fans when to and what to expect. “We’re shooting for early October, and it is the most modern-day, Spotify-algorithmic bullshit in the world!” he laughs.

“Almost every single song on this EP will have been released, and there will be one or two extra treats, because you’ve got to feed the machine. So, my apologies for not having it in the budget to deliver a ten-song album to the fans, but we’ll just waterfall that bad boy into a nice little compilation for ya, and start again next year.”

Sam Varga’s latest single, “Minute Man,” is out now, and you can pre-save its follow-up, “Queen of the Ashes,” here. You can keep up with Sam through his Linktree.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.