Savannah Conley Talks Her New Single “More Than Fine” & Upcoming Debut Album
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did you know that you wanted to make music?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: It was direct and roundabout at the same time. It's what my family does, they're all musicians or artists and most of them do it as a hobby. My dad is a touring guitar player, my mom was a background singer, so it was always around me and something that I took for granted. My whole family is super artistic and I was really lucky in that way. I’ve always written and sang but I would do it in secret. I would hide learning how to play guitar, I went to college and was avoiding music and that part of myself. When I was 19, I was working a bunch of jobs and going to school and trying to play shows again because I’d met a bunch of people that really inspired me. Then one day, my mom called me and she was like, “You have to pick one school or music, and and you know which one it has to be,” which is the opposite of how it normally goes. So I quit school and signed a record deal three months later.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did growing up in Nasvhille influence you as a musician?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: I was exposed to all kinds of music. My dad loves all kinds of music and my uncles are very different in their tastes, so they exposed me to a lot of stuff. But then I had the classic cousin that knows all the cool stuff. Back then, Nashville wasn’t anything but country music at that point so it was hard to find anything else and he was always getting me underground stuff and burnt CDs that I couldn't find here. It blew my mind. Then Kings of Leon, Jack White, Dana Arbok, Black Keys all moved to Nashville and all these venues started hosting new kind of kind of stuff, which was new for Nashville. Then I got to be a part of an DIY underground basement show here in Nashville for a couple years in late high school and early college. That was really formative for me, getting to see people making music just because they loved it. They didn't make any money but it was awesome. I made a lot of friends in that community and it was really inspiring. So Nashville influenced me in a lot of ways. I love it here, my whole family's here and it has its flaws, no doubt, but you can always find the good.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Turning to your new single “More Than Fine,” what is a lyric or production element you love?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: My favorite part of the song is in the beginning where there's this breath noise. Jeremy, my producer, is an insane drummer, he played all the drums on this record, and one of the mikes was catching him like that. The groove of the song is so tightknit, so he was really focusing and that mike was catching him. I was like, “Leave that. Let's cut it up and bump it up in the mix and make it a real part of the song.” It was such a strange thing that I love. Then my friend Hank came in and did all the guitars. I've known him my whole life and on that song, I kind of watched him unlock a thing that I hadn't seen in him. He was so receptive and was playing in a way that I hadn't heard him play before and I was so impressed. It was awesome.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you see yourself growing as an artist?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: You hear people say this a lot, especially about women, that you have to get mean and tough. I’m a naturally amicable person so I always want to make everyone happy and feel fulfilled and feel good. It’s not necessarily a bad thing on the surface, but when it comes to things like recording, it's easy to let what you want go to the wayside if someone else's opinion is strong enough to put yours down. I started making records when I was 19, a teenage girl in a room full of middle-aged men. I loved all those guys, they were great and very sweet, but it is a different dynamic that you have to learn. I didn't have the wherewithal to say what I really wanted. I stuck up for a lot of things but only to a point. Now it’s been a few years and I’m kind of over it. I'm gonna do exactly what I wanna do, make no compromises or sacrifices. Luckily, we've been in a situation with this record where that luxury was afforded to me. Jeremy allowed me to experiment and be present and active, and we took our time. It also helped that I didn't even have to lay down the law ever with Jeremy. We were on the same page so much of the time that whenever we disagreed, he was like, “Great, that's what you want.” It wasn’t hard, it was so easy to communicate.
