“I watched the thing that I love the most die and I had to let that go. It was very painful.”
Scott Stevens, founding frontman of the Exies, admitted that harsh truth in a conversation with Chuck Armstrong on Loudwire Nights Wednesday (March 27).
Fortunately, Stevens eventually found healing from the experience of saying goodbye to the Exies and in 2023, they released their first song in 15 years, “Spirits High.”
“I just started to get pent up and I started to take those frustrations and fears and this new existence and I started to craft songs,” Stevens said about the early days of the pandemic. “I didn’t really know that they were Exies songs, but what’s weird is that they oddly started to sound like the Exies.”
Stevens said he remembered hitting the opening chord progression for what would become “Spirits High” and thought to himself, “That sounds like ‘Ugly,'” the band’s song from 2004’s Head For the Door.
“I just started to play a little game with myself and I basically was like, ‘I’m going to go and I’m going to listen to all the material and I’m gonna try to create something that sounds like it’s from that time but it’s now.”
That’s how “Spirits High” was born — and that’s how the Exies’ brand-new song, “For What It’s Worth,” was born, too.
“In that time, I created around eight songs, maybe 10, that all kind of had little starts,” he explained. “It’s pretty cool that there’s a batch of tunes that were all born around the same time, and [‘For What It’s Worth’] was one of them.”
Why It Wasn’t Easy Writing the New Exies’ Song, “For What It’s Worth”
As Stevens reflected on the starts and stops of writing and eventually finishing “Spirits High,” Chuck asked him if it was easier to then write “For What It’s Worth.”
“No,” he answered, quickly. “Maybe even a little harder.”
Stevens explained that the songs he’s written over the last few years have been incredibly difficult to bring into existence and the band’s latest track was no exception.
“I remember I was watching television upstairs and I was on the couch and I grabbed the acoustic, I strummed the chorus and I started to sing the melody,” Stevens recalled.
“I didn’t have the words, but I had the melody and within about 20 minutes I had the first three or four lines of the chorus and I wrote it down and I looked at it in the morning and its journey began.”
As he thought about the beginnings of “For What It’s Worth,” he told the Loudwire Nights audience that this is a really important song to him — and he hopes listeners find themselves in it, too.
“[It is] very much like a page out of a diary,” he said. “The lyrics are very personal and they’re very much what I feel like I’m going through and I hope that it relates to other people.”
The Exies Are Preparing For a Reunion Show
Along with celebrating the second new song from the Exies in a year, Stevens revealed some really good news for fans of the band.
“We’re going to do a reunion show,” he said.
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“It’s pretty amazing that we’re actually going to get the original lineup minus [guitarist David Walsh], who passed last year. Chris Skane was on A Modern Way of Living With the Truth and was actually the very first guitar player for the Exies, but he was in another band so he went on and did a record. That’s when I got David — so it’s as close as you’re going to get to the original lineup.”
The reunion show is taking place at the legendary Viper Room in Los Angeles on May 29, and will also mark the 20th anniversary of the release of Head For the Door. More details will be shared soon, along with the official release of “For What It’s Worth.”
“We’re gonna play all the songs everybody knows.”
What Else Did the Exies’ Scott Stevens Discuss on Loudwire Nights?
- What it was like co-writing Daughtry‘s latest song, “Pieces”: “I came in with the riff and we worked on it for a little bit and then it got shelved and I think it was one of those things where every time we get together, we would break out our phones and look at it like, ‘Okay, what about that song?’ I don’t even think we were calling it ‘Pieces,’ but we started to chip away.”
- How he ended up working with Shinedown and Halestorm
- How his wife helped convince him to release “Spirits High” in 2023
Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below
Scott Stevens joined Loudwire Nights on Wednesday, March 27; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.
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