By Jim Barber
A guitar virtuoso possessing a profound level of personal spirituality and a desire to make music that speaks as much to the soul as it does to the heart and mind, Detroit musician/songwriter Sammy Boller has dug deep into the wellspring of his creativity to produce a powerful and compelling new instrumental rock/metal EP, ‘Midnight Garden,” which came out in late 2025.
Filled not only with magical and majestical fretwork, the six song EP (the vinyl version has a bonus seventh song) is an excellent and possibly revelatory example to many of just how instrumental rock/metal music can be as evocative, emotionally impactful and accessible as that with vocals and lyrics.
Although still a young man at just 33, Boller has been through the rock wars for more than 15 years, first with Detroit-based rock band Citizen Zero, then as an accomplished and in-demand session player and live hired gun sideman, as well as acclaimed solo artist. As an interesting aside, Citizen Zero has recently awakened from dormancy and working on new material, one of a number of projects that the prolific and effervescently energetic Boller is currently working on. Which meant that work on the EP had to happen in fits and starts.
“I started working with Nick Sampson the producer with just a few ideas. We started a few years ago and this record’s been done for a little bit, and I was holding on to it. I was waiting for the right time to release it. After we started, we just kind of wrote it as we went along I would say. It wasn’t a traditional process where you go in the studio for a month and then you have a record. It was more done in like sections of time, you know. We’d go in for a few days, take a break for a while and then go back in with new ideas for a few days, which I think was cool, because if you work on it over time it develops naturally, and you can kind of figure out the sound as you go. So that’s kind of what we did with this. I’m really proud of the EP man, I think it definitely helped me grow as an artist, I got to explore some new territory for sure,” Boller said from his home studio in Detroit.
‘Midnight Garden’ was certainly a labour of love put together over a prolonged period of time, lovingly crafted and recorded when Boller was able to cobble together a few hours in the studio, as mentioned above. The EP was released on vinyl as well as on digital and streaming formats, and Boller said he is chuffed to see the resurgence in the appreciation of physical product, especially vinyl.
“Finally having it out has been really cool, and the response has been great. I’m excited to play some of these songs live. It did come out on physical as well; it came out on vinyl. We did a 7-inch so it’s an EP, but yeah, the vinyl record actually has a bonus track on it so it’s like seven tracks. I love listening to music on vinyl. I’ve kind of collected it for a while so I think it’s a great trend. It’s nice to be able to actually hold onto something. And also when you make a record, hearing it on vinyl it sounds totally different; you hear all the little nuances within the music and the mixes, which I think is fascinating – that’s just really cool. I feel like vinyl now is more popular than ever, at least with my generation. It’s a big thing, at least in rock and metal. It seems like all bands are doing vinyl press things even if it’s limited runs because there’s a big demand for it. And I like the colour vinyl trend too. For this record we just did it in purple,” he said.
“For me, I was actually more in the CD era. The first music I bought on CD I think was The Best of The Who and a Kiss greatest hits album on the same day. Those are the records I first remember buying and listening to all the time. So I had a CD player, that was like my main my main thing, but I was very young when Napster became a thing and I had like a little computer when I was young and I was doing that as well, which was at the very beginnings of digital.”
Boller grew up in a musical household, in a very musical town (think Motown, Bob Seger, The MC5, Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, etc. etc.) playing first piano and later trumpet before picking up guitar. The schooling and training involved in learning those instruments led to a diligence and disciplined practice regimen that has stood him in good stead throughout his more rock and metal-oriented musical adventures.
“I always felt like I was a guitar player like from as young as I can remember. I played piano first; I took piano lessons when we first moved to Detroit when I was like five or six. So that’s my first introduction to playing music, and I liked it, you know, but I didn’t fall in love with it or anything. Then I played the trumpet in school mostly because my dad’s a trumpet player. But through that whole time I’d like beg my parents, ‘hey, please show me something on the guitar’ because we had a few around the house. Finally my mom showed me the riff to ‘Day Tripper,’ The Beatles song, and then that was it,” he said.
“I’ve just always loved the guitar and I’ve always loved playing and I still do. It’s been a blessing in my life to be able to play. I started taking it really seriously like when I was in middle school I would say that’s when I got an electric guitar. When I was young, like early teens, me and my friends would play after school all the time. As far as musical education, I played guitar in high school for various different school bands. The orchestra teacher in my school was a wonderful classical guitar player, so he got me into learning how to read music on the guitar and playing jazz, you know, stuff that I hadn’t done before. He was a tremendous help I would say. Once I graduated I went to music school for a year studying jazz guitar, but I’ve always been a rocker, and decided to leave school and try to get my career going.
