After being away from music for a while — or as Nate Ruess puts it, "retired" — Arizona band The Format reunited after Ruess started learning to play guitar and found a new vehicle for songwriting. "I figured it out enough to, like, write an album," Ruess says. He then reached out to his longtime bandmate, Sam Means, and within moments, Sam was all in.

The result is The Format's new album, Boycott Heaven, releasing January 23, 2026. Ahead of the album's release, Ruess and Means visited The Current studio to play a couple acoustic renditions of songs from the album and to chat with The Current's Jill Riley.

Watch and listen to the music performances above, and find the interview below. Beneath the interview video, find a full transcript of the conversation.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: Hey, I'm Jill Riley. You're listening to The Current, and I've got some special guests in the studio: Nate Ruess and Sam Means are here. They are back together again, The Format. Welcome to The Current, you guys.

Sam Means: Hello.

Nate Ruess: Thanks for having us.

Sam Means: Thank you.

Jill Riley: It's nice to have you guys back, and really, in that sense, you are back. Here you are. And it seemed like it was really a long time coming. I wonder if we could start by you guys kind of making that decision to get back together and reunite and make new music, because, as I understand it, it wasn't exactly an easy process once that ball got rolling.

Nate Ruess: No. I mean, we were a COVID cancelation, like many people. Our cancelation was probably a little less dramatic than most, but COVID cancelation we had. We'd started thinking about doing shows, we'd announced doing shows, we rehearsed once, and we were bound to go play a set of shows, and that was going to be it. We're just going to do these reunion shows and call it a day, just because we felt like, I think maybe Dog Problems, one of our albums, had turned 15, and we were like, "OK, well, this is cool. This is a good way to just do these shows."

Sam and I totally, like, no beef or anything like that. But he did say, "Well, I wish we were doing this with new music." And I was like, "I'm done. I'm retired. I'm not writing any more music." And he tried, like, we both had, like, a standoff about it, but...

Jill Riley: A friendly standoff!

Sam Means: Yeah, a friendly standoff.

Nate Ruess: But I am almost impossible — once I'm, I'm like a pit bull once I like — that sounds bad, but basically I'm very tough to get to change my opinion. And the shows got canceled, and I think there was a weird relief about that anyways, because for whatever reason, for me, I just didn't feel ready.

Jill Riley: OK.

Nate Ruess: Anyways. But then as COVID was kind of happening, I had started playing guitar as soon as my kids started going to school, and I had nothing to do all day. So I started playing guitar, learning how to play guitar, and I'd started writing, like, songs, parts of songs. And I thought like, "Oh, man, this would be a great Format album." And so I reached back out to Sam and was like, sent him some songs. And said, "What do you think about this?" And... 

Sam Means: I was in!

Jill Riley: OK!

Sam Means: Didn't didn't take much for the the pit bull to convince me to make music. I was like, "Yes! Where have you been? Let's do this."

Jill Riley: Well, that's great. And you — something caught my attention that you just said, "learn to play guitar." 

Nate Ruess: Yeah.

Jill Riley: OK. For me, that's just surprising, like I had just assumed, oh, obviously, you've been playing guitar since a teenager, right?

Nate Ruess: No, no, I've always been lazy. I've been reliant on my — yeah, well, it's true! — but I've always been reliant on my voice. So I will write songs, but I'll just write them by singing them out.

Jill Riley: Oh, wow. OK.

Nate Ruess: I'll hear like a whole song in my head. So a lot of ways that we'd write in The Format back in the day, you know, it'd be different ways: Sometimes people would bring chords, and I'll sing on top of the chords. Other times, I'll just be like, "I have a whole idea in my head. Now, how do I get it out?" to people who know how to play stuff.

Jill Riley: Sure.

Nate Ruess: And I was like, "All right, I've always loved guitar. I should probably learn it." And I don't know if— I'm still very, very, very much learning it. In fact, I'm going to my hotel after this to read a book on music theory and stuff like that. However, I figured it out enough to, like, write an album.

Jill Riley: Excellent. Well, Radiohead once had a song, "Anyone Can Play Guitar."

Nate Ruess: They were, I know!

Jill Riley: There you go.

Nate Ruess: And they were right.

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current. In the studio with The Format. Nate Ruess is here. Sam Means is here. So when it was time to take this batch of songs and go into the studio, what was that process like? And if you could talk about getting into the studio and maybe other players that you played with on the record?

