Cleveland Musician Sammy Haig Collaborates with National Acts from his Kitchen Countertop

As if to prove that you can write and record music from just about anywhere these days, local musician Sammy Haig has laid out a laptop, keyboard and trumpet on his downtown Cleveland kitchen’s countertop. The seemingly primitive setup has begun reaping significant dividends. Acts such as Tyler, the Creator, DJ Drama, Gunna, Kaliii and NLE Choppa have used his compositions in their music.

Haig, who grew up in Solon, hopes his success will to bring attention to music production in Cleveland and inspire others around him.

He says he owes a debt to his brothers, who introduced him to bands he might have otherwise not found on his own.

“My brothers were older and always played music in the house,” he says. “I learned to play piano at 8 and trumpet in fifth grade. I l just loved it. Listening was such a huge part of growing up. My brother game his old iPod, and all his music became the base for my music. I remember really liking acts like [the electronic group] Infected Mushroom and Tally Hall. My brother was always trying to find obscure music on the internet.”

After graduating high school, Haig enrolled in the jazz studies program and Indiana University.

“I thought if I could learn to play and write jazz music, I could write whatever I wanted,” he says. “When I got to Indiana University, I realized everyone had this intense relationship with jazz that I didn’t have. So the learning curve was very steep, but it was rewarding.”

In 2021, Haig recorded what would become his debut album in 2021 as his senior project.

“It was my first experience with producing recorded music,” he says of the album, which he called Cucumber.

In the pursuit of a job in the music business, Haig then moved to New York where he took a job in music publishing working for YouTube.

“I was trying to find ways to get involved with mainstream music,” he says. “I was looking with small artists I would find on Spotify. I tried to get representation after I heard that a bigger artist, Westside Gunn, had used some of my music on an unreleased song.”

After he found management, he began writing material regularly and meeting different producers. He got his first big break in March of last year when he received a phone call at midnight and found out that Tyler, the Creator and DJ Drama had released the ballad “Legendary,” a song with some of his jazzy trumpet riffs on it.

“I ran around the house screaming when I found out,” he says, adding that he tries to frame everything he does around the trumpet. “It was the first time I was really on the map, and people had looked at what I was doing.”

Since quitting his YouTube job and moving to Cleveland, Haig has continued to write and record music for other artists. He plays trumpet on “Chasing Ghosts,” a tune by Timmy Trumpet & Cheat Codes and on “Fly 2 U,” a song by rapper/singer DC the Don.

Going forward, he hopes to start working with more local musicians.

“Artists will always look first to places like L.A. and New York, and it took me a few months to look to the local music scene here,” he says, adding that earlier this year he played with Jake Miller, an artist with whom he’s collaborated, when his tour brought him to House of Blues. “I’ve worked with a few people here, but nothing has come out yet. But being in Cleveland has been great. I’m really close to my family, and we’re all here. I go to L.A. on occasion, but the majority of the year, I have just been here, and I really love that.”

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