“When I first started getting into the actual music scene in Detroit, I started playing with a band called Citizen Zero which was my first real band or my first more serious band I should say. That’s when I first started writing music and my own stuff and playing out and around the area. That was my band for a really long time. Detroit’s an amazing place for bands because not only are there so many different genres, everybody’s pretty supportive. It’s a great music town.”
It will be of little surprise to reads that Boller’s primary musical influences are legends and contemporaries of one another, the late great Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, both of whom have been credited with game-changing innovations in how rock guitar was played, how rock songs were written and inspiring every generation of player since their onset in the late 1970s.
“Van Halen was the biggest for sure. He was my hero, and still is. Eddie’s the one that got me into really trying to play lead guitar for sure. And in terms of songwriting, he’s probably my biggest influence. Him and Randy Rhoads are probably my two favorites. I love Randy because he was a really studied musician, all he did was practice. I always wanted to be like him like and I would also practice all day. After them I got I started getting more into like the instrumental guitar greats, you know, like Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai – stuff like that. Of that era those were definitely my biggest influences. Once I started writing music, I started branching out a lot more and studying different genres of guitar players and things like that.”
The notion of discipline and self-control, of being focused and in tune with you mind, body and spirit is something that has become an even deeper pursuit and lifestyle orientation thanks to Boller’s embracing of eastern spirituality, particularly the importance and practice of meditation.
“I’ve been really into like eastern spirituality for a long time now. A lot of my songs are kind of based in that world. It been a huge part of my life. I was always interested in eastern religion. I had an uncle growing up that is a Buddhist specifically Tibetan Buddhism, right? So, he would he kind of joke around with me when I was really young about some of that stuff, but I started getting into like more meditation and basic stuff in college and then when my first band Citizen Zero broke up I was kind of lost. I didn’t really know what to do, as a lot of people go through in their early 20s or mid-20s. That’s when I really started just gravitating towards it. I read a few books and kind of fell in love with it. I just went way into that world and it’s changed the way I write music. It’s changed my whole life. With most eastern religions it’s a lot about the inward journey, and that’s the journey of being a musician – knowing yourself. The more you know yourself the more it comes through in your music. I feel really lucky that I found that early, at a relatively young age,” he said, and is effusive in extolling the virtues of mindfulness and meditation and fervently believes it has made him a better musician, songwriter, performer and human being overall.
“It helps in all aspects of life, but a big thing with playing and improvising and just you know playing the guitar and the instrument is to learn to play from your heart. You can’t be thinking, you’ve got to be right in the moment, without the mind interfering. So, the more you can cultivate that in other parts of your life the better, like the famous saying is ‘be here now.’ That’s a big part of like walking on the stage too – it’s a moment. It’s in the moment. A lot of musicians and a lot of artistic people meditate in their daily lives, even if they don’t know they’re doing it. It’s happening any time, where anything that you’re completely homed in on in the moment, where your mind’s not bouncing around a million miles an hour, that’s all meditation.”
While admitting the there is a disciplined methodology overarching his songcraft, there is still plenty of room in the process for experimentation, improvisation and even just some good old-fashioned noodling.
“I definitely lean on more Inspiration as opposed to being methodical. I think when I was young I was definitely a really disciplined player, I practiced all day, doing scales and always trying to work on technique. Composing music, for me, I mean the process is different. Everybody has their own kind of process. The way I start is with obviously the guitar, but I’ll try to get an entire song just on the guitar by itself. I’ll just start playing, and the trick is you don’t stop. You have to just keep at it Improvising and when you get one little piece that has something in it or something maybe different than you’ve done before or something unique you just have to recognize it and go,” Boller explained.
“Okay, that’s the basis – that’s the kind of jumping off point. I get that one little thing just from doing it over and over, which maybe is the more methodical part of the process. You get better at it the more times you do it, obviously, you get better and quicker at recognizing that little piece and you just expand it out until it turns into a full piece of music. So that’s usually how I do it. I’ll try to get it on the guitar completely and then I’ll either take it to the guys I play with or a producer and then we’ll build a song out around it. That’s my approach at least for the instrumental stuff. For playing with bands, it’s different. I really think the best way to write music is get in the basement with your buddies and just start jamming – that’s really the best. When it’s for a solo record, you know, it’s it comes in all kinds of different ways.”