Sam Means: Yeah, it came together really quick once it started happening, because, like you said, he had already been sort of writing big parts of songs, and we were all just so ready for it. I think it was just right place, right time. And he had asked Brendan O'Brien, who ended up producing it, earlier, I guess, I don't know how far back in the year, but at some point in time, had asked him if he ever, you know, sort of hypothetically, if he'd ever go to do another record, if Brendan would be down to produce it. And he seemed pretty game. So, I mean, I think we started working on the demos in like August, like, really seriously working on him, like August or September? 

Nate Ruess: Yeah, of 2024.

Sam Means: Yeah, I met Brendan by October, and we were in the studio in January. Just ready to go.

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Sam Means: And Matt Chamberlain played drums, which was incredible. He brought him in, and the whole experience was just very, very quick, but very awesome. 

Jill Riley: Very good. Talking with The Format on The Current. So the new record is called Boycott Heaven, and it is dropping in [2026]. And with a name like Boycott Heaven, I guess one could almost assume that there's almost a little pessimism, but I don't hear that in the music. I hear these, like, big, sort of inspiring sounds. And with the song that we've been playing, "Holy Roller," I mean, that's certainly when I hear it, I go, "Oh, yeah. Like, you can sit around, or you can take some action to do something." And to me, that's really inspiring. So I wonder if you could talk about the title of the record and kind of where that came from, and if it relates at all to the music.

Nate Ruess: That's a great question that I'm still trying to figure out myself. So it's really, it's funny, because I think once I was on Twitter and something was trending, and as I'm getting older, I can't really see that well. Where are my glasses?

Jill Riley: Relatable.

Nate Ruess: But I was like, "Boycott heaven. What?" Like, "That's trending? Everybody's starting to boycott heaven?" I'm like, "That sounds like a good idea." And then I, like, squinted a little harder, and it was like, "Boycott Heineken." But then I was like, "Well, that's a brilliant name for an album." And so I'd started to kind of think about what that meant conceptually. And I think it changes ever so often for me, but I think it's just kind of with the state of the world today and the state of religion and the way that it's viewed, I think we need to make some changes before we say, "OK, this is the next place that we need to be."

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current. Nate Ruess and Sam Means are here from The Format. Again, the new record is called Boycott Heaven — not Heineken, but Boycott Heaven — dropping in the new year. Now, you guys did some reunion shows, and now there's this acoustic tour. So I wonder if you could talk about the decision to do an acoustic tour versus more of a plugged-in tour? Yeah.

Sam Means: Yeah. I mean, we, back in the day, we played acoustic shows all the time. It was really part of our thing. I think even our first show ever was an acoustic show. And you know, most of these songs, especially the older stuff, were written on acoustic guitar, so it's just something that's always translated really well. And this run in particular, we did, you know, Phoenix and L.A. and New York in the fall, and we're hitting some bigger markets in the spring of next year, but there were these really cool towns that just, because of the proximity to the places we had played, just didn't work out. So we wanted to make sure that we could show little love to some of those places. So we went to Rochester and Cleveland, and here in Minneapolis.

Jill Riley: Very good!

Sam Means: And then Tucson, which is a — you know, since we're from Phoenix originally; well, Iowa, but we claim Phoenix over here. So, yeah, it was important to just go back there, too, because there's a really beautiful venue that just opened up down there.

Jill Riley: Yeah, and I don't want to put a dig to our friends to the south, but I could say "Iowa." Just kidding.

Sam Means: This is the best time of year to do it, too.

Nate Ruess: If anyone from Iowa is listening, we'll be there.

Jill Riley: Yeah, you'll get there.

Nate Ruess: I'll have to run into 1700 cousins, but we'll get there

Sam Means: We'll hit Iowa City for sure.

Jill Riley: Or some old classmates. You never know what's gonna happen.

Nate Ruess: Well, I grew up in — it's hard. It's only convenient; where I'm at is where I'm from. So I was born in Iowa, but I was raised in Phoenix. So when I'm in Phoenix, I'm from Phoenix. When I'm in Iowa, I'm very proudly from Iowa.

Jill Riley: Yeah, understood. You are listening to The Current. You know, part of this tour, when I saw your date at the Turf Club here in St Paul, I noticed that a portion of the ticket sales were going to charity. And is that part of something that was really like a goal of yours to do with this tour, to make sure that you are doing something to give back as well?

