THE DAY HAD TO COME
"Best Country Music of 2024" on Bandcamp
#8 on CKUA's "100 Most Played Albums of 2024"
Listen to the album on Spotify or any other streaming service.
Stream / purchase digital files or the CD on Bandcamp. The CD is also available at Edmonton's Blackbyrd Myoozik.
First collaboration between Edmonton singer/songwriters is a stunning collection of original classic country duets.
The day has come. Having previewed their first collaboration, The Day Had To Come, with the singles "Secret Subway Conversations," "Long Long Gone" and "My Heart Up Against You," Edmonton-based singer/songwriters Sammy Volkov and Dana Wylie have released the full album today, giving fans of classic country duets a genuine reason to rejoice.
Even casual fans of country music are sure to be amazed by how brilliantly the 10 original songs on The Day Had To Come capture the spirit of the genre's greatest moments when male and female voices intertwined, from George and Tammy to Gram and Emmylou. This is songwriting in its purest form, expressing deep-rooted emotion through two artists pushing themselves beyond what they've already achieved on their own.
Since releasing her 2017 album The Earth That You’re Made Of—which earned her a Canadian Folk Music Awards nomination for Contemporary Singer of the Year—Dana Wylie has managed to balance her other work in live theatre with more recording that led to her 2023 double album How Much Muscle.
Meanwhile, Sammy Volkov’s 2022 debut album Be Alright! firmly established him as an artist on the rise, hitting the #1 spot on the prestigious CKUA Top 30, and other outlets comparing his approach and style to legends such as Roy Orbison and Charlie Rich.
Recording The Day Had To Come with producer Harry Gregg turned out to be a revelatory experience for both of them, as each quickly became the other’s number one fan. When asked about the title track, Sammy says, “I think that song is what made me excited to get this album going with Dana. She was playing it for me in rehearsal one day and I thought, damn, this is brilliant. It feels classic but I know it is entirely rooted in Dana's own experience.”
For Dana, a highlight was creating the album’s opening track, “Secret Subway Conversations.” “That one’s an instant classic, in my view,” she says. “Sammy's melody soars in a way that was perfectly conducive to harmonizing, and it's resulted in something that is both lush and quirky, in the most beautiful way.”
Among the many other standouts on The Day Had To Come are Dana’s bouncy “Ain’t Found Heaven Yet,” and Sammy’s devastating ballad “Saw The End Before We Started.” In all, the pair brought out the best in each other, a flame they don’t want to extinguish anytime soon.
Simply put, The Day Had To Come is one of the best records you’ll hear this year.
-Jason Schneider Media
"Secret Subway Conversations" is the debut single from Sammy Volkov & Dana Wylie's upcoming album "The Day Had To Come" (May 2024).
You can purchase the song and see full credits and lyrics on Bandcamp.
You can also hear the song on Spotify, YouTube, or any other streaming service. Lisa Wilton premiered the song on her CKUA program "Traffic Jams."
There's a nice write up about the single in Canadian Beats here!
"Long Long Gone" is the second single from Sammy Volkov & Dana Wylie's upcoming album "The Day Had To Come"
You can purchase the song and see full credits and lyrics on Bandcamp.
You can also hear the song on Spotify, YouTube, or any other streaming service. Grant Stovel premiered the song on his CKUA program "Alberta Morning."
"My Heart Up Against You" is the third single from Sammy Volkov & Dana Wylie's upcoming album "The Day Had To Come" (May 2024).
You can purchase the song and see full credits and lyrics on Bandcamp.
You can also hear the song on Spotify, YouTube, or any other streaming service
Be Alright!" debuted at #1 on the CKUA Top 30 Chart and within a month of its release, reached #38 on CKUA's Top 200 Album Chart for 2022! It also debuted at #19 on the Earshot National Top 50 Chart.
The 11 track album is available on all streaming services. Copies of the CD are available at Blackbyrd Myoozik in Edmonton. You can also purchase a copy of the CD & digital files here.
Since releasing the single “Weather Report” at the start of summer, Sammy Volkov has been turning a lot of heads with a sound that updates vintage early ‘60s pop and R&B with modern themes and sensibilities.
Based in so-called Edmonton, Alberta, Sammy’s musical approach might borrow a couple of quirks from Sinatra, a little flourish from M. Ward or Neil Young, a riff from the Shirelles, but before you know it he’s crafted something startlingly original from an esoteric palette of sonic colours. It’s all there on “Be Alright!”, an 11-song collection that combines Brill Building skill with Brian Wilson-esque ambition, all tied together by a voice as supple and entrancing as any heard in recent memory. Sammy takes music history seriously, and we get to reap the benefits. While taking his first leap into recording with a 2018 independent EP (released under the name Sam Wolfe), he went to New York City to follow his other longstanding dream of becoming an actor. Although he graduated from SUNY’s prestigious Acting BFA Conservatory, Sammy’s life in New York primarily consisted of doing behind the scenes work for many top rated television shows, and singing at open mic nights in Brooklyn.
When, one day, he came to the conclusion that he wasn’t making much creative progress, he contacted his producer Harry Gregg and engineer Scott Franchuk back at Edmonton’s Riverdale Recorders and said, “Let’s make an album.” What followed has been an emotional two-year journey, from initial recording sessions at the start of 2020, to finishing the album at the height of the pandemic, to now finally being able to share “Be Alright!”
It’s easy to simply say that if you appreciate great songwriting delivered in a classic, compelling package, then Sammy Volkov may just be your new favourite artist. But that barely does justice to the music contained on “Be Alright!” Few artists today have the vision to raise their work to the level of the 20th century’s greatest composers and performers, but that’s precisely what Sammy Volkov has done. Prepare to be astounded.
