S.A.M. burst onto the national scene with their “11:59“ EP in 2019. The debut single “10 Feet Tall” made it into regular rotation at SiriusXM Octane and Music Choice Rock while establishing the band at Active Rock Radio, peaking at #35 on the BDS and Mediabase charts. The band’s fortunes reached new heights when “10 Feet Tall” was used in promos for the 2019 ESPY awards, and aired as bumpers throughout the ABC telecast of the show. Follow-on singles “Heartless Machine” and “Unleash” helped solidify their place in the Rock firmament. The band received stellar reviews for their live shows from tours with Shinedown, Papa Roach, Sick Puppies, In This Moment, and Memphis May Fire.  Here’s our interview with the vocalist, JT Shaheen!

Beginnings:

The band has been together for almost 12 years. We’ve gone through several name changes and label changes to finally get to the iteration of the project we have today. We met each other while playing in local bands in Memphis, but we’ve been playing shows together for many years.

Behind the name:

We rattled a ton of names around for months while writing our first batch of songs, this one always stuck out as a unique identity to the guys and to the sound, so we went with it.

Inspiration:

Too many to name! We look up to country music artists just as much as metal bands. Music is music, anyone doing it at a high level we pull from and respect. Growing up I think all of us loved classic rock and metal, then as the years progressed started getting into the more synthetic production styles of the EDM movement, all those influences came together to make the band we have today.

We’re always working on new songs, and we try to grab the energy of the room or the time we’re living in to write about. I think lyrically that’s the best way to write – based on what you’re feeling and can relate to at that moment. We like to think of music as a timestamp of that particular moment.

Teamwork:

It depends on the record or session. For the most part, we work together as a band and with whatever writers and musicians to formulate the roadmap to our sound. We’ve been so lucky this go around to have an amazing group of writers come together. Every session is different though – there are times our guitar player will come up with a lead guitar line, then turn around and hear the vocal hook, and boom, we record it! Our writing style can get pretty chaotic at times, but we seemed to have figured it out.

COVID-19:

Honestly, it was kinda nice to have some time off the road, obviously, we missed the hell out of it…. But having some time off to write was nice! I think what we missed the most was the fans though – we definitely feed off their energy!