Sammy Rae & The Friends

indie rock · pop rock · folk

Sammy Rae & the Friends is a seven-piece band formed in Brooklyn, New York in 2016 and led by Samantha Rae Bowers, born January 4, 1994 in Derby, Connecticut, who performs as Sammy Rae. The group works a jazz-pop hybrid that pulls in soul, rock and classic pop, with two saxophones in the front line, layered ensemble vocals and arrangements written to hand solos around rather than centre one voice. The lineup is Sammy Rae on lead vocals, C-Bass Chiriboga on drums, James Quinlan on bass, Will Leet on guitar, Debbie Tjong on keyboards, Max Zooi on tenor saxophone and synthesizers, and Kellon Reese on alto saxophone. Bowers cites Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Queen, Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles as models, and the influence shows in a live show built on band interplay and sustained audience participation, with call-and-response and sing-alongs as structural parts of the set rather than encores. The recorded catalog is the EPs The Good Life (2018) and Let's Throw a Party (2021), the concert album The If It All Goes South Tour (2023), and the studio albums Something for Everybody (2024) and Songs We Wish We Wrote (2025), the last a set of interpretations. Bowers moved to New York from Connecticut in her early twenties and assembled the group from her own circle of players, which is where the Friends billing comes from. The band built its audience largely through touring rather than radio or singles, selling out Brooklyn Steel in 2021 and Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club in 2024, running headline dates across North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, and playing festivals including Newport Folk, Bonnaroo's main stage, the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, Bourbon & Beyond, Sound on Sound and All Things Go.

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