If you think about it, often the title of a song or album is derived directly from, or at least inspired by, the lyrics. So how does one of Boller’s instrumental songs get it’s title?
“All the songs and riffs and stuff definitely have intent behind them and emotion behind them. When I’m writing it’s usually about what I’m going through at the time or what I’m reading or something for a friend. I write the songs for my friends and stuff a lot. But as far as like the titles, it depends. With ‘Midnight Garden,’ I had that title for a long time, and I knew I wanted to name a song that. So, as we were writing that piece I was like, ‘okay, this is what it is.’ The title then kind of becomes like a target at the end under the tunnel, right? I picked that title for the album just because it like evokes so much imagery, and I also just think it’s cool,” he said.
For his solo work, Boller has written, recorded and performed almost solely instrumental music, believing, as was mentioned in the introduction to this article, that there is a particular mystique and unique, but still potent, emotive power to instrumental music, even hard rock and metal.
“I played in Citizen Zero in my early 20s. That was my first touring band. We got signed [to Wind-Up Records] and went on the road. We toured a lot, which was like my first real venture in the music business I would say. When we broke up, as I said before, I was kind of lost; I didn’t really know what to do. That was my whole life. But I had started working on new guitar techniques and I was really getting serious about it, and I had put a lot of music together, but even then I never really considered doing an instrumental record at that point. Then I talked to the band’s old manager, and he really encouraged me to pursue it, which was pretty influential in me deciding to go for it. I realized I can start doing this and try to turn it into something. It’s been amazing, I mean, I love it. It’s a totally different show when there’s no singer, you know, it’s a totally different thing trying to make a show interesting just with the guitar but it’s awesome, man, and it felt like that from my first record,” he said.
“For me like the guitar is the voice, right? A lot of times people think, well if it doesn’t have lyrics how could it have meaning? How could a song have any meaning, except for me, the guy who wrote it? But I can tell you, not only do the songs have meaning to myself, because everything that I write has something behind it. But the thing I love about it is since there are no lyrics it can be interpreted in a wide number of ways. It means something completely different to everybody who listens to it. So that’s one thing I really think is cool. Of course, songs with lyrics obviously can be interpreted in a lot of ways as well, but instrumental music is wide open. And just from people who like the album and the EP and stuff, I love hearing what it means to different people. For me, with any song, especially an instrumental, the melody is the king. That’s always that’s the main thing for me. I love playing guitar solos and playing fast and everything – it’s part of being a rock guitar player. But the thing that really is most important to me is writing something that Is beautiful, you know and has something within it that lives on its own. I’ve written music for a long time, but there’s something amazing about it when you’re able to sit down and come up with something out of nowhere and turn it into a piece. That’s just always fascinated me – I can’t get enough of it.”
Understanding that instrumental music can be somewhat off-putting to the general rock music fan, Boller has, as already discussed, worked hard to craft melodies and songs that are accessible, while still retaining enough virtuosity to impress the guitar nerds (not meant as a derogatory term!!) in the audience. One of the ways he did this was by deliberately choosing to tour with acts that have that general rock audience.
“Yeah, I feel really lucky yeah because with this genre music typically it’s a lot of guitar players in the crowd and stuff like that, which is great you know, but I feel lucky I’ve gotten to open for some bands that are, you know, more traditional bands. I did a whole tour with this metal band called Monuments, and that was incredible because there were barely any musicians in the crowd, it was a more traditional rock audience, and I love that. I want to be versatile in that way and so we’re and that’s one thing with like making an instrumental show. I wanted it to be more of an experience anybody could enjoy right? So yeah, I feel really lucky man.”
The bonus track, ‘Mother Light’ was composed and played on a piano and was written to honour the life and legacy of Boller’s mom, who died in 2024.
“That’s the first time I ever played piano on any of my solo stuff or, really, anything else I’ve recorded. I’ve just never gone down that road before, but I wrote that song years ago. I wrote it for my mom. When it came time to do the vinyl press for this EP and we were talking about doing a bonus. So, we went back in the studio and I recorded it for real. But yeah I wrote it for my mom, and she passed away last year, so it was kind of a fitting thing to have it on this record,” he said.
“I wanted to do a little, you know, tribute for her on the record. I like it that it’s a lot different from the other tracks, you know. It’s its own kind of piece entirely. Right now it’s only on the vinyl.”
For more information on Midnight Garden, upcoming tour dates and more, visit https://www.sammyboller.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
