Beloved Valley rock band The Format is currently on tour in support of their new album, “Boycott Heaven.” It’s the band’s first full-length record in 20 years, and co-founders Nate Ruess and Sam Means couldn’t wait to get out on the road and introduce fans to the new songs.
But just as the tour was getting underway, Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. The incident prompted some soul searching for Ruess and Means: What, exactly, was the purpose of making music?
Those deliberations have now led to a series of events they’re calling Saturdays in the Park. The idea is deceptively simple: in cities where they’re already booked to play a show, they’re adding daytime events to the schedule.
Ruess and Means set up a stripped-down stage in a local park, and invite local community organizations to set up tables. The events are free, and the goal is to let their music be an invitation to get involved.
Sam Means recently spoke with The Show about the origins of the series.
Full conversation
SAM MEANS: This album had been like 20 years in the making basically. So there’s that emotion behind it. And then that weekend of this album coming out for us was meant to obviously be a big celebration. But then, as is typical with the world around us today, something horrible happens and sometimes it makes it really difficult to celebrate something that you should be able to celebrate because there’s this messed up stuff happening.
So we had this song called “The Bar Is Set So Low” that didn’t end up making it on the record. It lyrically really kind of speaks to a lot of the stuff specifically that’s going on with the situation with ICE, and it’s an ongoing situation that we know this stuff has all been happening for a long time.
[CLIP FROM “THE BAR IS SET SO LOW” BY THE FORMAT PLAYS]
So that morning Nate was like, “Hey, do you think we should try to play the song today?” I was like, “Yes, absolutely.” So we decided to play it at the end sort of as the closer because we didn’t want to — it’s tough because you still want to find this balance.
I mean, Nate’s spoken on this a couple times of like finding this balance of people, sometimes people just want to go to a concert to escape the horrible things that are happening. It’s not that it’s a distraction, but like you still have to find joy in things, you know, so.
SAM DINGMAN: Right. You don’t want these events to become the like the defining fabric of your entire life.
MEANS: Yeah, exactly. Because that’s not, I mean, we may be becoming more sort of socially responsible as people, but we’re still a band and entertainers that are there to entertain people in a certain way. But we also didn’t want to overlook what was happening.
This felt important. So we played the show and, yeah, so we just kind of debuted the song to the world at that show. We closed it out, and Nate gave a real nice speech about why we were doing it and why it was important to us. And the crowd really responded to it.
DINGMAN: Yeah. So, I mean, would it be fair to say, is it too neat a narrative that kind of the seeds of this idea of doing these outdoor performances in parks as a way of getting people together around music and inviting them to then through that, get involved in other organizing efforts — were the seeds of that kind of born out of this experience?
MEANS: I mean, absolutely. We were in Seattle, at the airport, because we got there a little early, and I think our flight was delayed. And they kept changing our gates. We just were walking back and forth and back and forth and reflecting on, we were just sort of like, this is really exciting but also it seems like maybe we could be doing more.
And so we just started talking about that. We started talking about music that we were into from when we were kids and, like, punk bands that we listened to. And the conversation then was more so, like it’s just really sad because you can go back and listen to lyrics from the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s and ’90s, and every generation has these protest songs and protest bands and things where really positive messages to try to steer society, like, help steer society through entertainment towards, like, a better way.
And a lot of good things have come out of that. But at the end of the day, it still seems like we’re moving towards ... like we haven’t figured it out yet. Like, there’s still a lot more work to do.
DINGMAN: That’s really interesting, though. I’m glad you brought this up. We just had a conversation along similar lines on The Show here this past week, and there is a lot of talk about that right now, as I’m sure you know, about should musicians be doing more? Should music be doing more? It sounds like this is something you and Nate have been really kind of turning over for yourselves.
MEANS: I think yeah. I mean, you get comments where people are like, "Hey, stick to music," or whatever, and that stuff happens. And I always think that is hilarious because you have to do what you can. People ultimately just want to be comfortable, and they do want to be entertained, and they want to be able to sort of, like, check out from their day at work and just listen to an album.
But there’s been quite a bit of activism and sort of underlying messages going on in a lot of these songs for all time.
DINGMAN: So one of the reasons I’m interested in this, Sam, is it feels like it’s pretty closely related to the format — if I may — of the events, the Saturdays in the park events. Because please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like what you guys are leading with here is getting people to come out together and listen to music.
And then, oh by the way, by coming out to this event, you’re also going to be kind of organically connected to all of these organizations that are doing work you might be interested in getting involved in.
MEANS: Yeah, exactly. I mean, we were in sort of that walk in Seattle, to kind of go back to that. We were just talking like, “Well, what can we do?” You know, like, what else could we do? The vision for this was like, I just feel like we just need, like, a soapbox and a microphone.
And it’s just very grassroots, and it’s just welcoming. It’s important to go to protests. And I’ve been to some, and they’re cool, but for, like, an average person, it might be alarming. You know, there’s people with megaphones yelling at you and trying to get your attention, which they need to be doing because people need to know what’s happening.
But we thought, well, maybe there’s a good balance here too with this, and we can just have it be a show, but not like a, not really. You know, just kind of like, we’ll play a couple songs, we’re talking about it, and then invite people to speak and play a couple more songs and then invite another band up.
It’s like two to three hours. So it’s not a huge thing, not a huge huge commitment. Just kind of walk up and leave whenever you need to, you know? We just wanted to make it easy. And we thought it would be cool for a thing where, like, fans could come, but also a thing where people might just walk up and be like, “What is this?”
DINGMAN: Right, right. I’m wondering what it’s like for you to perform knowing that the music is going to be received in an explicitly politicized context. Does it change the way you think about it from a performance standpoint or the way you experience the songs?
MEANS: I mean, I do think it’s cool because I think people might listen to the lyrics a little bit more in that context. But I also think it’s cool, too, just to have maybe normal, happy songs that shows that regular people do have to sort of start paying attention, too. There should be a blend of normalcy, normal people, people that are just like getting through life, and then also the importance of maybe stepping into some slightly uncomfortable territory.
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