Sammy Rae and the Friends want to be your friend!
The world can feel a little lonely as the summer season winds down; children and friends go back to school, outdoor activities slow down, the sun begins to slip into the dark night sooner and sooner every day, and our social lives sink to the bottom of the once buoyant social summer. Sammy Rae and The Friends are here to keep your social lives afloat, reminding you how easy it is to dance and make friends everywhere!
Sammy Rae of the seven-piece band Sammy Rae and The Friends took time out of the band’s ever-increasingly busy schedule to give Kira Doman from ION Indie Music Magazine a peak into their lives as the band’s fan base continues to see a quick uptick in popularity and streaming.
Sammy Rae starts The Good Life
Sammy Rae always knew she wanted to be a star, taking up the stage and making people happy with her passion was something she dreamed of even as a little girl in the small town of Derby, Connecticut, listening to the big bands that inspired her.
“When I was a child, I had this dream of doing the whole music industry thing, which was as big as you can dream for a kid from a very small town,” Rae chuckled. “But when I got to New York in my early 20s I realized, not only am I talented and capable in a small town, I'm also very talented and capable in a city where people who are talented and capable go. I have what it takes to really do this thing. But I knew from the very beginning that I needed to form a band.”
“I really loved and love Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – these are players who were together on every record through the years through the decades, and I wanted that friendship that came with the people in it,” Rae smiled. “I knew from the very beginning I wanted to form a band and I didn't want to do this thing solo; I was talking about a permanent core group of people.”
But with a big dream of a big band, came big work and Rae revealed they cycled through a few great players before landing with the band they currently have and plan on sticking with.
“People did sort of cycle out predominantly in the first year as we were getting our feet set and the band started to grow, I needed different sorts of people and also some people were excited about the prospect of the band growing and other people were not or were involved in other projects,” Rae explained. “This project started to demand a higher level of commitment and some just weren’t ready for that, but this core group, apart from Debbie Tjong who joined us about a year and a half ago as our keys player, has been The Friends for the last five years. And we rock it.”
Sammy Rae explained that while cycling through the audition process to fill spots in her band, she was always looking for specific instrument players, and it was always a happy accident to discover how instrumentally versatile her band really was.
“The saxophone players, Kellon Reese and Max Zooi, were hired for saxophone, even though they play a million different things, Will Leet, our guitarist, was also playing keys before Debbie Tjong joined us, and Debbie plays much more than just the keys, we’d say she’s more auxiliary percussion,” Rae explained “it just goes on and on. Over the course of working with each other, we learned to play multiple instruments, we've progressed in our arrangement process, coming together as individuals who listen to each other and are inspired by different sorts of music.
The seven-piece ensemble is made of Sammy Rae, frontwoman ukulele and banjo player, as well as occasionally keys; Will Leet is backing vocals and guitarist, Debbie Tjong on keys and auxiliary percussion, C-Bass Chiriboga on percussion, James Quinlan is the bass player; Kellon Reese spans alto saxophone, flute and clarinet, and Max Zooi plays tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and the synthesizer.
“This project is hugely based on making space for everybody's individual musical talents and flexibility for folks to grow and be influenced and inspired by new things,” Rae said sternly. “This project is rooted in collaboration, and we all come from different studies of music and different walks of life, and as time goes on, we've become more comfortable playing with each other and getting to know each other's musical sensibilities.”
The sounds of The Friends
Writing music for the band is an incredibly creative and collaborative process, as it needs to be when accounting for seven musical talents and opinions. Rae explained that a member will speak up about an element a song might be missing, and the follow-up question is always “who can play that instrument?”. This creates a very diverse musical spectrum the band has traversed.
“We've got jazz, we've got rock, we've got pop, we've got some musical theater, we've got world music and Latin groups, there's something for everybody,” Rae laughed. “It’s hard to really pin down the sound of The Friends, I don’t think there is a specific definition for the iconic The Friends sound because we’re constantly trying to bring in new sounds and instruments from new inspirations.”
Although there is no specific sound to Sammy Rae and The Friends, Rae does highlight the importance of saxophone to their sound.
