00:00Singer-songwriter from Newcastle, Ernie, has put together a song to celebrate 25 years
00:06of Sunday for Sammy. The amazingly talented students from Gateshead College put together
00:11a music video for the launch of this new Northern anthem.
00:25Ray Laidlaw, who's best known for being a drummer in the iconic band Lindisfarne, is
00:29the producer for Sunday for Sammy, and I caught up with him about how this new track, called
00:34Carrying the Weight Around, came to be.
00:37Sunday for Sammy is a North East based charity that supports young performers when they're
00:43starting out, basically. It could be with assistance on fees for drama school, or it
00:48could be a bit of kit, it could be an instrument, that sort of thing. And we do that by putting
00:53a big show on every two years, with the great and the good from the North East scene, people
00:59you know, everybody from Anton Deck to Brian Johnson to all of them, they've all been
01:03in it to show some time or other. Lots of younger ones too, people like Rosie Ramsey,
01:07all been in the show. And the funds we make, we put into grants and give them out to young
01:13people who we think have got a future. 2025 is the 25th anniversary of Sunday for Sammy,
01:20and we're having all sorts of events throughout the year. And we decided that we'd like to
01:25mark that anniversary with a song. And we thought the best way of getting a song that
01:30was relevant was to ask somebody who we'd actually given a grant to over the years to
01:36write one. So I approached Ernie, and he was more than happy to help, and he came up with
01:41exactly the right song for the project. And we've used that piece of music as the music
01:48that a lot of dancers have done flash mobs to, and we're going to use it in other projects
01:53too, and it's just been released to the public last week. It's a fantastic tune, and the
01:59words, the lyrics are great because it exactly echoes what Sunday for Sammy is all about,
02:04which is basically, you know, you've got to work against the odds, you've got to work
02:08with what you've got, but don't let anybody tell you you can't do it. If you've got a
02:12passion for something, pursue your passion.
02:14Ernie recorded the track at Blank Studios in Newcastle, collaborating with producer
02:20Josh Ingledale and fellow artist Imogen Williams, lead vocalist of Imogen and the Knife, another
02:26recipient of the Sunday for Sammy's trust support. Now the song has been released, Ernie
02:31reflected on how the song came together and the deeper meaning behind it all.
02:39I've been doing it for as long as I can remember, really, ever since I was a kid, in various
02:45different bands, different sort of project names, and then I started this Ernie thing
02:51sort of in lockdown, really, and made it public in the last couple of years,
02:56and it's just kind of gone from strength to strength, which is good.
Comments