Bon Iver asked him to cover his new material and he’s teaching Mescal and Josh O’Connor to sing. But the interpreter is more interested in songs than stardom

Sam Amidon grew up in the 1980s, but his Vermont childhood was “almost like a refuge” from the gaudiest decade. His hippy parents were folk-singer educators who frequently travelled south to work with Sacred Harp shape-note singers. “We were still eating granola and tofu stir fry, growing veggies and having potlucks,” he says. “Nobody had a television. I remember seeing a picture of Michael Jackson on somebody’s notebook, but I had no idea what he sounded like.” The family had one Talking Heads cassette, one Cyndi Lauper cassette and one Bob Dylan cassette, albeit of traditional songs. “The idea of the singer-songwriter model just wasn’t in my life.”

Amidon followed his parents into music, becoming a fiddle prodigy and noted folk singer, releasing acclaimed albums for Nonesuch, and collaborating with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and folk-pop songwriter Beth Orton, whom he married in 2011. The couple live near the London cafe (incidentally, where Fleabag was filmed) where I meet Amidon in December to discuss his beautiful new album, Salt River, his first for Rough Trade imprint River Lea.