RUSTED ROOT NEW ABLUM RELEASE “STEREO RODEO” LEADS THEM TO THE FOX OCT 21!
Rusted Root performing one of there new songs “Weary Bones” for the new Album “Stereo Rodeo” which came out this past May 2009!
Here is an article from the Pittsburg Tribune reviewing and talking with some of the band members about the album.
pittsburghlive.com. By Rege Behe. Saturday, May 9, 2009
“Seven years.That’s how long it had been since Rusted Root released an album of new material prior to the unveiling of “Stereo Rodeo” earlier this week.Seven years: A lifetime in any industry, but especially in music.
When “Welcome to My Party” came out in 2002, there were no MySpace pages, no YouTube for instant access to videos. Musicians still could expect to make some money from album sales. This is the new paradigm into which “Stereo Rodeo” is unleashed, and one would think there might be some allowances, something new, to burnish the album for 2009 audiences.But no, not really. Rusted Root’s approach simply was to add more electric guitar.“It’s fun,” says singer and band leader Michael Glabicki, as the rest of the band — bassist Patrick Norman, vocalist and percussionist Liz Berlin, drummer Preach Freeman and guitarist Dirk Miller (guitarist Colter Harper is absent) — laugh. “You turn the knob up and that’s pretty much it.”
“Stereo Rodeo” is much more than that, obviously. Released Tuesday , it’s arguably the most diverse album in Rusted Root’s 20-year career. There’s the foot-thumping rockabilly of “Dance in the Middle,” the Wire-meets-XTC vibe of “Bad Son,” and the bookends “Driving One” and “Driving Two,” hyper-speed aural travelogues.“I was hearing stereo guitars going on, especially on ‘Weary Bones’ and ‘Garbage Man,’ and ‘Crucible Glow,’ ” Glabicki says after an in-studio appearance at WYEP-FM in the South Side. “Even when I was playing acoustically, I would hear that left-right thing happening. Once Dirk started playing — we had Colter in for awhile — the landscape became clear.”
That landscape, however, doesn’t mean Rusted Root is disavowing its past as one of the most engaging and hypnotic live bands performing today. The rhythmic aspect of the band that starts with Norman and Freedom, and is accented by Berlin’s use of everything from washboard to African drums, and Glabicki’s acoustic guitar, is still intact.What has happened is a rejuvenation of the band’s standards, from “Send Me On My Way” to “Cruel Son” to “Welcome to My Party.” “You get excited about the new material, and then, when you’re playing live, you find yourself approaching the old stuff completely differently,” Norman says. “It becomes fresh again, just that excitement of playing new things in front of people.”
A few songs on “Stereo Rodeo” were staples of Glabicki’s solo performances before they underwent the band treatment. “Weary Bones,” “Crucible Glow” and “Animals Love Touch” stayed the same in structure, but were given a more cinematic treatment on the new release. “I don’t really know how to describe it, but they just got wider and vaster,” Glabicki says. “It’s phenomenal what happens, and there’s two ways that goes: I can sit down with people individually and work ideas with them, or we can all get in a chaotic, one-room situation and you kind of hear what’s going on, you kind of don’t. But you know it’s going somewhere, so you keep playing it over and over again.”
“It’s almost more like a feeling: This feels good,” Norman adds. Glabicki says the key for him is “Crucible Glow,” a song he had trouble with prior to taking it to the band. On the album, it’s punched up with a soulful horn section and banjo, another indication that any preconceptions of what a Rusted Root song should sound like are null.
“I hadn’t been able to find it with solo bands,” Glabicki says. “It wasn’t anything close to what I thought it needed to be. And it just sort of happened, sort of smoky and Rolling Stones-ish.” The band expresses little concern about being overlooked amid so much musical debris on the Internet. Glabicki, for one, is certain longtime fans will know where to find the band’s music. “The good thing is, we are familiar because we’ve been doing it for so long,” Norman says. “Starting with ‘When I Woke,’ we were a touring band. We’re road dogs. We’ve pretty much made our lives on the road.”
It’s been that way, shockingly, for 20 years. The band members were in their late teens when they started, and Glabicki has said from the start he envisioned Rusted Root as a long-running vehicle, one that constantly adapts and changes and morphs into something, if not quite new, varied and intriguing.
“We’re always trying to get somewhere,” Glabicki says. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.”“It’s not the destination,” Berlin says. “It’s the journey.”
The Fox Theatre presents Rusted Root October 21! Get your Tickets here: http://www.foxtheatre.com/Store/ChooseTicket.aspx?sid=15550
