Music, family and friends have always driven 24-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist, Quinn Sullivan to better himself. Among his biggest supporters was his mother, who provided support and encouragement to perform music and strive to grow beyond the guitar prodigy label press and people in the music industry bestowed to him early on.
One of Sullivan’s first public performance came when he was 8-years old and Buddy Guy pulled him out of a crowd to perform guitar. In later years, legends such as B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana championed him for his talent on guitar. His experience performing around the globe, including as a member of the ensemble Trouble No More, the group sanctioned by the Allman Brothers to carry on their live-performance legacy, allowed him to grow not only as a guitarist but as a singer and songwriter.
None of that would be possible without the support of his family. So, when his mother died two years ago after a battle with an illness, it hit Sullivan particularly hard, and he started feeling lost in his grief. However, he slowly but surely started finding solace through the support of others and the therapeutic power of music. Sullivan started working on new music with the help of John Fields, Kevin Bowe and other musicians. It was during this process that Sullivan became fixated with the word salvation and finding meaning in the word. It led to him writing the song “Salvation (Make Me Wanna Pray).”
While he isn’t a religious person, he could see the spiritual implications – one could be saved from a traumatic experience through the love of other people. Through working with other musicians, he found confidence to express his vulnerability, grow as a songwriter and create a dynamic sounding collection of songs.
Sullivan feels that collection – his latest (and fifth overall) album Salvation, which is out Friday June 7 – “represent me as a human now and as an artist and as a guitar player and as a musician, all of the above.” The album finds him exploring themes of grief, resilience and redemption and creating an eclectic blend of blues, rock, and soul. Like the song, Salvation was the result of this confidence and experience.
Scummy Water Tower caught up with Sullivan recently to find out how music and others helped him process the loss of his mother, why he likes creating an eclectic sound, and why he’s excited to present the most complete version of himself to audiences.
First of all, what music have you been listening to lately?
Oh, man, that’s a good question. I feel like whenever somebody asks me this, I always never know what to say because I’m always listening to different kinds of stuff. I guess lately I’ve been really listening to a lot of different kinds of stuff, listening to Steely Dan. I’ve been listening to a lot of their records recently. I’ve been listening to a lot of Donny Hathaway recently. He has a record called Live at the Bitter End that I’ve really been loving. Let’s see what else? I’m always going back to my classics, The Beatles. I’ve been listening to some Led Zeppelin.
The new album definitely reflects that diverse nature of your influences. What about that eclectic range do you find appealing?
I guess it’s just not ever wanting to get bored and not ever wanting to be stagnant in what you’re putting out, but also what you’re listening to too. I feel like with this new album, it’s definitely been, there’s different sounds on the record. There’s a lot of different kinds of songs, but I feel like as a whole, they kind of can stick together as one puzzle. And my favorite records are records that don’t really follow a certain genre per se. They have a few different genres that kind of meld together and make it fun. So, that’s really what I love about music, making my own music.
What’s one or two of your favorite stories of getting influenced by other artists?
I mean, you’re influenced by people all the time. I don’t really know if I have a specific story about how someone influenced me. I think it’s just evolved. I think I started listening to music at a very young age. My parents would play me a lot of different kinds of music from The Beatles to the Grateful Dead to the Allman Brothers Band, Santana, Dire Straits. So, I was listening to a lot of that kind of stuff. And I guess as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed my own taste for music and have gotten into things separately from that music. And as you get older, you just sort of realize the kind of music that you like. A ton of friends recommend stuff to me and I get my music kind of in all different sorts of ways. I think with Spotify, I think it’s helped a lot to discover new music. I think there’s a really cool discovery aspect to Spotify that I don’t really feel like I can get on any other apps or any other services per se. I am always discovering stuff. I’m always being inspired by different kinds of stuff.
Many of the songs on the new album find you trying to process the sudden loss of your mother, from dealing with the grief to finding a sense of redemption and purpose. How did the writing and recording process help you deal with these complex emotions?
Well, first of all, there’s a song on the album called “Eyes on Me” that’s about her. I’ve never gone through anything this traumatic ever in my life. I mean, this is the pinnacle to me of tragedy. I don’t think it could really get much worse than that.
So, whenever I’ve faced any sort of tragedy in my life, I’ve always just turned to music because I feel like that’s the most therapeutic way that I’ve been able to deal with any sort of emotions. When I was going through that and continued to go through that, I went out to the studio, and I booked a session with this guy named John Fields who’s a Minneapolis based producer and songwriter and musician. And I flew out there in October of 2022 and had a lot of conversations. I had never met John before, so it was a very new experience for me. But I knew that I needed something new and fresh, and I wanted to work with someone that I haven’t worked with yet.