[UNPUBLISHED]: In that vein, do you value collaboration as part of the process?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: Totally. Lyrically, I lean heavily on myself. With this record, I wanted every word on this record to be mine and it is with the exception of one line. I’s not because I think I am the smartest lyric writer on the planet, I just wanted the story to be from me. That way it's completely cohesive, the intention is always the same, and it's always coming from the same place, even if it's a wildly different place from where it was written. Past that, I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I love the collaboration process in the studio because I have stuff in my head when I'm writing and how I want it to sound. But as soon as you give that to someone else and especially someone you trust, it's magical to watch them put something new that you never would've thought of, and you're like, “Oh my God, this changes everything.” Jeremy is the perfect example of that. With this record, I made a lot of fleshed out demos beforehand and he ws so great about staying true to this song and how I intended it but also bringing new stuff to the table that was so inspiring. There are a couple songs that he flipped completely on their heads and I could not have imagined where we took them before that. That's really valuable to me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Turning now to the single’s music video, what was it like to film?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: It started as a major pipe dream. I love history so much and I'm obsessed with this weird niche part of the internet that’s all these Instagram videos of these women who buy French château from the 1100s that are falling into disrepair for $5000 and restore them. It’s something I've been obsessed with for years. There's this one woman who bought the most insane chateau and restored it. So I was talking to my creative director and one of my closest friends, Sophia Matza, about the visuals. It's so fun to have friends that you trust creatively. Sophia has done visual I've ever done and we’re both from Nasvhille, we've known each other forever. I pulled up all these photos of these chateau and I was like, “How can we capture this feeling of these homes and these sceneries?” Then she and my friend Jack Justice who is a director here somehow made it happen. I don’t understand how but Jack found this chateau on the Internet and we rented it for a week. We just flew to France and filmed and shot everything there with a team of three people, Sophia and Jacqueline and our friend Cody. It was a true dream team. We were living there and shooting there, and it became this weird time warp where we were like, “Do we live here now? This is just our lives now.” It was something I did not think was possible, but it was, and it was one of the best experiences of my life thus far for sure.
[UNPUBLISHED]: For you, how do the single and music video work together?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: The record and the visuals are a weird hodgepodge of modernity and Victorian stuff. We didn't want it to be a period piece in the 1800s but there's such a romantic quality to the record that I wanted to capture with the visuals. My entire vision board was Pride and Prjudice. I kept saying, “Just imagine Pride and Prjudice but if they were all depressed.” We make sure we touched on all of those things and didn't make it into a costume party by any means, but capture the whimsical and romantic and emotional elements.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How excited are you for your upcoming debut album Playing the Part of You Is Me?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: It’s my first record, so that’s exciting but also terrifying. I wanted build a world, to create a record that is weirdly vulnerable in a way that I needed some element of separation from it. It already feels like my whole diary is just on display for the whole world. It's something that I haven't done before, parts of myself I haven't shown before, which is hard not to be excited about. I'm stoked for people to hear how much work and thought went into it. I hope it makes people feel that we care about them. I really want people to identify with it, and I hope that people feel seen by it and understood.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ll also be embarking on your national tour this month! What do you love about performing live?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: It's my favorite part of everything, I love touring so much. I'm very community oriented and playing shows feels like real world connection. You don't watch people listen to your records but I love seeing people after shows at the merch table and meeting people and hearing stories. And the pack mentality of touring with your band where you only know each other and you're just like this weird little gremlin group living out of a band. I love the connection of that and the bonds that that creates. And then you get to play shows and hang out with your friends and it's super hard, but it's so rewarding and fun.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What place are you especially excited to see while on our?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: I haven't ever played Arkansas before and that's where my family is from. It’s super rare that tours go through Arkansas. My family is all coming and we're staying with my grandma on her farm and she’s coming to the show, and I'm really excited about that. The rest of the places I've played before. St. Louis is always fun. Weirdly, Tampa is such a fun city to play. They have a strip of vintage stores around these venues.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Outside of music, what do you do for fun?
[SAVANNAH CONLEY]: I have a dog who I love hanging out with and going on walks. I'm a big yoga person, I hang out with my friends and my family a lot. I love being outside and reading. I have a lot of grandma hobbies too. My perfect night is where I'll go get dinner with my friends, I'll go to a show, and then I come home, watch two or three episodes of something and I'll embroider on my couch. I bring my embroidery in the van, that's what I do while we're driving. It's so calming.
