Exclusive Q&A: Saves The Day Find New Hope in 'Daybreak'

posted in: Exclusive Interviews • Features • Rock

Leave it to pop punk godfathers Saves The Day to prove that concept albums are not just the province of sci-fi obsessed prog rock bands. Having endured numerous changes in membership and label relations over the years, the band has retained only one consistent member in frontman Chris Conley. Compared to the vicissitudes of Saves The Day’s career so far, the challenge of writing a three-part series of concept albums seems like a welcome one. Daybreak, the final album in the three-part saga that also includes Sound The Alarm and Under The Boards was released last week on Razor & Tie. We recently caught up with Conley to talk about his love of Bowie, his opinion of the group’s earliest material and what it’s like to be a huge influence on an entire generation of young bands.

OS: Daybreak is going to complete Saves The Day’s three-album-long concept arc. What’s your favorite concept album by another band?

CC: My favorite concept album is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars by David Bowie. It’s a weird album with a weird concept featuring killer songs and bizarre production. I love the compositions and I love his voice. Arun and I listened to Ziggy on repeat while working on the demos for Daybreak.

OS: You’ve already collaborated with Say Anything’s Max Bemis on your Two Tongues project. Who’s another artist that you’d like to collaborate with?

CC: I’d love to work with Jeremy Enigk from Sunny Day Real Estate. I was thoroughly obsessed with Sunny Day in high school and beyond, and I love his voice and his writing style. I’m pretty sure his singing is one of the reasons I sing in such a high register, and I think we could make some funky music together.

OS: I recently read a great magazine piece about you and your daughter. How has being a father affected your lyrics and the themes you choose to write about?

CC: Well, being a father was one of the main reasons I embarked on a mission to bring my heart back to life through the writing of the trilogy. I didn’t want to be an angry dad. I didn’t want to raise my daughter to be cynical and disconnected from society. So I reached down into my heart and brought myself out of a nasty funk in order to be a better example for her and for my family. I needed to come back to the world and meet it with a caring and compassionate heart, as opposed to feeling alienated and angry.

OS: Your music has very intense personal meaning for a lot of people. How do you feel about listeners interpreting a song differently than you intended when you wrote it?

CC: I think it’s great that people connect with the music. It doesn’t matter to me if their concept of the song is different from my own, as long as it means something to them and it helps them get through a difficult time in their life or helps them connect to a part of themselves they had forgotten. That’s one of the real powers of music, to speak to people in a language beyond words, where the emotion expressed is what matters. I might be singing about longing for peace in my heart or hoping for a better world, and someone might interpret that as longing for someone to hold. To me, both of those interpretations are about hoping for the best.

OS: Saves The Day has been hugely influential to a lot of current young bands. What’s it like to perform alongside groups who’ve cited STD as their main influence?

CC: It’s wild when a band comes up to me and says they started playing because of Saves the Day. It’s an honor to be an influential musician, and in many ways, it means more than material success. I enjoy the positive feedback, and at times it has helped me persevere through the many ups and downs in my musical career. One of my favorite moments was watching Steel Train do an entire set of Saves The Day covers at 2010’s Hoodwink. What a treat!

OS: The tenth anniversary of Stay What You Are was this summer. How do you look back now on some of your earliest songs, especially from the Can’t Slow Down era?

CC: I feel proud of all the albums, and I’m blown away at the level of honesty in each record. Even though I’m sometimes overwhelmed in my emotional life, it’s as if I’m totally unafraid to share the twists and turns of dealing with the turmoil. I’m thankful I’ve been able to continue making music, and I believe my longevity is due to the sincerity in the songs. When you write about what is true for you, people can connect with it, since we all share a similar life journey, albeit under differing circumstances. When we play songs from Can’t Slow Down now, as a thirty-one-year-old man, I’m amazed to be able to continue connecting with the lyrics, as if some of the words were coming from such a deep place that they still resonate in the depths of my heart, even fourteen or fifteen years after writing the songs. I also still enjoy the actual compositions. Even though I continued growing as a songwriter, the early music has an urgency and a melodic purity that excites me to this day.

OS: If you were to actually “save the day,” what super power would you choose?

CC: While this isn’t your typical super power, I’d choose the ability to reach into people’s hearts and minds and fill them with love and acceptance so they could feel more at ease and face the vicissitudes of life with more grace and composure.

Check out Saves The Day’s fall tour dates in support of Daybreak!