Check Out Sav Buist’s Story

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

Hi Sav, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Katie and I met in our public high school orchestra program at Traverse City West Senior High. Katie was (and is) a cello player, and I played violin. Our orchestra teacher, Ann Marie Jones, set up this thing called the Alternative Styles for Strings Club, so a few of us used to stay after school and play arrangements of Led Zeppelin or Coldplay songs together. One day she asked for volunteers to represent the Alternative Styles for Strings Club and play a few songs for an after-school meeting – Katie and I were the only two to raise our hands. Katie came over to my house to rehearse it and I was in the process of moving so there was stuff everywhere, namely a guitar case lying on the ground in the living room. Katie lit up when she saw it, got it out, and started playing the song “We’re Gonna Be Friends” by the White Stripes. I grabbed my ukulele and pretty soon we were jamming on that and not at all rehearsing for what we were supposed to be rehearsing for. We decided to be a band that night, though we were really just acquaintances at the time.

Since then, we’ve added our drummer Michael Dause, toured 250+ shows a year on average for eight years, released an album through a major label, worked with our dream list producers, played all kinds of venues in at least 48 states, the UK, and Canada; opened for artists like Brandi Carlile, Arlo Guthrie, The Decemberists, Martin Sexton, Keller Williams, and more; scored music for multiple films (Almost Home, One Simple Question) and landed sync placement in shows like The Boys (Amazon Prime) and Boardwalk Empire (HBO); done hundreds of workshops across the country for students anywhere from ages 5-25; played hundreds of festivals including Electric Forest, High Sierra, SXSW, Rocky Mountain Folk Fest, Four Corners, Sisters Folk Festival, Americana Fest, and Folk Alliance International; and won songwriting competitions like Kerrville NewFolk (2021) and Songwriter Serenade (2022). We’ve also engineered and self-produced our last four records, including an indie-rock album called Vessel, two EPs of co-writes with Kim Richey, Dar Williams, Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gretchen Peters, Tom Paxton, Maia Sharp, and more; and an album of songs performed and arranged with a studio youth orchestra called the Kaboom Collective.

We are still touring full-time, teaching workshops on songwriting and improvisation, engineering our own records (working on a covers album and our next EP of co-writes called Time Out Session #3, as well as a children’s record with Tom Paxton), and doing all kinds of session work on violin and cello.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It’s been crazy. Before the big ones, we had all kinds of vehicular mishaps – trailers with broken axles, vans where the brakes went out in the mountain ranges, and tires that blew in the process of going from 90 degrees Texas to 30 degrees Michigan. Then in January 2019, we had a van engine failure that pulled us into a car shop in Tucson, AZ. We were told that we needed to take the trailer off the van, so we parked it outside our hotel room. The next day, we found out that the engine needed to be replaced in the van, AND the trailer had been stolen out of the parking lot while we were sleeping – as well as all the gear inside of it. Luckily a ton of people donated to a GoFundMe that was set up for us, and all of our gear sponsors – Shure, Takamine, Fender, Boss/Roland, LR Baggs, D’Addario, Liquid Violins, NS Design, Mark Schwartz Violins, Knudsen Violins, and more – pitched in to get us back on our feet.

A few months later, with our van’s new engine and a brand new trailer full of replaced gear, our drummer and sound engineer were driving the rig downstate in Michigan when a car blew a red light and slammed into the van. While they were both okay, the trailer flipped twice and both the van and trailer were totaled.

Then 2020 happened… haha.

The thing about us is that we’re never even given a moment to consider whether or not we should keep going. We’re pretty privileged to have a support system that extends its branches far and wide across the United States – all the host homes and people who have put us up; people who have sent gas cards in the mail; people on our Patreon; gear sponsors who just smile at the recent mishaps and send us with new gear without batting an eye. We are so dang lucky to be able to dust ourselves off and keep going. It may not be a smooth road, but it’s a lot smoother thanks to the community that exists within this genre of music and the community of people willing to keep the ball rolling.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We are known for playing all kinds of genres of music on all kinds of instruments. I (Sav) write about 50% of the songs, sing lead and harmony, and play the violin, mandolin, guitar, and bass for The Accidentals; but I also play banjo, electric guitar, upright bass, and viola. I’m an audio engineer and did a year of school for it before hitting the road full-time. I’ve been playing professionally in this act for 11 years, but I knew how to wrap a cable when I was 10 years old and started singing harmony and playing violin with my family around that time. Katie writes 50% of the songs, sings lead and harmony, and plays cello, electric guitar, and bass, as well as an accordion. She’s also got a real eye for film, editing, and storyboarding our last couple of music videos. Michael plays drums and sings harmoniously, and he’s also a guitar player, bassist, and audio engineer with his own studio in Grand Rapids, MI.

Together, Katie and I use programs like Finale to score music for film and for orchestral accompaniments. We co-write with people who have inspired us to become writers. We’re most proud of, as I like to joke, having our hands in a lot of cookie jars without ever getting our arms stuck. Yes, there’s viability to doing a lot of things that make having a full-time career as a musician possible; but we also really enjoy the process of being able to break outside of any and every box that people find comfortable to put us in. We’ve never been one thing and we never intend to be. It’s one marketer’s worst nightmare and another marketer’s dream project.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Our biggest piece of advice is to not be afraid to ask for help or to reach out to those who inspire you. When we were first starting out, we reached out to all our favorite local acts asking if we could play their opening slots; we’re now friends with all of those musicians and feel entrenched in the Michigan music community, and because of those Michigan roots, we’re finding our foothold in the Nashville music community as well.

We reached out to people like Kim Richey and Dar Williams and Beth Nielsen Chapman asking if they would ever be interested in co-writing, and they all said yes. We asked our local breweries, co-ops, and coffee shops to take a chance on a couple of teenagers when we were first starting out, and they all helped us get our start.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theaccidentalsmusic.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theaccidentalsmusic
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/theaccidentals
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/moreaccidentals
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/moreaccidentals
• Other: www.patreon.com/theaccidentals

Image Credits
Jay Gilbert, Anna Sink, and Brian Hockensmith