Nate Ruess: I think it's a goal in general. Sam and I have both, since The Format ended almost 20 years ago, have been very fortunate, I think, in our personal and professional lives, and it's allowed us to now do things like sell tickets basically as low as we can sell them, while still finding a way to basically break even. If that's even, if you can put it that way. Sell merchandise as low as you can possibly sell it. We think that that type of stuff is important, and furthermore, now doing these shows, you know, I think food banks are a great way to directly give charity and kind of know where it's going, know that it's going to help somebody like, very, very directly. And so that was something that on this tour, we just felt like was super important, especially this time of year. But, I mean, honestly, always.

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Nate Ruess: But I think people are just a little more cognizant of it this time of year. And it's just, I mean, it's been phenomenal.

Sam Means: It's been great. And shout-out to the venues, too, for being willing to participate in that with us. And it's, yeah, it's just been really special to see we have. We've heard that they've had to refill and refill and refill the stuff at the shows.

Nate Ruess: The donation bins and even, and then the money that people have raised.

Sam Means: Oh, yeah, we did an auction for a couple tickets, and that, like, far exceeded any expectations. People were just very, very generous there. So yeah, it's been really, really great. 

Jill Riley: That's good, yeah. And you know, like you were saying, Nate, like, let's have this carry over into every day. And I know that during the holiday season, I think it's top of mind for people. And then let's remember July, you know?

Nate Ruess: Yeah, one trillion percent. Things don't change, people don't magically have food in July. And so anything that we can do to help fight food insecurity, or, I mean, we just try and be as helpful as possible, and our hope is that we can do things as directly as possible, too.

Jill Riley: Yeah. You're listening to The Current. The Format in the studio. Boycott Heaven is the new record. And you played a couple songs while you're in the studio today. And I wonder if you could talk maybe just a little bit about the song, "Holy Roller." You know, that's an expression that I have heard before, and I'm like, "You know what? I'm going to Google this expression because I want to make sure that it is the thing that I think it is." But it's really my takeaway from the song is, like, you can, you know, wiggle around and pray all day long, and if that's what you need to do, great, you know, whatever floats your boat. But there is this sense that, like, we are human beings who have free will and like, what do you do? What are you actually going to do? Which kind of relates to, I mean, even taking an action, like making sure that you're giving back to communities when you're on tour. But what is that thing everybody's going to do? Or, like, individually?

Nate Ruess: Yeah, you can't just be reliant on the divine.

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Nate Ruess: And I think it's our, yeah, we're living this life. And my belief is that we're here, there's the only ... sorry, I'm not good at — I always do this, I get very emotional — but our goal as human beings is to lighten the load for our brother.

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Nate Ruess: And so I think that's a great way of putting it. You know, like, religion is a fantastic thing for those who choose to use it properly. And again, that doesn't disqualify us from the things that we have to do in this life directly.

Jill Riley: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming into The Current studio. There's one more song that you recorded that we're going to go into now, "Right Where I Belong." It's really beautiful.

Nate Ruess: Thank you.

Jill Riley: Yeah, it's beautiful. It just feels like a love song. And I wonder if you could talk about a little bit.

Nate Ruess: Yeah. So I feel like it's one of the, like, few love songs on the album, especially because, as I've gotten older, and I thought I was, like, retired from music, I was like, had kids, met my wife, and started kind of looking at the world more outwardly and less inwardly like all the old songs kind of were. Less about, like, "woe is me." And I'd always written songs, like, trying to find, you know, it's about, like, yearning for love, I suppose. And I met my wife, and then I didn't feel as inspired anymore to write those type of songs, and I felt more inspired to look at the world outside of that. 

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Nate Ruess: But it doesn't negate kind of how special she is to me. So that song is just about growing up and just being in love.

Jill Riley: Well, here's to growing up and being in love. Cheers, you guys. Thank you so much for coming into the studio. 

Nate Ruess: Yeah.

Sam Means: Thank you.

Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current. The Format, the new record, Boycott Heaven, is due out January 23, the year 2026. Nate Ruess and Sam Means, take care, and thank you so much for coming to The Current.

Nate Ruess: Thank you.

Songs Performed

00:00:00 Holy Roller
00:04:00 Right Where I Belong

Both songs from The Format's 2026 album, Boycott Heaven, available on the band's own The Vanity Label.

Musicians

Nate Ruess – vocals
Sam Means – guitar and vocals

Credits

Guests – The Format
Host – Jill Riley
Producers – Derrick Stevens, Nilufer Arsala
Video – Josh Sauvageau, Erik Stromstad
Audio – Cameron Wiley
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

The Format – official site