Q&A: Singer Savannah Outen

Street had a phone call with Savannah Outen, a singer-songwriter with over 440,000 subscribers on YouTube. Outen spoke to us from her home in Portland, Ore. and gave us the scoop on her new collaboration with Music is Medicine and her new single, “Brave and True.” The song was released along with a music video on Tuesday as a part of the organization’s “Donate a Song” project.

 

How did you get involved with Music is Medicine?

They reached out to me. It was just one day [when] I was looking through my emails and saw that they had asked for me to be a part of it. I thought it was such a cool concept. Nobody is doing that right now, and there’s nothing like Music is Medicine out there. I thought that it was such a special organization. [It was] just the fact that I would be able to write a song for a patient and then be able to release it on iTunes and share it with all of my fans and supporters, and for them to be able to have a piece of it and be able to give back by purchasing the song because all the proceeds go to Johns Hopkins. I just thought it was a really cool concept, and I wanted to jump on board and be a part of it.

So you were part of the “Donate a Song” project, and you’ve written a song for a patient at Johns Hopkins, Bo. What was it like meeting him?

It was amazing. It was so cool. I met Bo first and then all of his family. It was so cool to just sit down and talk with him and get to know him a little better. Once I got to know him a bit I played him the song. It was so cool; his mom started tearing up. After that he was a little more comfortable with me and so he decided to play my guitar and we just jammed out for a bit. We sang John Mayer songs and Fleetwood Mac and it was pretty amazing. It was just such an awesome experience, and we’ve been staying in touch. They’re such great people, Bo and his family, and I was honored to meet them. 

How did you get inspired to write the song?

We tried Skyping for a bit but it just wasn’t working. Both of us had bad service, and it just wasn’t working out so we ended up talking on a phone call. It was just kind of figuring out what he wanted the song to be about. I wanted it to be perfect for him. I wanted him to love it. It was a lot of pressure because I’ve never written a song in this kind of circumstance where I was asked to write a song for somebody. Usually it just kind of happens. He just kept saying over and over again how he didn’t want this to be a sad and depressing song, he just wanted it to be really uplifting and about perseverance. So immediately I got inspired and I called my song-writing partner, Tom Harrison, and I told him all about the phone call, and we came up with “Brave and True.”

When you went to Johns Hopkins was there anything that was challenging? I know seeing patients can be tough.

The first person that I met was this little boy. He was blind, and I think he was six or seven. He was a little tiny thing, and he was so precious. He was the first patient that I saw and it was almost just at the instant that I walked in to the floor that Bo was on. [Seeing him] was pretty hard, but he was so full of life and so happy and positive. If I took anything out of that trip and experience it was to live every moment to the fullest and be grateful for what you have. Then I met a little girl and it was her first birthday and she was just adorable. It was a little hard. But I remember I took my videographer and my friend Caitlin with me, and right after when we got in the car we just sat there and smiled at each other. It was a pretty great experience, and I keep telling everybody that this was definitely one of the best things I’ve gotten to do so far.

You’ve done a lot of charity work and taken the time to support causes that you believe in. What about the “Donate a Song” project stood out to you?

I think the most special thing was being able to incorporate music. I always say that music is the best form of medicine. I’m always listening to music and I think that that’s one thing that all of us in the entire world have in common: that we love music and that it heals us. So when Leora [Friedman ’14] reached out to me, it made perfect sense and I thought that what she was doing was so cool. I had never heard of anything like it before. Also, I’m really good friends with Drew Seeley and he did it last year. I was a little familiar with what he had done, so I texted him and said “They just reached out to me,” and he was like, “Oh, you gotta do it, it’s like one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.” It was pretty much a no-brainer.