From Arapaho to SONSOFSAVAGE: Brett Savage's musical odyssey

In the mid-’90s, the band Arapaho were the rock darlings of Durban, South Africa. With multiple chart-topping hits — including “Dump Truck,” which stayed at number one for multiple months, and “Butterfly Angel,” written by bassist Brett Savage after the passing of his father — Arapaho were on their way to becoming something much larger than what anyone anticipated.

“1994 is when we started getting famous,” says Savage. “We grew popular really quickly. Primarily because in South Africa at the time, during apartheid, there were sanctions on music. You couldn’t bring music into the country. Local music was primarily ethnic black music, which white people just didn’t listen to. Then, when Nelson Mandela got out of prison and apartheid was unraveling, the sanctions were lifted. The reason our band was so successful is because of timing. We were one of the first South African bands to be signed to an international record label, during an apartheid era where we sang anti-apartheid songs in support of a new country. That’s when we became super-famous. South Africans gravitated towards Arapaho because we were one of the only options. We were an average band. If you brought us to America, we probably wouldn’t have been famous.”

Savage chucked deuces for Southern California after finding himself in the crosshairs of a major drug kingpin. “When I left South Africa, it was very controversial. I was badly beaten up by a drug dealer who was dating an ex-girlfriend of mine. This guy lost his marbles and beat the crap out of me. So, I left the country under that premise, and the band turned a cold shoulder on me. The whole situation was very traumatic. There were photographs of me coming into this country with strangle marks on my neck. The U.S. government expedited a four-day visa for me to get out of there. It was gnarly. It made the front cover of the newspaper over there.”

Not long after Savage’s departure, Arapaho found a replacement bassist. But without his songwriting skills, they’ve yet to make another album. For his part, Savage never went back to live in South Africa. He notes that San Diego reminds him a lot of his home country, which makes sense, since so many former South African citizens relocate to Southern California. “I got here and got a taste of the people and city and landscape. If you go to La Jolla, you’ll hear a lot of South African accents. La Jolla is so similar to Cape Town. It actually smells like Cape Town, with the seals and kelp from the ocean.”

Now, after a decades-long residence in Carlsbad, Savage and his sons, ages 20 and 16, are creating music together. The father/sons trio call themselves SONSOFSAVAGE. Although they inhabit a completely different genre from Arapaho — the new outfit favors more of an electronic sound — the elder Savage is still able to give musical guidance and direction based on his previous experience. He’s eager to note his son Vann’s swelling potential, saying, “He’s been making his own beats since he was thirteen. He’s so quick and so fast. His plan is to go to USC for music production. The songs we’ve put on Spotify, he’s produced them all. The hope is that when he turns 18, we can tour together. We want to do a twelve-song album.”

Working with his sons and experiencing the inevitable creative differences has resulted in small problems, but none without simple solutions. “Me and my son [Vann] sometimes argue in the studio about what we’re going to release. It’s interesting, because I have to sometimes pull the dad card. When you’re working with your son, he acts like a son, and doesn’t want to do what you tell him to do. So what I have to do is treat him like we’re in a business. I pay him 50 bucks an hour. I am paying him, so I am the client and he needs to listen to me. In six months, it’s made a huge difference. So now he’s got a couple grand in the bank, and I’ve gotten my own way. I can spend the money on my son, and he can learn, because eventually he’s going to be doing it for other people, versus me barking at him all the time.”

If you put your ear to the ocean and listen closely, you can still hear Arapaho playing on the radio airwaves in South Africa, providing Brett Savage the steady stream of small royalty checks he can use to pay his son for his present-day productions.