SALIVA has abandoned its previously announced plan to reunite with original frontman Josey Scott.
Scott left SALIVA at the end of 2011 after 15 years with the group, reportedly to pursue a solo Christian music career. He was quickly replaced by Bobby Amaru, who can be heard on SALIVA‘s last four releases: “In It To Win It” (2013), “Rise Up” (2014), “Love, Lies & Therapy” (2016) and “10 Lives” (2018).
Scott broke the news of his return to SALIVA in October 2019 during an appearance on “The Morning Dump”, a podcast hosted by “The Big Mad Morning Show” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the time, Josey said that he wanted to get together with SALIVA and “write a badass record.”
SALIVA guitarist Wayne Swinny addressed Scott‘s status with the band during a new interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station. Asked if there are still plans for Josey to reunite with SALIVA for a possible album and/or a tour, Wayne said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We were part of the conversation. After Josey made his announcement, there was a few text messages going on. I did talk to [former SALIVA guitarist] Chris [D’Abaldo] one time. But the problem is, we kind of already have a SALIVA. The problem with doing the reunion show is what do I do? Pull the bus over and say, ‘All right, Bobby, Brad [Stewart, bass], hop out, man, to the hotel room for a couple of [months].’ It just didn’t make sense on the business end. There was preliminary discussions, but it never really got off the ground. We just basically had to make plans and keep this train rolling, so to speak. It didn’t make sense to me to stop what we were doing. ‘Cause this unit, we’ve been together, it’s been almost 10 years now, with Bobby in the band. Brad came along shortly after that. We’re tight. We get along. It’s a well-oiled machine. We’ve got a great crew, a great bus driver. It would throw a monkey wrench into the actual SALIVA.”
He continued: “Bobby pushed me and said, ‘You know what, dude? If you wanna do it, do it. At least talk to [Josey] about it and check it out.’ I did. But there was no business plan put together. It was one of those — it seemed like a spur-of-the-monent idea, but it didn’t happen. It ain’t gonna happen.”
According to Swinny, even though there were some initial discussions about a SALIVA reunion with Josey, there was no follow-up to ensure that the plan was executed.
“If you wanna do something, do it,” Wayne said. “But you can’t just talk about it and have it magically happen. There’s work, there’s planning, there’s stuff that goes into it, and none of that stuff was done early enough to pull it off.
“Yeah, there was some fan response, saying, ‘Wow, yeah, that might be cool.’ But it didn’t get enough steam to take off,” he explained. “All the preliminary stuff kind of got set up, and it just didn’t jell.
“It just didn’t make sense to stop what we [the current lineup of SALIVA] were doing and do that, because you’ve got momentum, we’ve got a groove going, the band’s tight live. I didn’t feel like we should give that up or give that a rest.”
In February 2020, it was announced that SALIVA would team up with POWERMAN 5000, ADEMA and FLAW for a run of summer 2020 shows dubbed the “Nu-Metal Revival 2020” tour. A short time later, Scott revealed in an interview that he would not take part in the trek. (The shows were eventually canceled due to the pandemic.) During the same chat, Josey said that he wanted to write new music with D’Abaldo and Swinny. “They’re kind of the original nucleus of what SALIVA had to offer, I believe,” Scott explained. The singer also expressed interest in releasing new music to coincide with the 20th anniversary of SALIVA‘s second album, 2001’s “Every Six Seconds”. As for SALIVA‘s lineup for the reunion tour, Josey said that Tosha Jones would sit behind the drums while former BREAKING BENJAMIN member Mark Klepaski would likely play bass.
SALIVA released six albums with Scott and tasted platinum success and a Grammy nomination for its first big hit, “Your Disease”.
SALIVA will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its breakthrough major label debut, “Every Six Seconds”, with a special project called “Every Twenty Years”, an EP of classic songs re-recorded with Amaru, on May 7 via Megaforce.
