Interview by Ash Widmann

Savings is an emo band based in Albuquerque, NM. Their new single, Stressed Out, drops Friday, July 24th. This week, I hopped on a Zoom call with three of the four band members: Sam, Nick, and Robby. (Grey was unable to join us.) We talked about a lot, from the band’s origins and influences to their new sound, and a bit about what’s coming.

Let’s start by talking about the origin of Savings and their early influences. 

Sam: I’ve been in a band since December of 2021, something around that timeframe. The lineup that we have today has been kind of a culmination over the years. I met Nick through his other band, Right On Kid – they asked us to play a 5 year show for one of their albums. We continued to play shows with them and met Robby, well actually I’ve known Robby forever. Robby’s just like, a brother. And then we met Grey.

Robby: Savings started as a solo project.

Sam: Also true. I guess I should have mentioned that. Savings started as a solo project in my bedroom, and initially got to the point where I wanted to play live shows, so I started gathering musicians. Nick was someone early on who graciously just wanted to play guitar for fun. And then slowly, over time, we met our old guitarist, his name was Dawson, he just moved to Denver. Shout out Dawson! We love Dawson to death. Met Dawson, and then just continued to play shows, and Dawson knew Grey, who’s now our drummer, guitarist, can do everything basically. Grey joined in probably 2023. 

Nick: So that’s been the lineup since then.

Sam: Early influences that have stuck are like Citizen, Movements, the Maine.

Nick: Our influence is kind of ranged. Sam and Robby are super into hip hop as well, so we have a lot of that influence now in our music. It’s always been there, but now it’s kind of going more full-fledged in that direction. I was in a pop punk band, so obviously a lot of my influences are The Story So Far, Neck Deep, that sort of stuff. The ones that for sure have kind of stuck within the last EP have been Trophy Eyes, Citizen (like Sam said), Movement. That’s kind of what we gravitated towards. 

We talked about your influences. You can definitely tell the difference between the earlier stuff versus your later stuff. Talk to me about the evolution of your sound.

Nick: When the band became an actual band, when Get Well Soon came out, a lot of us were more into midwest emo stuff. That sort of influence is definitely more prevalent at that time frame, we started writing songs that sounded like that and kind of flowed into an EP. Obviously all those songs, we still play them, and we love them, but I think a lot of our influence kind of came into culmination when we did How Do You Feel? That was the first time when Robby was added to the mix, as well. Robby kind of helped shape that one pretty definitively in that direction, and it was kind of cool, because it was like, we went out there, and we had these little song ideas – but the sound of it, like what you hear now definitely came from all this kind of pulling our influences together and going that route. Dawson was super into midwest emo back in the day too, so the guitar parts were very much like that. So, How Do You Feel?, when that came about, we were able to individually pull all of our favorite styles and it just came to what that sounds like, which is pretty awesome. Now with our new song that we’re gonna be dropping on the 24th, Stressed Out, we’re still in that same headspace, but we wanted to lean into a lot more of the hip hop roots to have a little of that in there as well. We’re excited for that one to come out.

I was told you guys took a hiatus for a little while. Do you want to talk about any of that?

Sam: It was kind of unintentional, to be honest with you. We all just had a lot going on in our personal lives, and music became more of a stressor than it did something that we were having fun with for a bit, and we allowed ourselves to get to that point. We tried to go out to New York to record what would have been the follow up EP to How Do You Feel? and it was just not the best experience. Shout out to Billy!

Nick: We love Billy to death.

Sam: It was just not the right time for us to continue recording, and I think we all had to kind of get level heads outside of music, whether that be work stuff or whatever. We just had to get back to a point where music wasn’t stressful to approach. And thank God we did. I think it was beneficial for all of us, to be honest with you. Now we have a much better headspace. I think that even goes into how we write and what we write now. Not that anything was disingenuous, but I think we got to a point where we were like, okay, well we have to play a certain type of music, shifted from that to, okay, we get to write whatever we want, and it shows in the music, I think, that it’s more heartfelt. You can feel the emotion. Not that there wasn’t any emotion in the past stuff, but I think we were getting to a point where if we didn’t pump the brakes, that we were gonna come to a screeching halt pretty quick. 

Nick: And I think that’s how this new song came about, too, like lyrically. We were talking a lot about a lot of those themes, like this past couple years that we haven’t put anything out. It was kind of the right time. We wanted to write something very honest, so we’re very excited about that. But I agree, that’s kind of what happened. It was just more so that all of us had stuff going on. 

Robby: Yeah, that sounds about right. A very needed break. But we’re back, and happy to be back.

Sam: I think things moved very quick for us, not in an egotistical way, we just didn’t know what to do except keep moving. And eventually we were kind of like, okay, when can we breathe for a second? We didn’t find moments to do that throughout that process, and it came back to bite us in the ass. Burnout is a very real thing in the creative world. 

Has any of your music been influenced by this current political landscape?

Nick: I think there is some influence in a lot of our songs, probably subtle, but you know, a lot of us share everybody’s collective struggle. I think a lot of our emotion that comes through our music kind of reflects that. We’re going to go out to record now, and I’m curious to see how that all kind of plays out. But yeah, 100%, I think what we love about music is that we can all share sentiment through sound, you know? Through just being able to listen to a song together and kind of feel how that feels and kind of separate yourself from the overall climate that we’re all surrounded by. So I think there’s part of us that’s definitely showcased in our music with that as well. 

