Local performer plans release concert for CD

Temperance resident Sam DeArmond had a big interest in golf in high school and college, competing on teams -- until a passion for music took over. He now performs regularly at area bars. Enlarge

A promising young area performer will debut songs from his first album in a concert slated at Lourdes University next month.

Singer/songwriter Sam DeArmond is serious about his music -- so serious that he let it damage his golf game when he was a starting player at Bedford High School and Siena Heights University.

"Golf was a huge part of me before I started playing music," he explained. "But the more time I spent on music, the worse my golf game kept getting. I don't regret it."

Indeed, the 23-year-old Lambertville resident has pursued music with a passion, playing in area venues such as M. T. Loonie's Pub and Grill in Temperance, where he performs Wednesdays at 8 p.m., and the Blarney Irish Pub and Grill in Toledo. In 2009, he competed in Battle of the Bands against Crystal Bowersox, before she achieved American Idol fame.

Now he has recorded an album, "Last-Minute Man," which he produced himself. He and his band have scheduled a release concert at the Franciscan Theater at Lourdes for March 3. Doors open at 6 p.m., with opening act the Icarus Account, an acoustic duo consisting of twin brothers from Fort Myers, Fla., playing at about 6:30. Admission is $10. Tickets can be purchased at the door or at samdearmond.com.

Mr. DeArmond will do guitar and vocals at the concert. The program will include all 11 tracks from his album and covers of recording artists he admires such as Bob Seger.

For Mr. DeArmond, a 2007 graduate of Bedford High, the album and concert are the culmination of a lot of time and effort.

Golf, however, was his true passion -- until he got the music bug. He said he started playing with friends and family members when he was 16. "I picked it up fairly quickly," he explained. "I started playing songs probably by the time I was 17. It was the summer going into my senior year that I became serious. I didn't put the guitar down."

He earned a partial golf scholarship to Siena Heights University in Adrian, but quit before graduating to pursue music.

"It's not that I don't still love golf. I do," he said. "You can have a bad day on the golf course and it can bring you down for the whole day. But with music, there's nothing to bring you down."

Mr. DeArmond described himself as a self-taught musician who doesn't read music. He has written hundreds of songs and said the process for him involved a lot of intuition and trial and error.

"I start with the music, then start singing words," he said. "Once you start with the melody and you have this guitar line, the words come."

His musical influences are eclectic and span generations: John Mayer, the Foo Fighters, James Taylor, the Doobie Brothers, the Gin blossoms, Third Eye Blind, and Marc Broussard.

"I'm all about real music, real music playing in a room," he said.

The album is available on iTunes. Mr. DeArmond also has two videos on YouTube that have each attracted more than 200,000 views.

Music runs in his family tree. Harry DeArmond, who is a legend among music buffs as the engineer who designed guitar pickups, was his great-great uncle, he said.