Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar release their new live album A Beautiful Buzz via Gypsy Soul Records on May 22, 2026.
Captured during the band’s Love Is All Around tour across Western Canada in 2022, the album documents the raw power, soul, and communal energy that have made Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar one of Canada’s most electrifying live acts.
The CD and limited edition gatefold double vinyl editions of the album are available via www.samanthamartinmusic.com/store with the digital edition available on all streaming platforms HERE.
The album is preceded by the lead single “My Crown,” released Friday February 27, offering a first taste of the sweat-soaked, soul-driven performances that define the power and the excitement of A Beautiful Buzz.
Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar occupy a rare space in modern roots blues music: deeply reverent of soul and gospel tradition, yet unafraid to push those forms into something louder, sweatier, and fiercely alive. Led by Martin’s unmistakable, powerhouse vocal delivery, the band has earned a reputation as one of Canada’s most commanding live acts, equal parts grit, grace, and emotional force.
A two-time JUNO Award nominee and seven-time Canadian Blues Award nominee for Female Vocalist of the Year, Samantha Martin has long drawn comparisons to the great soul shouters of the past. As Rhythm & Booze put it, “Samantha Martin’s name can be talked of in the same sentence as Etta James, Tina Turner, and Aretha Franklin.
It’s soul for the modern age with a turbocharger.” Paris Move (France) went further, calling her “indispensable, Samantha Martin, the new Southern soul tornado.”
Those comparisons aren’t casual. Over the course of their catalogue, discerning listeners will hear echoes of Mavis Staples, Sharon Jones, Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MG’s, and the Memphis Horns, all filtered through a modern, road-hardened sensibility. It’s classic soul DNA delivered with contemporary urgency and volume.
As Glide Magazine noted, “a jaw-dropping display of vocal prowess that showcases this band’s brand of supercharged blues. Comparisons of soul greats run rampant, but like Brittany Howard, Samantha Martin might be the next musical game changer.”
Mixed by Renan Yildizdogan and Ross Hayes Citrullo, the in-house team at Gypsy Soul Records, A Beautiful Buzz marks a first for the band: a long-overdue live album capturing the raw electricity that has defined Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar onstage for over a decade.
Recorded during the band’s Love Is All Around tour across Western Canada in 2022, A Beautiful Buzz was born under extraordinary circumstances.
Originally scheduled for January and repeatedly delayed by the final wave of COVID-era disruptions, the tour finally launched in November, with Martin six months pregnant. Undeterred, a 13-person touring party loaded into a sprinter and rental car and pushed west from the sub-zero cold of Saskatoon toward the West Coast.
Night after night, the shows carried a heightened emotional charge, but one final performance stood apart, crackling with urgency, joy, and the awareness that one chapter was closing just as another was about to begin.
That moment became A Beautiful Buzz, a testament to resilience, love, and transformation, capturing a band at full throttle and an artist on the edge of profound personal change.
For many listeners, the album lands somewhere in the lineage of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen, a communal, unrestrained live soul revue where horns, grit, gospel, and sweat collide.
It’s not a polished live souvenir; it’s the sound of a band at peak intensity, feeding off the room and giving it everything back.
With a new studio album already in development for 2027, A Beautiful Buzz stands not as a detour or placeholder, but as a deliberate statement, finally committing to record the live force that made Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar essential in the first place.
“The Love Is All Around tour, initially set for January 2022, faced the trials of postponement until November 2022—marking the closing chapter of COVID-era delays,” says Samantha Martin. “By the time the tour kicked off, I was six months pregnant with my son.”
“I’ve never been one to be easily deterred. So, clad in a winter jacket that barely zipped, our 13-person touring party loaded into a sprinter and a rental car and embarked on a tour from the sub-zero temperatures of Saskatoon to the balmy West Coast of Canada.”
“Each show was a whirlwind of energy and emotion, but one stood out above the rest. Perhaps it was the excitement of the final show, or maybe it was the realisation that my life was about to change in a big way. Whatever the reason, the atmosphere was electric, filled with a beautiful buzz that I wanted to share with you. This album captures the magic I felt, and is a testament to resilience, love, and the power of music amidst life’s transformations.”
Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar ‘A Beautiful Buzz’ Tracklisting
1- Love is All Around
2- Don’t Have To Be
3- You’re The Love
4- Good Trouble
5- All Night Long
6- The Shape I’m In (feat. Steve Marriner)
7- I’ve Got a Feeling
8- My Crown
9- Loving You Is Easy
10-“Band Intro
11- Pass Me By
12- Them Changes
13- Loving Cup
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Recorded November 26, 2022 @ A.C.T. Theatre in Maple Ridge, BC
Mixed by Renan Yildizdogan and Ross Hayes Citrullo at RHC Music in Toronto, ON
Mastered by Phil Demetro Mastering in Toronto, ON
BAND LINE-UP
Lead Vocals & Acoustic Guitar: Samantha Martin
Background Vocalists: Tafari Anthony & Sherie Marshall
Electric Guitar: Curtis Chaffey
Bass: Ian McKeown
Drums: Will Fisher
Keys: Jeff Heisholt
Trombone: Emily Ferrell
Saxophone: Andrew Moljgun
Trumpet: Brian Walters
Special guest vocalist and acoustic guitar on “Shape I’m In” and 2nd electric on “Them Changes” and “Loving Cup”: Steve Marriner