And I respected John’s work so much and what he’s done and his production. I wanted to see what would happen if we got room together and see what we could create together. And I spent a couple of hours with John talking about life and talking about many different things. And he decided to invite one of his good friends over named Kevin Bowe, who’s a great songwriter from Minneapolis. And we wrote a song that day called “Salvation,” which embodies how I feel about my life these days. It’s like being saved by a traumatic experience through the love of other people. That’s what I would categorize salvation as. That’s what I think the meaning of the song is to me. And at that time, we didn’t really know we were going to call the record Salvation, and I also didn’t really have any sort of direction of where I wanted to go.
I never really do, when I’m making music, I really only really know what it’s going to be when I’m done making it. Hopefully as a whole, it develops into something. And I think with that being said, I think as we wrote more and as we came up with more songs, it kind of molded into a certain sound that I was like, “wow, I think we’re making an album here.” And we had about 15 songs that we tracked and recorded and wrote. And I tried to narrow it down to about 10 songs or 11 songs.
That’s always a tough decision to make because you have such a deep relationship with all of these songs that you’re writing, and you sort of have to pick your favorites. And I guess for me, I struggled a little bit with that because I really did like all of these songs on this album. There really weren’t any skips for me. I feel like on albums people have skips. I feel like for me, none of these really felt like skips. So, it was a hard decision. But finally, we came down to about 11, and I’m very pleased with the songs we chose, and I think they all represent me as a human now and as an artist and as a guitar player and as a musician, all of the above.
What were the biggest things you learned about dealing with grief and trying to find that sense of redemption?
You never really get out of the grief. I feel like you’re always kind of in it, from my experience anyways. I mean, I think it still feels the same as it did when it happened. It’s been only almost two years now, which is hard to believe. But I guess what I’ve learned is that so many other people are going through a very similar thing to what I’m going through. And it’s kind of like a silver lining in the whole thing where it’s like you meet these other people that have these very similar stories that you have about their lives and people they’ve lost, and you don’t feel so alone. I think at first you feel alone, and you feel like it’s never happened to anybody else. You just have these sort of naive thoughts.
And then as you talk to people, as you meet other people, you share these experiences together. And again, you don’t feel so alone. I think I’ve just learned to open up to the people I trust and let them into what’s going on. I think that’s kind of the only way that you can really get any sense of relief from any of it is talking to people. And I mean, to be a musician and to be an artist, there’s a vulnerability that you kind of have to have to really be able to truthfully tell your story. And I think honestly, this new album that’s coming out I feel like is one of the first times where I feel like I’ve very truly been vulnerable. Not to say I haven’t been vulnerable on my records before, but I just feel like this one, I guess the right way to say it, is this record to me has been definitely by far the most personal record to me. That being said, I think that’s why I think it’s my best record yet because I feel like it’s truly who Quinn Sullivan is as an artist.
I lost my dad about eight years ago, so I can definitely relate to this album.
Sorry to hear about that.
He really got me into listening to music. So, music has helped me keep his memory alive.
Absolutely. And my mom was the same way. I mean, she turned me on to a lot of music growing up, and one of our favorite things to do was listen to music around the house and go to shows and stuff. It’s always around me every day. And her strength and her wise words of wisdom surely and truthfully got me through this record, and that’s why the record is for my mom.
What do you like about using salvation in more of a general universal sense?
There’s a lot of different meanings of that word. I know that it’s very closely affiliated in a religious context. I’ve never really viewed myself as a religious person per se. I didn’t grow up in a religious household, so I didn’t really ever practice religion. So, I kind of view myself as being spiritual. I believe that there is something out there other than this. And I think there is, has to be, that’s kind of the hope. But I think salvation, it’s just a feeling of being saved from a traumatic experience through positive forces. And albums and songs and music, it’s all subjective. So, people will have their own sort of meanings to what it means to them. And I think there’s something beautiful in that other people sort of bring on their own meanings to the music and to the lyrics. But that’s what it means to me.
Your collaborations with other musicians played a big part in creating the sound of the album.
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I had so many beautiful musicians on this record. My live band played on two songs, a song called “Dark Love” and a song called “I Can’t Stay (and You Can’t Go).” We had a blast recording those songs. We were just recording it old school, like a full band, everybody in the room playing at the same time. It felt really locked in. And we had a lot of laughs during it too, so they’re really funny guys. We were having a good time. But I think it helps when you have different kinds of musicians and players because it molds the sound.