“I think the saxophone is a cornerstone sound of our band,” Rae said. “The saxophone exists kind of in a similar tambor to the human voice, and both of my saxophone players have that sort of sensibility where they play very much like singers, and I sing very much like a horn player. That trio that we have has become a really efficient starting place for many songs.”
“I'm very melodically driven,” Rae continued. “A lot of our music is very melodic – melodic, upbeat hooks in blaring saxophone lines. Having two saxophones kind of sets us apart a little bit rather than an entire horn section or a saxophone and a trumpet. We've got a tenor sax and an alto sax, and that is very much an identifiable part of our sound.”
The favoring and admiration towards the woodwinds can continue to be seen in their June single ‘Cold-Hearted Man’, with the introduction to clarinet now in their band lineup, as well as a few other instruments.
“The clarinet, the banjo, the banjolele, and the upright bass were all introduced to our sound for the first time with the release of Cold-Hearted Man,” Rae listed off. “We knew we wanted to go for something that was quite campy, and tongue in cheek – kind of period-appropriate, similar to the genre of gypsy jazz music. It just made sense with the rest of the direction the song was taking.”
Sammy Rae and The Friend’s first EP, “The Good Life” featured the string sections prominently, such as bass, and many forms of guitar and ukulele, and Rae assures that their debut full-length album will also be heavy on the strings once again.
“If it goes according to plan, we'll be releasing our debut full-length album at this time next year,” Rae revealed. “We’ve never released a full-length album before, we’ve only ever released EPs, so to be able to tailor an entire tour around the release, theme, and concept of an album is a creative challenge I’m very excited to take on.”
“We are still in the very nascent stages of arranging and producing this album,” Rae said slyly. “A huge part of our first EP The Good Life was string arrangements, and that's definitely going to be a big feature on the upcoming album. We're already writing up some really cool string parts, so I'm eager to get more of that string arrangement sound back into the upcoming album and see how those can kind of reappear as building blocks of the album. We're not a string quartet but luckily, both Debbie and Max in the band are gifted string arrangers.”
Rae revealed that she is frequently shocked by how lucky she is with the band that has shaped in front of her, and the sheer quantity of people who wish to be a part of this journey with her. However, the number of amazingly talented players doesn’t always make the organization set-up for performances particularly easy.
“I think our climb to fame, in my opinion, is made more impressive because of how many people we are carrying with us,” Rae said. “Seven people is a lot when it comes to feeding, rooming, and other features like instrumental tune-ups and piece replacements. The more people you have, the more instruments you have, which means the need to hire more crew on the road…All of the expenses can really start to pile up on you and it can be daunting. It’s those moments that make me incredibly grateful that we’re a very tight-knit, concerned, and loving family both onstage and off. We care very deeply about each other and the dynamic we have is a precious thing.”
A big stage for a big band
Not only do the expenses make things hard to coordinate sometimes, but the size of the stage is vitally important for a successful Sammy Rae and The Friends show.
“We really thrive in and love to headline large indoor venues mainly because the show is so visual and when we're in a venue which is dark and controlled, we have access to the lighting rig and the colors on stage pop more, the costumes we're wearing pop a bit more. Having access to light design is important for our show’s atmosphere,” Rae explained. “We're big and we move around a lot, so we take up a lot of space and we do what we can to make everybody feel really seen and appreciated for coming to our show.”
A keystone feature of every Sammy Rae and The Friends show is showing their gratitude to each and every fan that made an appearance to the concert, falling in line with the band’s motto, “Go put a smile on someone’s face, go tell somebody they’ve got a place in this world, go tell somebody you wanna be friends with them.”
“This band and our performance energy really drive to generate a safe space where our audience can come exactly as they are and feel comfortable to do that,” Rae smiled warmly. “We want them to feel that they're very much taken care of and hopefully see themselves represented by at least one person on stage. It's always been about keeping that personal connection between us and the audience. We often say it's a bit of an exchange of energy: we can't live this life that we love and live our dreams unless those people are showing up and supporting us. So, we try to exist in a constant place of gratitude and always find new ways to say thank you and make every single audience member feel important for being there.”
