A Rusted Root Salute: Stereo Rodeo
I was in New Jersey in, I think, '95 waiting for Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to come on stage when I stumbled upon an opening act that truly confused the Zepheads around me. There was a group of people chanting joyfully and pounding away on congas, doumbeks, djembes, tambourines etc. and it was really going somewhere. I had discovered Rusted Root in a manner not unlike Columbus discovering the West, after a bunch of other people did. They had already caught the eye of thousands of record buyers and were in the process of evolving from an underground project to a really huge and huger underground project that was on its ironic way to the Billboard Hot Top 100.
You can easily guess that it is no easy thing to introduce anything demanding, hard to define, exotic, dense, or nuanced to the American public in large numbers. This work was just so interesting, so compelling, it had the effect of making the people who listened to it interesting. And what I find interesting is that the process is still taking place, and still underground. In fact, it is happening more than ever now.
And now here is the reason for looking up Michael Glabicki, the humble mastermind of the project: Their new epochal album, Stereo Rodeo and their upcoming shows.
T. Virgil Parker: I've been listening to Stereo Rodeo and really grooving on it.
Michael Glabicki: Awesome.
TVP: So it got me thinking about the pedigree of the group, as it were. I recall that the 80's and Pittsburgh have very little to do with what I think of as Rusted Root. How did it evolve originally?
MG: Well, I started writing in ‘88. I dropped out of college and decided that was what I wanted to do at that point. I was working with different musicians around Pittsburgh . I had known Liz from high school so I asked her to come down and drop some background vocals and it just sort of automatically worked. And then Liz knew Jim, the drummer, and Patrick, and they came in. At that point we had just come up with a name. We went out and we played a Pittsburgh contest of bands and placed third. From that point we just sort of got in the truck and started spiraling out from Pittsburgh , as far as Ohio and Upstate New York and West Virginia . I think at that point, we made a record and sold thirty thousand on our own.
TVP: Not bad.
MG: Yeah, so the record labels kind of got interested at that point.
TVP: I'm thinking about the evolution of the sound itself. From what I remember of 1988, that era was not exactly friendly to originality or uniqueness.
MG: I guess the sound comes, uh, well, it starts off with the song writing. Really, at that point, I wanted to do something different. I didn't want to sound like anybody else. So whenever I'd write something that was “cool” or I liked it because it did sound like something else, I would automatically discard it. At that point, Peter Gabriel came out with So, and that just gave me the opportunity to go and try some African percussion with the music. That sort of came about through from friends of mine who had been studying and listening to some African drummers. Then when I went out to seek musicians for the band I made sure that everybody kind of knew a little bit about African percussion. A lot of members of the band knew each other from an African drumming class at Pitt University . As far as developing the sound, it's less derived from influences and more derived from spiritual space or meditative space. We would play in a room for hours upon hours until something cool came out. It wasn't like, “hey, let's do this,” and then we went and did it. It sort of had to happen a different way.
TVP: One thing I noticed about early Rusted Root's music is that the drums are almost perpetual. Currently, they're used with a great deal of drama. What can you say about maturing composition style?
MG: I would say that it really is exactly that, a more mature approach to composing and being more artful in the dynamics of it. Almost all of the songs on the new record had been played solo acoustic out at my shows and on tour. For me, I really learned what I can do with just the acoustic guitar bringing down the dynamics to hardly anything at all where you can hear a pin drop, to really making it big again. I've been really practicing that over the past five or six years. Understanding that there are other worlds out there to be explored. In the beginning, we were all just sort hyper and ready to rock, and we went out there and did from the beginning of the song to the end of the song. Now, there's so much drama in being able to go as low as you can go, which propels you to how high you can go. Songs like Stereo Rodeo, even with the vocals, creating those really intimate background vocals on the bridge there. We're really having fun with this. The new songs and our being able to create intimacy as well as bombasticness.
TVP: There's so much irony in the way you're approaching these ideas that it would be pretty hard to get into bombast. Particularly, Stereo Rodeo. There's a great deal of intimacy to the song, but it's also making fun of itself at the same time.
MG: I think it's making fun of myself. But it's real, in that way.
TVP: Yeah, exactly. That's one thing I'm noticing is, as the writing style has evolved, it's like you go straight for an idea rather than circling around it. As a result, the rocky parts are actually rockier than they would have been when you were starting out.
MG: I agree.
TVP: Do you think that's just confidence?
MG: Yeah, I do. It's confidence. It's also the band being really willing to come around an idea in a new way. I think we're all just really exciting about making something really new and different from what we've done before.
TVP: Boy, the sound is remarkable. Did you bring it all in, or was there a lot of contribution in terms of ideas?
MG: The basic songs were pretty much together. I think on Driving, though, that was something that we wrote on stage before a show. Or at least started writing before a show. That's where it developed from that point. With everybody on stage we just started playing and a couple of the melodies came out. Then later on, in the studio, we finished writing. Actually, a lot of it got written or composed right as we were recording it. I think we did seventeen takes of Driving and then left one week and said, “that's it.” Each time it was different, and we would stop after each one and go, “let's try this.” “Well, let's try this.” So for that, it was really awesome to get the spontaneity on the record and then juxtapose it up against Stereo Rodeo. That was more of a formulated song on that part of the record. I'd like to see us to more of that later.
TVP: The way most bands create that have been around for twenty years is just part of their DNA . This new album is so diverse that you know that it wasn't a byproduct of being a band. You know what I mean?
MG: Yeah.
TVP: How do you manage to keep it that fresh?
