Brooklyn-based musician Sammy Rae, frontperson of her band Sammy Rae & The Friends, is no stranger to Boston. Last October, the high-energy jazz-pop fusion band sold out Roadrunner despite having only a handful of EPs and singles under its belt. Now, the band is coming back to the venue Sept. 21 for another headline show on its “CAMP” tour. Ahead of the show, Rae took the time to chat with GBH News about Boston, touring and more.
Excerpts from the interview follow, and you can listen to the whole interview above.
Molly McCaul: So you have a tour kicking off soon — how are you feeling about that?
Sammy Rae: We’ve been off the road for the last several months working on an album, which is the first time that we've been off the road for so long. We haven't really played tour shows in succession one after another in nine months, which is crazy. So it's special. We're definitely ready to get back on the road.
McCaul: And you just announced a whole new leg of the tour today.
Rae: Yeah, the whole southeast spring leg. It’s great because the tour that’s going to happen after this [“CAMP” tour], whenever that is, is the album tour, promoting the album. And this “CAMP” tour isn’t really promoting anything. It’s just a world that we got to build and live in for a couple of months, which we’re excited about, because it is a fully conceptualized world that we feel really good about.
When we get to album land, whatever that tour looks and feels like, that’s 11 brand new songs. So we’re going to start taking some old favorites out of the rotation. We don’t have too much new stuff that we’re trying to promote [at the moment], so we can really stretch out with some of the stuff that we have been playing for a while, which is exciting musically.
McCaul: Tell me more about this world that you built for this tour. What has that been like, building that world? What do you hope comes out of it?
Rae: Every tour, my house is always full of stuff. For [our last tour,] the “Follow Me Like The Moon” tour, the set was basically some pampas grass and faux feathers in the colors of the single cover.
[For this tour,] we don’t have single art to base it off of. We’re just kind of inventing this whole thing from scratch, and we’re just trying to bring the outdoors indoors and create a cool little campsite onstage. In my living room [right now], there’s a four-foot, five-foot and six-foot faux fir tree. It feels like the outdoors is taking over my home at the moment, which it is, and we’re excited to take over these venue spaces with that same design.
McCaul: What does camp as a concept mean to you?
Rae: I think what’s cool about camp as a cultural and artistic and fashion statement is it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is the name of the game in this band. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, we try not to take anything too seriously. It’s a lot about embracing our inner child.
We recently put out a song, "Cold-Hearted Man," which is a little bit of a “down with the patriarchy” political statement in a very, very campy, sort of on-the-nose but silly way. And that’s something we’re excited about standing in — being fully present for who we are.
Something we’ve been thinking about a lot recently, too, is that we’re not 21 going on tour anymore. We’re 30. And the audience, I think, has grown up with us and we definitely trust them. They trust us. It gives us a lot of permission to be who we’ve always been, but in this new light.
McCaul: You went on an album retreat earlier this summer. Would you say that it affected your approach to touring or songwriting?
Rae: We’ve always gone on writing retreats. It’s so loud in New York City, it’s so loud on the road, it’s really hard to arrange. When it’s time to make new music, we’ll go and retreat to the woods and get a house. We did that twice over the course of this last year. We recorded the album retreat-style for eleven days up in Woodstock, New York. It’s been brief moments of us living in community again, which is great to remind us of what that’s like.
McCaul: So you’re playing Roadrunner in Boston this week. You guys played that venue last fall as well. What are your feelings about returning to that space, especially since you sold it out last time and recorded tracks for your live album there?
Rae: Roadrunner is one of the coolest venues we’ve ever played, and it was an honor to play it and sell it out last time we were here, especially so close to it opening [in March 2022]. It was one of those “oh my god, this is what league we’re in” moments because it’s such a legendary venue. We’re very excited to come back, especially now that we know what’s up, and it’s always a joy to revisit a venue a second time. It’s a highlight of the tour, by far.
McCaul: What can fans who were at the show last October expect to be different this time around?
Rae: We’re rearranging some of the tunes that everybody knows and loves a little more acoustically, sort of a campfire [singalong] way, which we’re excited about. I won’t tease any of that, but there are some favorites that people are used to hearing in a big, full-band arrangement, which have now at this point been playing for, like, six years. So we’re excited to breathe this new life into them.
McCaul: What are you looking forward to in Boston or over the course of the tour as a whole?
Rae: It’s hard to explain, but there’s a sense of going back to work. There’s a sense of schedule. My day is laid out and I know exactly what I’m doing, when I’m doing it. And it’s fun, it’s special, it’s an adventure. But more than anything, it’s work. So to be home for a year, almost, and set my own schedule every day got kind of taxing. I’m very excited to be back in the zone.
We’re psyched. Boston’s awesome. It was one of the first cities we were able to play outside of New York, because we couldn’t travel the furthest, so it always feels like a home away from home.
