Senses Fail and Saves the Day celebrate their New Jersey roots

In the late ’90s, an 18-year-old literary misfit penned fervent lyrics while waiting for class to start at NYU and traveling back to Princeton to see his girlfriend. Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool went on to influence everyone around them, including Senses Fail’s Buddy Nielsen. It’s only appropriate, then, that Saves the Day and Senses Fail are in the midst of a New Jersey Vs. The World tour, where they are playing through their landmark albums — Through Being Cool and Let It Enfold You — for their anniversaries. Those releases blasted the aspiring Jersey musicians into mainstream spotlight, where their hard-hitting, rousing blend of emo, punk, and hardcore was guided by their hometown scenes. Let It Enfold You and Through Being Cool exploded with emotion, but while Senses Fail expressed raging post-hardcore intensity, Saves the Day were relaxed, contrasting gleaming melodies against their hardcore upbringing in the New Jersey underground.

Read more: 9 bands commonly mistaken as emo who really aren’t

Time, family, and inner work have changed the meaning of these songs, but the titles still ring true. “Through Being Cool means surrendering to the reality of things as they are,” Saves the Day bandleader Chris Conley shares. “Staying true to yourself despite what others might say, think, or feel.” “[Let It Enfold You means] to be as truthful and honest with yourself in order to live fully,” Nielsen adds. The run continues until early December, including a special Veeps stream that will capture their stop at The Wellmont Theater in New Jersey.

Over email, we caught up with the two frontmen to talk about New Jersey stereotypes, literary idols, and tour memories while they were on the road.

Because the title of this co-headliner is New Jersey Vs. The World Tour, tell me about growing up there. What was the music scene like then vs. now, and what are some of your favorite stereotypes about your hometown or New Jersey in general?

CHRIS CONLEY: Growing up in New Jersey was character-building — it’s the most densely populated state in the U.S., so you’re elbow to elbow with all walks of life, edged out of the way if you don’t learn to get along with your surroundings. People can develop a chip on their shoulder just learning to navigate all those jughandles. Back then, the underground music scene was a shelter for freaks and geeks alike who were in considerably smaller numbers than they are now, and it wasn’t weird at all to have blue hair or face tattoos. You could be yourself and belong.

Sometimes New Jersey could get a bad rap for being an angry, unenlightened, and unwelcoming place, but in those sweaty VFW halls and community college parking lots, you could find yourself right at home among like-minded progressives who became your found family of friends overnight as you sang along to your favorite bands side by side. I’m sure, somewhere in that vast territory, the same spirit is alive and well even today.

BUDDY NIELSEN: The No. 1 stereotype is that everyone from New Jersey is a jerk and an asshole, and that is pretty true. Except for the fact that everyone has the biggest heart and is absolutely amazing. You aren’t allowed to make right turns — you have to use the things called jughandles. The music scene was amazing growing up. There were shows every weekend from local and national bands all over the state in almost every corner of the state. With the proximity to Philadelphia and NYC, it just makes for a really interesting area to be. I feel like I am sure that people are still continuing the legacy of the NJ local scene today.

It feels like for so many people, Let It Enfold You and Through Being Cool never left their car in high school. What were the albums you were playing on loop when you were in school?

CONLEY: When I got my driver’s license in 1997, the first CD I slapped into my stereo was Hello Bastards by Lifetime, and I cranked the volume and blasted it so loud they could hear it in Kansas. Another few favorites from back then were Start Today by Gorilla Biscuits, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by Jawbreaker, Maniacal Laughter by the Bouncing Souls, and By the Grace of God’s For the Love of Indie Rock.

NIELSEN: Hell yeah. I spent a lot of time listening to Through Being Cool! I was addicted to Thursday’s Full Collapse, and Bad Religion’s Against the Grain was a big one for me. I listened to a lot of comps that had a lot of different bands and different styles. 

Do you have any favorite touring stories from these eras of the band?

