Sammy Rae & the Friends Bringing Disco and More to Mission Ballroom

Sammy Rae is just as comfortable singing lounge music in an intimate, smoky jazz club as she is fronting a sold-out concert-turned-costume party.

The Connecticut-born singer and bandleader cut her teeth in the Harlem jazz scene after she moved to New York City at nineteen to study music at Manhattan College. Although she dropped out a year later, Rae’s real education came during a six-month residency at the Cotton Club, a former Prohibition-era hot spot frequented by celebrities and performers of the day that has since been resurrected.

Rae began recording and releasing music at that time, but it wasn’t until she teamed up with a crew of local musicians that her band, Sammy Rae & the Friends, really took shape.

Since 2018, the group’s been busy putting out EPs and singles that showcase a wide range of pop, jazz, soul, funk and disco. Rae says she and her bandmates wanted their debut, Something for Everybody (September 27 via Nettwork Music Group), to reflect the diversity they have always explored.

“We had built some time into our schedule to sit still and think about what we wanted our record to sound like in terms of where we have been, where we were and where we wanted to go,” Rae shares. “I think it’s a really beautiful compilation and culmination of everything that this band is capable of.”

And that’s quite a lot. With Rae’s dynamic vocals at the forefront, seamlessly shifting between honeyed leads and smooth harmonies throughout, there really is the titular "something for everybody."
“This album was a statement [that] we’re done trying to pare down and streamline into one sort of thing. This is what we do. We do it all, and we figure out a way to make it all work together," she says. "And that’s our superpower. We wanted to really lean into that with this record, which is Something for Everybody. That’s the way we’ve always described our music to people as a band. What kind of music is it? Well, there’s something for everybody.”

“Coming Home Song” is a soulful R&B ballad, while “No Rulebook” feels like something Rae would croon back at the Cotton Club. Then there’s “Cool-Doug, at Night,” which includes guest vocals from Jacob Jeffries, a certified disco jam that harks back to the heyday of the super-fly Studio 54 scene and is powerful enough to spark a disco revival.

“It’s such a fantastic genre. With ‘Cool-Doug’, we wanted to go as close as we could to a period piece. It’s pretty on-the-nose disco, and that was the idea,” Rae explains. “Get that Bee Gees energy, Sly and the Family Stone energy. I hope we bring disco back. I don’t think disco ever went anywhere. It’s just nice to hear it creeping back into more popular music, for sure.”

Sammy Rae & the Friends are keeping the vibes going on tour with different themes depending on the stop. For the Denver show at Mission Ballroom on Sunday, October 6, "jewels" are the motif. Corook is also on the bill.

“We always say, 'Come as you are,'” Rae shares. “We find that that creates something that helps the audience get excited and get into the zone earlier on.”

Sammy Rae & the Friends have certainly found their zone. The thirty-year-old singer-songwriter admits it took some time to not commit to one label over another and pigeonhole themselves too much. While that would have made it easy for the music industry to market the band, Rae’s crew can't easily be described with a catch-all term, and that’s the calling card.

“I think for a while, it was almost a point of self-consciousness, because it was hard to describe what kind of music we were making. We have to get that pop sound. We have to get that rock sound. We have to find our jazz sound. We have to find this. We have to find that,” she recalls.

“It was liberating when we realized we can just do any and everything that we wanted to do, especially because the sky’s the limit. If we wanted to turn around and make a hard-rock record from top to bottom, or jazz-standard record, I don’t think anything would surprise our audience at this point," she continues. "They’re kind of down for anything. It’s refreshing to know that we don’t have to ever limit ourselves.”

We’ll be waiting to hear those records, too. But in the meantime, there’s Something for Everybody, which Rae describes as “a bit of a concept record,” at least musically speaking.

“There are different songs from pretty much thirteen different genres, or at least they stand apart from one another, next to each other,” she explains. “That’s our strength in this band, is that we’re inspired by so many different walks of life and different sorts of music.”

Like one of her biggest influences, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Rae is happy to weave and tell stories of everyday people through song, whether they’re more somber, such as in “We Made It,” or about the charming, disco-loving Doug. Rae knows her friends will always have her back, too.

“It feels good to be able to showcase our range in such a loud and powerful and unabashed way,” she concludes.

Sammy Rae & the Friends, with Corook, 7 p.m. Sunday, October 6, Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street. Tickets are $58-$110.