SALIVA frontman Bobby Amaru says that 2021 “was just not a good year” for the band’s planned reunion with original vocalist 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 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).
In October 2019, Scott announced that he was returning to SALIVA, explaining at the time that he wanted to get together with his former bandmates and “write a badass record.” Less than a year and a half later, in March 2021, SALIVA guitarist Wayne Swinny poured cold water on those plans, saying that the reunion with the singer “never really got off the ground.”
Amaru discussed Scott‘s failed reunion with SALIVA during a brand new interview with The Bay Ragni Show. Asked if he feels any “pressure” knowing that there are still ongoing discussions about a possible reunion with Scott, Amaru said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I’m in those discussions as well, and there’s nothing shady going on; it’s nothing that I don’t know about. It was my idea to actually say, ‘Hey, you guys should do a 20-year-reunion deal.’ I was an advocate for that. Wayne Swinny will tell you that. I was the one that was, like, ‘I think you guys should.’ And I think a lot of things just didn’t pan out last year with… They couldn’t get on the same page, and then Josey lost his son. It was just not a good year for anything like that.”
Bobby also addressed BLABBERMOUTH.NET‘s previous coverage of SALIVA‘s reunion talks with Scott, saying: “Blabbermouth and all that stuff, that’s clickbait, man, and that’s stuff that… It’s drama. There’s too much drama in the world as is. If people wanna be fucking focused on who the fucking singer of SALIVA is — who fucking cares? Whatever. You know what I mean? There’s way more shit going on, man. And typically the people that are on there are probably writing, ‘Ah, I fucking hate it’ or ‘Who cares anyway?’ They’re probably… I don’t know what they’re doing with their life — fucking working at Subway or whatever. It’s all good.
“I know that what we have, this band, we have a business; this is like a business; this is our business,” he continued. “And it’s also a fun business. And, dude, we’re all happy doing this. We’re not trying to enter drama into it or whatever. And I’m not saying that that’s what would happen, but we’re just not looking to change what we have going on.”
Amaru also once again confirmed that SALIVA will reunite with Scott for a one-off appearance at this year’s Blue Ridge Rock Festival, set to take place September 8-11 at the Virginia International Raceway in Alton, Virginia. “[It’s] gonna be fucking awesome,” the singer said. “And I’ll be there. We’ll both be there. It’s gonna be great. It’s good for the fans.
“I’ve always said that I wish the guy would do [solo] records and put out songs and do stuff. There’s a lot of guys doing it — Geoff Tate, Scott Stapp. There’s a lot of dudes [who were previously in established bands] putting out [solo] records for the fans, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
SALIVA‘s reunion with Scott at Blue Ridge was originally announced on March 18 by festival organizers via Twitter. They wrote: “It is Happening. For years it is has been highly rumored and demanded, now it finally takes place this September.” Less than two weeks later, Scott shared the announcement on Twitter for the first time and included a simple two-word comment: “LETS GO!!!!!!” When one fan asked him, “Are u serious???”, he responded: “Yes!”
When Swinny spoke to WRIF about SALIVA‘s failed reunion with Scott, he said that even though there were some initial discussions about Josey‘s return to the group, 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.”
Last December, Josey took to his Twitter to write: “I want 2 apologize 2 my fans because I thought I was gonna reunite w/certain people & make u new music, & that fell through, but, I believe everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences. A blessing in disguise. Now it’s just u, & me, how intimate is that? #SV2022”.
SALIVA released six albums with Scott and tasted platinum success and a Grammy nomination for its first big hit, “Your Disease”.
Last May, SALIVA celebrated the 20th 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.
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Tagged: Alternative Music, music blog