CONLEY: Leaving New Jersey for our first few trips up and down the East Coast still shines brightly in my mind — playing between the racks in a record store in Virginia, slipping around the concrete floor of a squat in Philly, sleeping on kitchen tiles next to a one-eyed cat at a birdbath factory in Maine… memories to last a lifetime! But by far the most memorable and incredible trip from those early days was our first full U.S. tour around the country with Bane, fresh out of high school, wide-eyed and wonder-filled, alive with the glory of rock.

NIELSEN: During the touring cycle for this record, we played on the first Taste of Chaos, which was insane because it was a sold-out arena tour headlined by the Used and MCR. Still one of the craziest tours we’ve ever done. 

You both pretty much sing exclusively in the first person — in a way that’s singular and distinct. I can’t imagine the bands sounding any other way. What are the advantages of using “I” instead of “we,” and is there anything that influenced you to want to write that way?

CONLEY: For me, the advantage of using “I” in most of the lyrics for our songs is authenticity — since I only truly know how it feels to experience life from my particular point of view, the words can be sincere in a way that is unquestionable simply by employing descriptive language to indicate the emotional impressions that echo within my heart and mind as I make my way through the world. My lyrical heroes and primary sources of inspiration when we started Saves The Day were Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker, Ari Katz of Lifetime, Joni Mitchell’s album Blue, and Morrissey’s work in the Smiths. Their heartfelt, unabashedly poetic, and personal approach to the art of writing lyrics spoke to me at an early age and stuck with me through the years inspiring me even now.

NIELSEN: I really don’t think I could write songs about anyone else. All of the writers that I was attracted to and loved wrote in the first person or a lot of their style was autobiographical. 

The strength of the writing on both of these albums still feels profound (for Saves the Day, the “You Vandal” line “My ribs have parted ways/They said, ‘We’re not going to protect this heart you have’” and on the Senses Fail side, the title track’s bridge “I’m just a bad actor stuck with a shitty script”). Do you remember which books you were reading or the authors you were into around that time? Were you absorbing a lot of poetry?

CONLEY: I was buried in books and brimming with ideas that struck like lightning reading the works of Hemingway, Mary Oliver, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Anne Lamott, Raymond Carver, E.E. Cummings, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and more. I devoured novels, short stories, poetry, prose, pamphlets, and plays — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Fahrenheit 451, The Sun Also Rises, Bird by Bird, Brave New World, 1984, On The Road, Howl, Othello, and countless others, along with poetic books on philosophy and spirituality like the Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Rumi, and Be Here Now. But by far the most important book of all in terms of finding my own voice as a writer was Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From.

NIELSEN: I was reading a lot of Saves The Day! Lots of Bukowski, Burroughs, and Salinger.

Did you experience any backlash once those albums started to get popular?

CONLEY: After Through Being Cool came out, I started getting questions like, “Is everything OK, Christopher?” mostly from family members — friends and fans never seemed bothered much by what was clearly poetic license (and they rarely called me by my full name!). Self-expression for me didn’t always mean singing or writing about literal events, but rather was intended to be imaginative ways to daydream, conjuring up scenes and scenarios where my emotions could climb out of my body and breathe onto the page through my pen.

My inner life was so tumultuous and so difficult to deal with on a daily basis that the words helped me to therapeutically process the alienation and despair that I felt living in a world so torn apart by strife and prejudice. I too wanted to tear myself asunder living in its midst. Years later, when people would occasionally misconstrue some of my early work, believing my emotional reflections and expressions to consistently be about real people or places, I learned to be more conscious of how those imagined words might affect the listener in the future, and I became more aware of generating a positive message, which thankfully coincided with my efforts to lift myself up out of decades of depression.

NIELSEN: Absolutely. If you go back and read reviews from the time, they were very soft on the record and the band. A lot of people didn’t take us seriously because everyone in the band was a teenager. 

What do the titles of these albums represent to you, all these years later?

CONLEY: Through Being Cool means surrendering to the reality of things as they are. Staying true to yourself despite what others might say, think, or feel. Finding an inner steadiness and strength of composure. Fastening yourself to the mast of your own ship, clenching your teeth to smile as the cosmic winds whip around your face, and letting your motherfucking freak flag fly.

NIELSEN: To be as truthful and honest with yourself in order to live fully.