Season 3: Drew McManus Talks the Broad Expanse of Satsang

The Load Out Music Podcast

If you’re one of those people who says you like “all kinds of music,” then Drew McManus and his band SatSang just might be for you.

The entirety of SatSang’s catalogue spans comparisons to Ben Harper, G-Love and Special Sauce and Jason Mraz among others. However, the band’s new record “Flowers from the Fray” includes performances and arrangements that are broad and spacious, reflecting the wide-open fields and soaring mountains that surrounded the band during the whirlwind recording process in McManus’ home state of Montana. It’s an Americana record fueled by acoustic guitars, fiddle, and pedal steel, hinting at everything from Uncle Tupelo and The Jayhawks to Gregory Alan Isakov and The Head and the Heart as it meditates on the power and pull of home.

McManus is fascinating. Born in Montana, he spent much of his formative, extremely troubled years in Des Moines and Chicago. His childhood was marked by physical abuse at home and a nose for trouble on the rough streets that surrounded him, and by his late teens, he was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. After returning to Montana for rehab, he got clean and sober, married the woman of his dreams, and launched Satsang with ‘The Story of You,’ the band’s breakout 2016 debut that is steeped in reggae, hip-hop, and world music.