In Conversation: Jason Beebout of Samiam
Over 35 years and ten albums, Samiam have earned their legendary status. But staying together, as Jason Beebout tells it, can be a test of will.
Whenever we talk about the mid-’90s punk rock major-label gold rush, we tend to forget that there were multiple outcomes. Success ranged from the relative obscurity of Shudder to Think to the enduring ubiquity of Blink-182. Getting dropped was a band-destroying disaster for Into Another, but for Jimmy Eat World, it was an opportunity to make a platinum-selling record without label interference. Literally anything could happen. Even before Samiam’s Atlantic Records debut came out, there were already signs that things were amiss: Singer Jason Beebout recounted one such sign in the Autumn 1994 issue of Anti-Matter, when he told me about the way “Stepson”—a song he’d written about the complicated feelings he had towards his stepfather—had been so ruthlessly edited in the stu…