As the band’s fame continues to climb the ladder of success, Rae notes how keeping these intimate connections with their audience is starting to become much greater, though they will continue to find ways to show their listeners how grateful they are for being their friends.
“It was much easier to thank all of our fans at a show when we only had 100 people in the audience, but as we get to these larger venues we’ve found it to be a challenge to figure out how to generate that space of 'Thank you, your individual self, for coming exactly as you are and offering what you are to this fan base, to this world, and to this venue.' It gets particularly hard when you're playing for 5000 people and there's a whole balcony full of people that aren't even lit and you can't see them,” Rae sighed, “But we've found ways of keeping that energy of ‘thank you for being here’, and we continue to find ways to do that. We’re always looking for new ways to say thank you.”
The band’s listening analytics on Spotify alone have gone up almost 100,000 monthly listeners since March, and the band continues to book bigger gigs, and travel further than they had before. Sammy Rae and The Friends will be returning to Europe for a more extensive tour than their first UK stop, for the month of November.
“We did a short UK run this past winter, which was hugely fruitful, very exciting, and very inspiring,” Rae gushed, “However, we only toured the United Kingdom. This time we’re branching into some other places in Europe, such as Ireland and France! We source a great deal of inspiration from the audience and I'm excited to play for some audiences and countries that we've never been able to touch or visit before. It was amazing to see the different ways that our music is consumed and appreciated and we were hugely grateful for being received so fondly in countries aside from the United States. There’s a different sort of fan culture and music consumption culture in the UK that we were very pleasantly surprised and inspired by. Branching out of familiarity leads to inspiration.”
Although Sammy Rae and The Friends feel a loyalty to their home of New York City, traveling to the UK didn’t leave the band too homesick.
“It was amazing, the fan response in London was so similar to the energy of New York City, and we normally find that each city has its own fan resonance and cool appeal,” Rae smiled. “LA is different from Denver, Denver is different from Chicago, it’s all so different; but we were very happy to discover that London and surprisingly Seattle have similar fan energy and interactions as New York City. We also seem to stream almost as well as we do in New York City, in London, sometimes better. We’re very eager to play London again, but bigger this time around!”
The band that thrives on community
Although Sammy Rae and The Friends continue to book bigger venues further away, Rae emphasizes they’ll never forget where they started out.
“I think every New York show is really special because every time we play New York, we expand,” Rae smiled. “When we started, we were booking maybe one show a month and it was for 50 people, but then suddenly it was for 100 people, and then it was for 200 people, and we started to expand in this way that was really rapid. But whenever we come home to New York, I always see faces that I remember from the very early days.”
“A huge memory that I’ll carry with me for quite some time happened just last week: we played Central Park Summer Stage, which is one of the largest, most exciting, and most coveted outdoor venues in New York. It's in the middle of historic Central Park which creates this deep sense of community throughout that whole show, and I recognized so many people from my community at that show, as well as met a collection of new fans; that's really special and those memories are always really powerful -- to play in New York is to also play for your friends,” Rae said warmly. “It can get hard to be a touring musician, being away from your home for a majority of the year can become very lonely, so to return home always feels like a hole has been filled in my soul.”
Seeing as it’s right in the band’s backyard, Rae gushes how their band’s bucket list will never be complete until they perform Madison Square Garden, and with their fan base climbing, and a prospective new album being released by Summer of 2024, that goal becomes more attainable with every song and stream.
“It’s very difficult to write music on the road, so with our next few months of ample time off the road I want to become the band that takes over the city,” Rae grinned. “I love touring more than I love sitting still, but I want to get to a place where our creative process and our communication skills as a band are extremely effective, and we’re being recognized and remembered by our listeners as a band with every album being better than the last.”
Add Sammy Rae and The Friends discography to your playlists today, and keep a watchful eye out for their debut full-length album next summer! Until then, in the words of Sammy Rae and The Friends, do whatever you feel.