It actually can bring new elements into the music, which you might not have had if you hadn’t had those certain people. A couple other notable session musicians that were on this record was a guy named Michael Bland, who’s a phenomenal drummer who played with Prince in the nineties. And he was a joy to work with and be around, and you could tell by being in his presence that he’s just had such a phenomenal life with music. I mean, he’s just one of the greatest to do it. So, it was completely an honor to have him play on my songs. It was really cool to watch him play on these songs. And another guy named Noah Levy, who’s another badass Minneapolis based drummer who played on some songs as well, he’s a drummer and just one of the best that I’ve ever seen. And then John Fields, who’s not only a great producer, but he is also a great musician as well. Played bass and keyboards on a couple of songs too. So yeah, definitely a full all-star cast of musicians on this album.
It sounds like your work with contributors definitely gave you inspiration for more diverse compositions on this album.
Absolutely. I think the more people you work with, the more diverse you’ll be. I’ve worked with a lot of incredible musicians and songwriters over the years, so I’ve been lucky enough to have a community of people I can reach out to create with. And the musical community is a very small community. It’s not as big as people think it is because a lot of people know other people, everybody kind of knows each other. So, I love being in this community because there’s always somebody that you can reach out to make a song or do a gig with or just hang out with, it’s a great way to meet other like-minded people.
And it just feels good to be part of something, part of the community. I think that’s what a lot of us search for is to be part of something. And I don’t think there’s not a lot of pure communities, because I always say the music business is not really the music industry. Those are kind of two separate things in my opinion. I think the music industry, I mean they coincide with each other, but they don’t feel the same. The music business is just a business, so that’s what that is. When you’re around the right kinds of people that are in this industry, it can be really cool and really creative. It’s just been a wonderful, wonderful period of time to have this community of people.
What was one of the most surprising or challenging songs to write and record?
I think “Eyes On Me,” for obvious reasons, was a tough song to write. It’s a tough song to listen to. But definitely for writing that I felt better. I felt like I got something out that I needed to get out. Again, music is therapy to me. It’s always been therapy and it always will be therapy, just a feeling I get with music that I don’t get with anything else in my life. It’s my safe haven. I can always go back to it.
So, I mean, it was challenging to write about my mom in a way that I wanted to honor her, but also let people into how I felt about it and what I went through. But Kevin Bowe really helped me out with that and really was the perfect collaborator on that song that I could have ever asked for in that moment. So, I think together we wrote a very poignant and very beautiful tune that captures everything my mom is and everything she stands for and who she is as a person.
Was your inspiration for the song “Dark Love”?
“Dark Love” was inspired by honestly a toxic relationship with another person. And musically, it kind of takes on this hair band-y kind of AC/DC rock riff that kind of kicks it off. I thought it went well with the lyrics. It was kind of chaotic a little bit, which I like. It just goes into this cool little segue into the solo that sort of does a ZZ Top kind of core change in the solo section. So, lots of influences around that. I like playing it live too. It’s a really fun song to play. We don’t really open with it on the show, so for everybody coming to see me play this summer, that’s probably what we’ll be opening with.
What’s your inspiration for Rise Up Children?
“Rise Up Children” was a song that I had started the music for years ago, so I had it written for a little while, but I just didn’t have any words and I just really didn’t know what to say to go along to the song. I didn’t really know what to write about. And I brought it to a session with John and Kevin one day when we were writing, and I sort of had this idea to have a song that is about the next generation of people coming into the world and how they’re going to deal with their future. So that’s essentially what “Rise Up Children” is about. It’s just about getting hip to what’s going on and making a better future for yourself, really.
What are you most looking forward to in the months ahead?
I’m just really looking forward to people hearing this new album first and foremost. I’m really excited for other people to get into it. And then secondly, I’m just looking forward to being on tour this summer and playing these new songs live. I always have a really fun time when I release new music and I play it live. It’s also a little bit nerve wracking too because you don’t really know what people are going to do. It’s kind of like a lottery every time. You don’t really know again what’s going to hit people in a certain way that makes them react in a certain way. But there’s a fun thing in that. It’s almost like it’s just a game every night. So, I’m looking forward to it.
We’re going to have a lot of fun. I have a great band that’s coming on this tour with me and we’re looking forward to showing up every night and giving it our all and putting everything into what we’ve got. And I’m looking forward to seeing everybody on the road this summer.
You can follow the latest about Quinn on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and listen to his music at his YouTube page.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
