Introducing The Savage Poor

Thomas Gerbasi
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read
The Savage Poor (photo by Wyatt McSpadden)

The Savage Poor’s debut album, The Grown Ups, won’t hit the rest of the world until Aug. 18, but when people in Austin get a dose of it during the band’s release party at the One-2-One bar tonight, they’ll hear not only a good ol’ fashioned rock and roll band, but one not afraid to tackle today’s world in song.

Right on time.

“Very unfortunately, it does seem like the right time,” said frontman Jeff Brown. “I wish that it wasn’t, but it does seem like it is. I felt like you could see certain elements of what’s going on right now coming down the pike for a while and it seems very clear that we were headed to a very strange place.”

Yet when listening to the 11 tracks on the album, it’s clear that this strange place we now inhabit could be anywhere, not just the United States, and almost any time in history. In other words, this isn’t a 2017 record that will sound like a 2017 record in twenty years.

“It was very important that the record had a political element to it, but I also wanted to make sure that it wasn’t topical in the sense that, just like reading a newspaper article, it would date instantly,” Brown said. “So whenever addressing the kind of things that are going on, I tried to do it in a poetic sense that would adapt as time changed and would have other things to say.”

Formed in 2016 by Brown and his brother Ben, The Savage Poor (The Brown brothers, Roger Wuthrich, Alex Moralez) is anchored by a sibling bond that is rooted in the blue collar values of their native Pennsylvania.

“There’s only been two years in our whole lives that we’ve lived apart,” he said. “We’ve always been roommates, we’ve always played music together and we have our differences from time to time, but we get along pretty well.”

This core and upbringing allows the band to be unique in Austin, a city surrounded by musicians everywhere you look, and one where it could be easy to get lost in the shuffle.

“Like any music town, like Nashville or New York, there’s always a challenge to it because there’s so much going on that you’ve got to work to do something that’s your own,” Brown said. “I think coming originally from the Northeast and not abandoning those things that we loved growing up helped us a good bit.”

As for those things, Brown is quick to credit some of the greats as influences, and it’s clear that they’ve become part of his musical DNA, if not in sound, then definitely in spirit.

“A lot of my favorite songwriters are from the Northeast,” he said. “I love Lou Reed, for instance, he’s one of my all-time heroes. I grew up learning to play guitar to Ramones records, so those things are always a fundamental building block of whatever we did. Even if I wanted to get away from that stuff, I couldn’t because I grew up with it and it’s still in my stereo a large part of the time.”

And no matter what happens with the release of The Grown Ups, Jeff Brown and The Savage Poor are here to stay.

“I guess when it comes to music, I’m almost obsessive-compulsive about it,” he said. “I go to sleep with headphones on, I wake up in the morning and the first thing I’m doing is listening to a record. I’m just obsessed with it, and ever since I got into it as a teenager, I’ve always been like that. Even if I were to do something else, I couldn’t get away from it. I probably won’t die with a large bank account (Laughs), but I almost can’t do anything else.”

The Savage Poor plays the One-2-One Bar in Austin, TX tonight, July 26. For more information, click here

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No reviews, just features on the people who make the music - all music. From rock and rap to country and pop, if you listen to it, I'll write about it.

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