Sammy Rae & The Friends have brought their radical joy to Boston once again. The band triumphantly returned for a double feature at the Royale on March 26 and 27 with its 2022 tour, filling the venue with cheerful bliss and uptempo funk. The shows were filled with both optimism and a deep sense of catharsis, having been the band’s final performances before a one-month tour hiatus.
On March 16, the Daily interviewed the band’s frontwoman Samantha Bowers, or Sammy Rae — her stage name.
So who are Sammy Rae & The Friends? They’re a Brooklyn-based collective of musicians who come together to put on a show and to create good times. Fundamental to the band is not only Sammy Rae, lead singer and often public face, but also the slew of performers who come together to create that iconic jazz pop sound. These are her ‘Friends,’ a term Bowers came up with as an ironic statement about the music industry.
“I was seeing a lot of these tour posters for folks who were playing with their bands, and it was [the front person] in really big font, and then on the bottom [the poster] would say ‘and friends,’ in lowercase,” Bowers said. “But like who are these ‘friends’ that you brought tonight? And maybe you’d hear the bassist’s name once or something. So I kind of decided to play on that a little bit, flip it and make Sammy Rae & The Friends.”
In that spirit, it’s important to recognize all of The Friends individually, as they all contribute individual talents and quirks to the broader sound experience. Debbie Tjong is on keyboards and background vocals. Tjong got her strongest breakout moment during the concert from a full-blown keytar feature. On the dueling alto and tenor saxophones is Kellon Reese and Max Zooi respectively, each wailing away with showstopping solos. Then there’s Sebastian “C-bass” Chiriboga on drums, who brought an infectious sense of energy and fun to the show. Rounding out The Friends is Will Leet on guitar and James Quinlan on bass, who each rocked out on raging solo lines at the concert.
When all these forces come together, the result is funk ecstasy. Blaring saxophones and roaring basslines form an auditory party, one that can’t help but inspire you to get up and dance. Bowers overscores this with outstanding vocals, riffing and belting ad infinitum. This, combined with electric stage presence, creates a celebratory concert experience that oozes with cheer and play.
When asked about this emanating sense of joy, Bowers remarked, “We’re just a bunch of people having fun with some of our favorite people on stage. I find that when you get that sort of performance, it lessens that sort of wall there, that fourth wall is kind of transparent and gives the audience permission to have fun.”
This reflects a broader goal of Sammy Rae & The Friends: They value their audience and want them to have a good time.
“We try to move through all this with this sense of humility and gratitude,” Bowers said. “And we understand that all this was an exchange of energy and love, and we can’t have the dream that we have … unless people are supporting us.”
This is undeniable within the show itself, with Bowers and her bandmates spending an extensive amount of time communicating with the audience, recognizing and validating their experiences. The audience supports the band, but the band also supports the audience.
Another reason for this communal sense of release is the band’s undeniable queerness. Bowers herself is a queer-identifying womanwho uses she/they pronouns interchangeably, and much of her songwriting is unabashedly based in queer experience. Even within the show, Bowers paused between songs for her “moment of queer affirmation” in which she personally acknowledged and praised her queer fans, and similarly applauded the allies in the room.
The result was a show filled with the audible effervescence of queer culture.
“While our main goal is to make our music accessible to everybody, my hope is that it particularly elevates folks in the queer community,” Bowers said. “What’s special about us is we have an opportunity to some degree to choose our own family, and community is extremely important to us. So driving home that point of community so much in the live space, I think that queer folk feel attracted to that and comfortable in that.”
Still, even while reveling in the rapture of the present moment, Sammy Rae & The Friends are moving to bigger and better things. With their shows at the Royale being the last of this leg of the tour, and the second-to-last of the tour at large, the question of the future is ever-present. That future, of course, looks oh-so exciting.
“We've got a lot of festival shows coming up this summer, which we’re very excited about, and we plan on recording some new material in the spring,” Bowers said.
This could expand into new realms for the band, with Bowers excitedly expecting new projects.
“[We’d like to produce] music videos, if time will allow. It’s something that I want to continue to make a bigger part of the project.”
Still, with every step forward, Sammy Rae & The Friends want you to know that you’re valued. The listener, and eventually the audience member, is central to the movements of the band. This creates not only the space of love and compassion that was seen at the Royale but also leads to a burgeoning community of followers who feel validated and heard.
Bowers remarked on the recognition the group receives from its supporters.
“With every major decision we make on how to move forward with the band, it's always ‘How do we make sure they realize that we want to say thank you really loud,’” Bowers said. “We always keep saying ‘thank you’ at the forefront of our decision making.”
This gratitude is tangible, felt by every listener and viewer. With this positive outlook Sammy Rae has found not only her titular Friends but also a community of friends across the globe.
