Drummer Ryan Thornton ’02 and his band Sam Champion have signed a three-record deal with independent label Razor & Tie. The band released its first album, Slow Rewind, in September and completed its first nationwide tour in the fall.
“The band is founded on longtime friendships forged over rock and roll music, beer, cheeseburgers, and the rigors of higher education,” states the band’s biography on the Razor & Tie web site. “Maybe Sam Champion’s ineffable chemistry springs from the fact that the members of the band were friends before they started making music together. And even though they’re in a band together, they’re still friends”.
The name for the group came up in conversation over “cool” band names during a late-night drive with longtime friend Noah Cernin. Sam Champion of WABC-TV says he is flattered.
While it can’t predict the weather, the Brooklyn-based band is brewing up a storm with tunes that strike a chord with post-graduate contemporaries. It has been reviewed by Spin, New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and various ezines, or electronic magazines.
Although Thornton had been drumming for several years before college, he refined his skills at Lafayette. He still uses drumming exercises he learned in a music class before and after shows. Thornton also took a number of music history classes and found the January interim course New York Jazz Experience particularly inspiring.
“We saw a different jazz performance each night at all of the greatest venues in the city,” he recalls. “I saw some of the greatest jazz players in the world do their thing five feet in front of me with my classmates by my side. Besides the music, it was my first time in New York City for an extended period of time. And the trust and freedom our professors allowed us meant I could do a lot of exploring. I fell in love with New York City that week and moved there right after college because of it.”
As an American Studies major, Thornton took classes that allowed him to explore his interests and attain knowledge he holds with him as travels on tour.
“My education at Lafayette gave me the passion for knowledge, which I carry with me all over this country. I am always the one giving the history lessons to the other guys in the van, and the one that makes everybody pull over for a great view or a historical landmark,” he says. .
Prior to his founding of Sam Champion in summer 2002 in New York City with Chernin, Thornton played with his hometown band Rana (and is still a member), and in campus bands Kentucky Straight and Picpockets.
“We played in a couple of venues around town, but our best gigs were in off-campus basements,” he recalls. “They were just packed every time, with a line going up the stairs and into the kitchen for the unfortunate latecomers. The energy that our music produced in those basements was something I’ll never forget. It was a tremendous feeling, and now I’m committed to making people feel like that every night.”
Thornton values the friends and professors who impacted him in college.
“ There were so many outstanding and at times ‘mind-blowing’ professors at Lafayette I don’t know where to begin,” he says. “Professor Andy Smith was my adviser, and I had about five classes with him thorough the years. He really pushed me, and I thank him for that. He instilled the passion for knowledge in me, taught me how to write a good paper, how to really watch a movie, and about park planning (to name a few). I mean, he let me write my big senior seminar paper on the evolution of Hip Hop. Often I wish he were in the van with my band, just teaching us about everything we see out these windows. Professor Ian Smith was best English teacher I’ve ever had. He taught me how to dissect and find the true meaning behind a book, a sentence, a word. Professor [Lori] Dobbins introduced me to jazz. Professor[Robert] Mattison, taught me to see the beauty in all art.”