Meet Sav Buist

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sav Buist.

Hi Sav, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself. 
I was born into music in the sense that when my parents – who are professional musicians – met in Nashville and had me, I was suddenly entrenched in a multi-faceted world that constitutes the music industry. I knew what the inside of a tour bus looked like as a kid, and I grew up singing every single word of every Nickel Creek, The Chicks, and Indigo Girls song I could get a hold of. I sang in my own language for a long time, but it was as natural to me as the bones in my body in that sometimes I forgot that a musical inkling existed within me. I never considered it as something I could ever do for a living, even when I started hearing harmonies at nine years old, even when at twelve I picked up violin in elementary school and joined a band with my parents that they formed to help me learn the ropes of confidence, improvisation, and flexibility. 

It wasn’t until I met Katie Larson at 16 years old that I was inspired to play other instruments and write songs. These were things that she did with ease – she moved from cello to guitar to ukulele to bass with the kind of subconscious self-confidence that an introvert like me craved. Songs poured out of her, quirky and funny and clever like the songs we both liked to listen to, and I wanted to try my hand at it. I went from only singing harmonies and playing violin to learning viola, mandolin, banjo, guitar, bass, and even musical saw. I went from writing books that only I would ever read, to songs that went straight onto our first record, which featured the first five songs I ever wrote. 

Since then, our journey of 12 years together has been almost impossible to describe. It’s involved going to school for music, to avoiding going to school for music and taking a production deal instead; major labels and lawsuits to get out of them; stolen trailers and car crashes; bookshelves and tightly-tucked in sheets of stranger’s houses; shows in caves and swimming pools and festivals of 50,000 people to bars where only the bouncer and the bartender are in attendance. From the ages of 18 to 26, I toured 250+ shows a year as part of a band we formed called The Accidentals – a name that still describes us well. Accidentally falling into every opportunity, from the moment we met to the accidents that we found a way to bounce back from along the way. 

The faces and the names have changed along the way too, regarding the people we carry in our van – but that’s life. We’ve always leaned on each other at the end of the day, and we still do. 

During the pandemic, we switched gears and started engineering our own albums. I started school for biology, taking two online courses at a time, and wrote a livestreaming manual that turned me into a temporary live-streaming consultant for everyone from artists like Kim Richey to venues like The Ark and the Bluebird Cafe to institutions like Folk Alliance International and the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs. 

Once we emerged from our makeshift studio/cave with three more albums under our belts, we moved down to Nashville for co-writing and session work. As a string team, Katie (who plays cello among other instruments) and I (violin, viola, upright bass) have played on dozens of records, ranging from K-pop band BTS to songs that entered the Eurovision scheme to artists like Sawyer Fredericks, Jax Anderson, Brendan James, The Crane Wives, and many others. We also started co-writing with people who inspired us to become writers – Beth Nielsen Chapman, Kim Richey, Tom Paxton, Dar Williams, Gary Burr, Georgia Middleman, Maia Sharp, David Wilcox, Gretchen Peters, Mary Gauthier, and Jaimee Harris, to name a few – and it changed the way we wrote. It also shifted my perspective on writing as a whole. I love rock and roll, but it eats lyrics for breakfast. The multi-instrumentalist side of me, and the frontman/sideman side of me, was thriving, but the songwriter in me wanted exploration. 

So, with that, I started writing songs that didn’t hold back on that idea. And pretty soon I had an album of songs that didn’t quite fit with what The Accidentals currently have to offer to the world. I’m calling it the Mockingbird Suite because I’ve always really related to the mockingbird – I’ve sung harmonies ever since I was a kid, and I’ve always tried to emulate the voices of the people who inspire me the most – and in the mess of it all, it can be hard to find the individual voice. But the mockingbird has one, even in its messy recapitulations, if you listen closely. This album is all about listening closely. I’m looking forward to putting it out there. 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think “musician” and “smooth road” could be oxymorons. And maybe we’re the oxymorons for thinking it could ever be any different. We do have a healthy sense of perspective though. Ani Difranco has a line in her song “Terrifying Sight” that reads “Even in your darkest hour / You’re luckier than anyone you know.” I hold true to that. Regret is not something I experience very often, because even my darkest hours have been my turning points, my hardest lessons. I could go on and on about the stolen trailer, the car crash that followed, the pandemic that ripped away all I’d ever known from the road, the violins crushed by cars undertire and the guitars that fell off stands and shattered…and in the past, I have. But I hate doing that because of something that happened after we explained all of this to a handful of students at a songwriting workshop we did in Arkansas. One kid raised his hand and asked, “Why are you so unlucky?” 

“We’re actually SO LUCKY,” I explained. Because we were. We had a community that lifted us up every single time we fell down. We had sponsors who didn’t bat an eye as they replaced gear not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES between the tornado that once completely wiped our mics and our board out of the picture, the trailer theft, and the van/trailer totaling. We had a woman at Hennessey Trailers in Pennsylvania who once stayed three hours overtime to fix the wheel bearings of our trailer that were so shot it was dangerous for us to travel. When my pedalboard was stolen, and I posted (jokingly) that the real loss had been the Star Wars blanket protecting the pedals inside, I was sent three Star Wars blankets in the mail. I don’t even think unlucky is the right word for us. It’s simply the catalyst for luckiness. At least in this band. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I do a lot of things. I like to joke that I have my hands in many cookie jars, and I’m just trying not to get my arm stuck in any of them. I write songs, I co-write songs, I engineer (I’m audio tech certified), I’ve scored for movies and TV shows, I play multiple instruments, I host two Patreon pages (one for The Accidentals and one for my solo project), I do session work on everything with strings from violin to banjo, I learn whatever I don’t know, and on the side, I’ve been working towards a degree in biology and writing an undergraduate thesis with focuses in empathy, altruism, neurobiology, and vocal mimicry – with the eventual goal being to understand how music works in the brain. 

I think I’m most proud of my flexibility. A lot of people very close to me think I work really hard, but sometimes it hardly feels like working. I think I thrive off of passion for what’s around me. I want to understand not just what a thing is but how it works. I want to unpack it for everything it is. To some extend, I think that’s what songwriting is – looking at something from every angle and drawing some very human conclusion from it. But it’s also how I learned to engineer, how I learned – and taught – livestreaming during the pandemic, how I learned to play other instruments, why I started digging into the biological mechanisms of music, and more. That passion is a gift – and sometimes a curse – but mostly a gift. 

I don’t think it’s about setting me apart from anyone. In fact, I’ve found that diversifying what I do has brought me closer to more people that I might not have found had I shut myself off from anything. I’ve garnered more opportunity, more friendship, and more collaboration from remaining open. If I don’t know how to do something, I ask. I put myself out there on the regular. I’ve become really vulnerable and raw, and in the process, I feel I’ve become brave, and also have created a safety net of people I trust and admire. 

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
If you want to be a part of the process, and if you’re curious about creativity, our Patreon Pages – www.patreon.com/theaccidentals and www.patreon.com/savbuist – get into the nitty gritty. Plus, it’s super fun. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.savbuist.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savbuistmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savbuistmusic/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@savbuistmusic
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/savbuist

Image Credits
Jay Gilbert
Nathan Strait