MG: I really feel like we're really just coming into ourselves, really. I don't think we're anywhere near our peak let. So it's really a drive toward being a more complete songwriter, being a more complete, us, as musicians, us, as a band, and us, as arrangers. I think we're still driving toward something that I don't think we'll really ever achieve. But there's some greater goal out there we're really trying to get to and I think we still have that drive is in all of us.
TVP: I bet a lot of people are telling you this is your best album yet. It really exceeds every category that you're going for, in my opinion. What brought you to Suspicious Minds?
MG: That's funny because to me, it's always been a song that was so mystifying to me because I always heard and it had this great magic to the song itself. We started playing it. I just started strumming it a little bit in the sound check and was like, “wow, let's do this!” Because I always wanted to find out what this song was about. Just to find it was so simple and the lyrics were just sort of kind of there, kind of almost together, it seemed like. I don't know, it's just a really amazing song but it's not an amazing song on paper. But it is an amazing song. So I think that sort of drove us to do it. I just turned to the drummer and said, “hey play something Latin to it.” I think we ended up playing it that night, and it was a hit with our fans.
TVP: It's crazy. Particularly the Latin drums. It brings out something that wasn't there before. Or was, but not apparent. Anything that was done by Elvis is wallpaper at this point.
MG: It had such a weird groove to it.
TVP: Yeah. Now, talk to me about Bad Son. It seems, I think, that we're in the aftermath of George Bush zone, but it does seem to capture the way everyone felt while he was in power in a way that's still visceral. Were you channeling a lot of anger, or was that crafted?
MG: Yeah, I was definitely showing a lot of anger. I wrote that after I played down at a Iraqi Veterans Against the War March down in DC, and came back and started writing that. It's really powerful. To see that, in our time, soldiers going up the steps of the capital and lying down and being carried away, taken to jail for protesting against the war, it was a super powerful thing. It's something that will definitely stick with me. That's why I still felt like putting the song on the record even though our time was passed with George Bush. I think it needs to be remembered. I'm one of the people who thinks that there should be consequences to what happened. I think that if maybe one person hears that song and thinks that, maybe that will help it happen.
TVP: In a way, do you think that artists dropped the ball in the last eight years?
MG: No, I don't think so. It was really hard. I think there was a learning process that needed to happen outside of Congress or outside of the government. How can I explain it? I think people were just numb beyond belief to where, I don't think there was an audience there for protest songs.
TVP: That's true. Look what happened to the Dixie Chicks. They were crucified.
MG: I think it was a learning process for everybody in this country and I really don't think artists could have been a part of it. I mean, Neil Young came out with that whole record, “Let's Impeach the President.” It went by basically unnoticed. There should have been more young people getting involved, but I don't think the younger people knew how to do it yet. I think they're learning how to do it now. I think they're cycling back around. I think if something like that ever happened again, I think there'd be a lot a more people in the streets now.
TVP: I think so to. The surprising thing about this album, there are a lot of poignancies and edginess which don't always compete with one another; almost a textbook of maturing style. Not that it was ever immature, per say, but very few people get a chance to evolve in terms of recording, I think. It probably gives you an opportunity to look at the ways you've expanded. Just looking at your catalogue and wondering what that feels like.
MG: Looking back, I can see there was a more detached feeling than I had for this record. This one definitely feels alive, and it sounds like us, and it smells like us, and it looks like us. I think each one has its lesson in what got us here now. It's hard for me to go back to listen to some of the older stuff. But this record, I can throw in and listen to it any time.
TVP: That's always true, I think. You're going to be playing a lot of festivals this year. Do you see more material coming out of that process?
MG: Yeah. I'm actually in the studio writing our next record right now. The idea from this point on out is to really take advantage of our touring time. I think what's happened in the past, for us, and the problem that we've gotten into, is that we love to tour but we get out there and all you have the energy to do is really get up on stage and play, and then you're down for the count the whole next day. We might go out and get some lunch, and that's about it. Then we got to go out and do the show. So we're really trying to integrate writing the next record into our tours. I think a lot of it is our focus, too. Like, if we're focused on doing that, it will happen. But it's also taking into account the length of the drives and all of that, too. So right now I'm working on about twenty new ideas for the next record and, you know, I guess maybe the way it goes is that eight of those might work out with the band. A few months down the road I might bring twenty new ideas in and eight of them might work out. And then kind of start figuring out what the record will be. It's pretty exciting because even though we're putting out a record, I'm kind of off in this other world, too. So I get to go back and visit the material on the new record as well as being sort of this grounded space of writing a new one.
TVP: I suspect you're the only musician around with a platinum selling record who still does drum circles.
MG: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe.
TVP: Maybe, with exception of Mickey Hart. I'm going to guess that a lot of people have been waiting to see you perform live as a group.
MG: Yeah, it's really great to put the new material in the set with the old songs, and that's a whole lot of fun for us because songs take on new meaning when placed up against other songs and it's sort of like one of the happy side affects of this. Mixing all the music together and seeing what we can create. Sort of like, we have a bunch of artwork and we get to like making a collage now. It's a lot of fun.
TVP: What do you see doing in the next five years or so?
MG: In the next five years I think we should put out another three records. I'm going to really elevate the band and keep putting out as much music as we possibly can. That's my goal. And I have to get a couple solo records in there as well.
TVP: That's for sure. Liz does some solo music as well. Does that come into the fold at all? How does that affect the songwriting?
MG: Well, Liz plays a particular role in the arrangement of a lot of songs. I think she continues to do her own stuff, her own solo work, and she brings that awareness of the arrangements back to the band and it's really helpful.
TVP: That's excellent.
MG: So, I hope that she continues to do that.
TVP: Well, it's a terrific project. Is there anything that you want to talk about that I've missed?
MG: I guess, you know, the record comes out May 4th. And, I think that's it.