Talk to me more about your new song that’s coming out, and your new sound in general.

Nick: I think we’re excited, I think this new song definitely is very honest and speaks from a personal place of like, yeah, we had some struggles the last couple years, and the song has just more of a hopeful sound to it, talking about the overall stress that everyone goes through, and that we went through. And I think we’re excited that this song, we were able to be just very very very honest with where we’re at. And I think a lot of people can share that same sentiment as well. You can take it for what you will. But we definitely wrote about our struggles, dealing with stress and anxiety through these last couple years, and that’s a collective struggle, so I think it’s gonna be awesome that people can listen to the song and feel that sentiment. Sonically I think we were able to pull in some more of the hiphop elements in terms of the vocals, so that was cool. Sam was kind of going back to his roots, too. You know, when the band first started, it was very much in  that headspace and I think it’s cool  that we’re kind of able to reflect  back on that again. But moving forward, we’re gonna be recording two new songs soon, and I am curious to see how those come out. But I think we’re at a better headspace now and we’re all able to pull from our influences very easily, so I think it’ll be awesome to see what happens with that.

Sam: I mean, we kind of just wrote the song for fun, to be real. We kinda got to a spot where a lot of us were like, can I even do this anymore? Like am I capable of writing a good song again? And I think it was a matter of any muscle, you gotta retrain it. We co-produced it with our friend Kai Ross, me and Nick just went to his house because he has a studio, and he primarily does hiphop work, but we work with him. And just on a random Thursday night, were just, hey let’s make a song for fun. We were all just wanting to be creative again just for the sake of being creative. There wasn’t really an end goal in mind with the song, it was kinda like, hey you make music, we make music, let’s have fun. And then we did, and it slowly culminated into kind of what Nick was saying, we were in a season of, I don’t wanna say doubt, but in a season where we didn’t really know  what was coming next. And it was in our hands to kind of build that, and we did. But it’s hopefully gonna be received where people will receive music and digest it any way they want. But the song was written from a standpoint of ours that you don’t know what the next day, the next week, the next month will look like, and to just hold out hope and know that there’s beauty in the unknown, basically. 

So you said you’re recording some new stuff soon. Can you tell me about that?

Nick: It’s the very early stages. Obviously there’s a little bit of uncertainty with that. As Sam said, this last song that we wrote was just for fun, and we didn’t have any expectations. And we’re kind of going into this with that same mindset. So we have ideas, and we’re very excited with the direction that these could go. And that’s kind of  the fun of writing music, and that’s what I’ve always loved with music, is that I don’t know what’s gonna come from it until we’re there and do it. But I think we’re gonna be able to be honest and be able to write about things we’re going through, and we’re very excited for that. 

Sam: Yeah, we’re recording with Pete Zen. It’ll be fun, we leave on Sunday, we’re gonna spend the week in LA and we play Camp Emo at Warped Tour on that Saturday, so it’s gonna be a fun day, just getting new tunes up and running, getting to hang out with  fans and people we haven’t seen in a long time. It’s gonna be cool, it’s a privilege, we’re really grateful for all of it. 

Let’s talk about your connection to your fanbase.

Nick: It’s always cool to see over the years how Savings has grown. When we play shows we’re not really expecting anything, but it’s been cool that we go out of town and have people actually singing back our lyrics. And just meeting them when we’re selling merch or whatever, just talking to people, and just having that collective connection with music is awesome. It’s cool to see that our little community that we’re trying to build grow. And every time we play a show it’s always getting better and better. It’s awesome just to be around that. People have a connection to something we wrote, or what we’re feeling, and just having that overall connection is awesome.

Sam: I think at the end of the day, we started making music in the first place because music was very close and dear to my heart, as far as an emotional outlet, it’s always provided words to things that I couldn’t process out loud. Like I just couldn’t figure out how to say it. So we’re grateful that we get to have and experience moments with fans at shows and the merch table and whatever. People come up and are like, hey this really helped me get through X, Y, and Z. And I think that’s the most important thing that I care about as a musician is just like, I was able to kind of turn the tables and be able to be the person that gets to help someone through something, just like y’all did for me at one point in time. That’s what I feel most grateful for. Shoutout to everybody. We really can’t do it without anybody who supports us. We wouldn’t be anywhere without you guys. We’re very grateful and indebted to y’all. So  thank you.

Robby: We’ve been teasing our song on our socials, and on TikTok someone commented “welcome back” and it was cool to see that. 

Sam: It was also kind of an unknown thing for us, we’re just like, do people still give a fuck about us? 

Nick: When we posted our snippets, it was like I said a level of uncertainty where it’s been a minute. We played some out of town shows the last couple years, but we haven’t really dropped any music, so we were just curious to see. But it seems so far it’s good so we’re excited. 

Sam: I’ll keep saying it ‘til I’m blue in the face, but we’re just grateful for people who stuck around, people who have been here since the beginning, fans, whoever they may be, we’re here for it and we appreciate everything.

Stressed Out will be available for streaming on July 24.