My Mom Is Here Talk “Can’t Find My Way Home,” Power Station, and Going Bigger Without Losing the Band

There are easier songs to cover than “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

Steve Winwood’s original has lived in people’s heads for decades. It is familiar enough that any new version has to justify itself almost immediately.

My Mom Is Here do that by refusing to treat it like something fragile.

The New York duo’s version stretches the song outward with horns, strings, a full live band, and a guest guitar appearance from Jake E. Lee. Recorded at Power Station in New York, it sounds bigger without losing the ache at the center of the original.

For vocalist Samantha Seiff, that balance was never really calculated.

“I don’t know if we intentionally set out to strike any kind of balance between the original and something that felt new,” she says. “The original composition is so striking, beautiful, and sonically distinct that I feel like we would’ve really had to have done a real number on it to ‘dishonor’ it.”

That confidence says a lot about where My Mom Is Here are right now.

They know the history.

They just are not scared of touching it.

A Song That Was Already There

The cover was not born from a grand concept.

My Mom Is Here had learned “Can’t Find My Way Home” for a show, and somewhere in the process, the song started making sense in their own language.

“It happened to really click with a funk rock feel,” Sam says.

So when the band headed into Power Station for a session that already included horns and strings for their original track “The Lucky Dudes,” the decision came naturally.

Why not take the cover there too?

The result moves far beyond a standard reinterpretation. What could have stayed stripped-back becomes full and cinematic without turning stiff.

That scale also carries something personal for Sam.

She grew up with the song. Her dad introduced her to classic rock early, and she had seen both Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton live multiple times before ever imagining herself recording the song.

“Getting to sing this song, which I’ve loved since I was little, with not just a full band, but a full string section and horn section, in a studio as iconic as Power Station… was totally bonkers,” she says.

She calls the day one of those “pinch me moments.”

There have apparently been a few.

Power Station, Live

The room matters here.

Sam is open about something she sometimes struggles with in the studio: the absence of immediate energy.

“When I’m performing live, I don’t feel like I need to push a feeling or sound because the people I’m trying to reach are standing two feet away from me,” she says.

Power Station changed that.

The band recorded together live. Sam sang over them live. Instead of constructing the track piece by piece, there was something happening in the room that she could actually react to.

Coming from a theatre background, that made sense to her.

“I really thrive on the interplay of other actors’ energy onstage,” she says. “I definitely felt that interplay in Studio A.”

That feeling is probably the most important thing the recording preserves.

For all the arrangement’s size, it still sounds played.

Not assembled.

That distinction matters to Sam.

“It’s really important to me that our recordings feel like they’re played by an actual band,” she says. “My songs come from a real place, sound like they’re recorded by and with real people, and evoke real emotion.”

That is also why the added scale never feels decorative.

It is not bigger for the sake of being bigger.

It is bigger because the room could hold it.

Enter Jake E. Lee

Then there is the guitar solo.

Jake E. Lee’s involvement could easily become the headline on its own. He has played with Ozzy Osbourne, and his name carries its own history.

For Sam, though, the collaboration seems to land more on the human side.

She knew of him through Las Vegas, where she is originally from and where Lee is now based. When the band started looking for someone who could bring something distinctive to the track, his name came up.

What surprised her was how quietly exacting he was.

“He was so committed to getting the right guitar tone and crafting the right melody,” she says. “It was such a dream to record with him, and it’s surreal to hear his playing on our track.”

The solo works because it does not feel dropped in for prestige.

It becomes another part of the arrangement.

Another voice in the room.

That seems to be the running theme with My Mom Is Here: the scale can change, but the chemistry still has to make sense.

How Big Can This Get?

“Can’t Find My Way Home” closes out a three-song Power Station recording capsule, and that process taught the band something important.

They now know how large their sound can become.

“I think we learned the upper limit of just how big our sound can get,” Sam says. “And now we know we have that capability in our arsenal.”

But the more interesting part of that realization is what came next.

Instead of locking them into one sound, it freed them up.

“I think we also defined the extreme limit on the spectrum of our funk/pop sound,” she says. “Now, I feel freed up to explore other genres.”

That openness feels especially relevant because My Mom Is Here is changing in other ways too.

The band is now officially a duo: Sam and Nick Sare.

They bring in musicians they love for individual shows and sessions, rather than treating one fixed lineup as the only version of the project.

That structure seems to have made Sam more comfortable writing without thinking about what everyone else might want to play.

“I used to subconsciously write songs that I thought the band would enjoy playing,” she says. “Now, I’m writing for me, and I’m very comfortable throwing spaghetti at a wall.”

That might be the most useful creative shift of all.

Less permission-seeking.

More curiosity.

What Comes Next

The biggest thing on the horizon is also the most obvious sign that My Mom Is Here are thinking beyond one release at a time.

They are making their first full-length album.

The project is currently being recorded at Better Company Studios in Brooklyn with Allen Tate, with the rest of 2026 set aside for finishing the record, making videos, and planning a spring 2027 tour.

“All of the songs on our upcoming album started with me and my notebook,” Sam says.

That line feels important after everything that came before it.

The horns can get bigger.

The strings can get bigger.

The rooms can get bigger.

But the songs still begin small.

That may be the clearest throughline in My Mom Is Here right now: ambition without losing the thing underneath it.

They are learning how far the sound can stretch without turning into something unrecognizable.

“Can’t Find My Way Home” is a perfect example.

It reaches backward without feeling nostalgic.

It reaches outward without losing intimacy.

And it leaves the band with a much more interesting question than where they have been.

How big do they want to go next?

My Mom Is Here’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” is out now. The duo will play Mad Love Music Festival in Boston on October 11 and Nublu in New York City on October 16.

Photography: Holland Rainwater