THE BAND THAT WAITED 7 YEARS TO PLUG IN

Sapwood didn’t burst out of the gate.

They sort of…lingered there.

Seven years passed between the moment the band “started” and the first time they played for an actual crowd. By the time it happened, it didn’t feel like a debut, it felt like letting the world in on a secret they’d been keeping since 2014.

That this wasn’t some industry-manufactured outfit. It was a homegrown, Millville, New Jersey project built on friendship, tape hiss, and the kind of musical curiosity that makes you wonder, what if I slid this empty Doritos bag across the floor and hit record?

At its core, Sapwood is just people who like each other enough to keep making noise together, even when life slows the process to a crawl. They’re not chasing fame, they’re chasing the feeling. The same one they got when they first heard their own songs back through cheap speakers and realized: oh…this is ours.

But to understand why it took so long for them to get on stage, and why that first show hit so hard, you have to go back to where it started.

Not in a club, not in a studio, but in a basement owned by a grandmother who believed enough to buy a drum kit before there was even a band.

FROM OMA’S BASEMENT TO THE FIRST SHOW

Before there was Sapwood, there was a drum kit in a basement.

Not just any basement, his Oma’s.

My oma bought me a drum set when I was in middle school and it was always in her basement

That kit sat there for years, waiting. Its moment came in 2014, when he was housesitting for his grandparents. He invited a few friends over, dragged his guitar and amp downstairs, and told everyone to play something.

Sean played the drums the best out of everyone there — none of us were that good — and he played along to this song I wrote called It’s Been Rainin’. The day after, I texted him saying we should start a band!

They started moving the drum kit between basements, “sometimes into his parents’ basement,” trying to make up songs and learn as they went. Things leveled up when he bought a 4-track tape machine from a coworker.

We just started recording a bunch of music when I bought that 4-track. Not with any big plan, just because we could.

For years, Sapwood lived like that, as a recording project more than a band. No live shows, no rehearsals in the traditional sense, just songs born in private and pressed to tape.

Then, in 2021, everything changed with a single message.

This guy JoJo Buttons reached out to me on a Sunday night asking if we could play a show with him on the Friday coming up. At that point me and Sean had hardly been jamming, let alone ever practiced a song together.

They also didn’t have a bassist, until his partner, Aubrey, stepped in.

Aubrey learned to play the songs on bass and we practiced every day up until the show.

That first night on stage wasn’t just a debut. It was the thing he’d been waiting for since that first jam in Oma’s basement.

The experience was everything I had been longing for while making these songs. Truly fulfilling.

MILLVILLE MADE, LO-FI FOR LIFE

Millville, New Jersey isn’t exactly a music capital. By the time Sapwood started, whatever scene there had been was already gone.

There used to be a metalcore scene in my county when I was in middle school and high school. And then it all kind of fizzled out when Hangar 84 in Vineland closed and the Holly City Family Center in Millville stopped booking shows (probably because people moshing punched holes in the wall and broke mirrors all the time).

Without venues, there were no local gigs to cut their teeth on. But music still had a way of finding them, usually in Sean’s car on the way to skateparks.

Sean would always drive us around to skateparks and places like that, so we’d be listening to the same kind of music all the time — Modest Mouse, Nirvana, MF DOOM

Those drives were as much rehearsal as any practice space.

Whatever we listened to at the time really influenced what we made.

Sapwood’s sound has never been easy to pin down. You might hear indie jangle in one song, punk urgency in the next, and folk warmth right after that.

Sometimes I’d call it alternative, indie, emo, punk, and folk, but I guess it could just be called rock.

The texture that ties it all together, that fuzzy, slightly warped intimacy, wasn’t a stylistic choice at first. It was survival.

Lo-fi was there at the right place and the right time in the most affordable and accessible way. It was a great feeling of validation hearing Modest Mouse’s early tapes or The Moldy Peaches record music on tape like that, so I sought to find more and more music like that and it just became an acquired taste.

That taste stuck. Even as recording methods evolved, the commitment to keeping things raw stayed. So did the unfiltered storytelling.

Woody Guthrie said it best: all you write about is all you can see.

For Sapwood, “all you can see” often means cats, dogs, frogs and sometimes, the band itself. On Sap Would, he leans straight into the joke:

I’m always cryin’ like a sad sap would.

Call it self-awareness, call it world-building, either way, it’s Sapwood.

DIY OR DIE

Sapwood has always been a homegrown operation. In the early years, recording meant wrestling with a 4-track cassette machine. A process that was slow, finicky, and downright inconvenient, but felt non-negotiable.

These days, he’s gone digital, but the independence remains.

I’ll always manage the band myself, even if I don’t do a good job of it! It’s just a fun little project after all.

Part of that fun is in the sheer volume of work Sapwood puts out. Albums aren’t just collections, they’re challenges.

Sometimes I’d set a specific number of tracks as a goal and would know it’s done when I’ve got the 16th track or something. For our album happygoluckyfucker, I was turning 27 that year so I decided to make a 27-track album and release it on my birthday.

The recording process is equally adventurous. Anything can be an instrument: tools clanging together, water filling a cup, cicadas screaming outside. Once, he recorded himself sliding an empty Doritos bag across the floor with his feet.

Those experiments hit their peak on The Big Bright Yellow Sun and the Hive House EP — two records heavily inspired by Animal Collective and The Beach Boys.

And while the methods may get playful, the subjects are grounded in real life. Songs are often love letters to his partner, portraits of his dad or Sean, or mash-ups of friends and familiar moments.

My everyday interactions give me most of my fuel.

That’s why their first show in 2021 was a turning point. After years of Sapwood existing mostly as a recording project, the music finally became a shared space again.

I got to play some songs that meant a lot to me with my friends that mean a lot to me, and the whole experience is something I’ll always cherish.

For Sapwood, music is more than output.

It’s a living record of relationships.

A scrapbook you can dance to.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR SAPWOOD

Change is part of Sapwood’s DNA and right now, the lineup is shifting again. Aubrey, who learned bass practically overnight to get the band onstage for their first show, is stepping away to focus on their other project, Later Bloom. (Sapwood’s frontman is in that band too — “We just recorded our first album last weekend and it rocks!!”)

The rhythm section is staying in the family. Sean is moving from drums to bass, and longtime friend John is sliding in behind the kit.

They’re both pretty good at either end of the rhythm section,” he says, “so they might even switch it up every now and then!

On the horizon? Another album’s worth of songs, already written and waiting to be recorded with the new lineup. More shows. More experiments. More moments that feel like the first show all over again.

Sapwood has always thrived in the space between impulse and intention, that sweet spot where friendship, instinct, and weird ideas collide. And with a fresh lineup and a backlog of songs, they’re ready to keep that collision going loud and often.

WHERE TO FIND SAPWOOD

Catch their music, videos, and all the latest updates here:

• Instagram: @sapwoodtheband

• YouTube: Sapwood

• Bandcamp: https://sapwood.bandcamp.com/music

Turn it up, keep it fuzzy, and remember: sometimes the best bands take their time.