Scott Samuels takes a Fall

“It’s about falling for someone and falling out of romance,” says former Roxy Dioxide singer/guitarist Scott Samuels of his solo EP The Fall, which drops this week.

“It tells the story of a shallow L.A. relationship. The idea came to me when I went up to L.A. for a concert and wound up parking in the garage of shopping center in Beverly Hills. To get to the street, I had to walk through Macy’s, and getting off the elevator, I noticed the Macy’s tailor shop was lined with pictures of the staff there posed with all these celebrities. It got me imagining a guy who works retail in Beverly Hills, and is all about appearances, and a girl who’s forever thinking she’s ‘found the one’ with every shallow, good-looking guy she meets.”

When Samuels arrived in San Diego around 1991, he played sideman in several established groups before teaming up with guitarist Tim Bennett in A.M. Forever, Roxy Monoxide, and then Roxy Dioxide. One of those early bands, the Rhythm Slaves (aka the Snails), took him on a 1995 tour that included a place in downtown Milwaukee called the Tamarack.

“When we came into town, we noticed the Beat Farmers were playing across town, so we drove over to their venue, sat in on their soundcheck, and exchanged a bit of conversation. They invited us to their show, and my bandmates wanted to cancel our show and just go hang out with the Beat Farmers instead. But since my girlfriend had booked the show for us, I didn’t want her upset or disappointed, so I insisted that we play the Tamarack.”

“As it turns out, we played to a crowd that consisted of my girlfriend and four other people. [Beat Farmers frontman] Country Dick passed away a few weeks later, so we had missed our chance to see the Beat Farmers play one of their last shows. The other guys in the band told me that, from now on, all shitty gigs will be referred to as ‘Tamaracks.’”

Samuels went solo earlier this year, embarking on a midwest club tour and releasing his debut CD Great Big World in May. The first single from the new Fall EP, “If I Could Start Today Again,” is streaming online. He’ll debut the EP with an afternoon set in Leucadia on November 2 at Café Ipe, in the outdoor courtyard under the Surfing Madonna.