As they say. Now while Rusted Root is together, you’re all still very much involved in various individual projects. Comment on each one of them.
I can speak most accurately about myself. I’ll do my best for the other ones. I’ve been playing with a band called Mama Tongue a lot this year. We recorded a record here in Pittsburgh that we’re still working on. Hopefully we’ll have that out sometime soon. It’s world dance music. It draws a lot from traditional African music, but it’s a pretty eclectic mix of different world stuff.
I’ve been teaching a lot of Rhythm and Drumming workshops. Basically they’re hand drumming workshops. I’ve been traveling around the East Coast and Midwest getting with people in smaller groups and talking about rhythms and different experiences musically and how to integrate rhythm into your life and use it for different means of self expression. I’ve had a website now for a couple of years. I keep revamping that. The new incarnation is just out. It’s jimdonovanmusic.com. I’ve got not only information about me and my music, but I have e-commerce as well. I sell different drums and all kinds of fun stuff. It’s a side business. I also have an instructional drumming CD on the site.
I do these altered-state ambient music recordings. I just finished my latest one. It’s called “Pulse.” I have one other one called ‘Indigo.’ That came out in 1998 on a label called Triloka. This new one is called ‘Pulse.’ It’s an hour-long piece of music that consists of very organic drums, very repetitive trance-oriented stuff but no loops. I play for an hour straight. It’s a collaboration with a duo called Life in Balance who play Shakuhaci flute, which is a Japanese bamboo flute, and quartz crystal bowls.
Do you play it live?
Yeah, I play it a lot.
Wow. You’re so into world music. Now we know where the world music element comes from in Rusted Root.
Yeah, I love the stuff. This music is the kind of music that’s very interactive. You can listen to it, but it actually takes you in and helps alter your whole body system to get into super deep relaxation or if you actually like to work with that kind of stuff, it helps you achieve altered states of consciousness, ways to get further into yourself and learn more about yourself.
Jenn had a band called Lovechild for a while. They had to change the name because there’s some other band called Lovechild. I think it’s just called the Jenn Wertz Band. She still rehearses with them and they do dates here in Pittsburgh. It’s a group she reassembled here in Pittsburgh. She was living in the Carolinas for a while and she just moved back not too long ago. So she does that. And she’s been writing a lot.
She’s grown tremendously in five years. It’s really nice to see someone break out and be able to hold her own in the music world because when she started with us was when she started to sing. She hadn’t really sung before us and she didn’t play an instrument.
Mike went out on a short run last fall. He did some isolated dates this year. I know he’s been working on some material, making some demos. He’s the consummate player. He’s always doing something. He’s always writing. He loves to write. He’s got lots of stuff.
Jim got nominated for an Emmy Award. He composed the music for a PBS TV show here in Pittsburgh called ‘On Cue Magazine.’ It’s like a talk show. He composed the music for it and recorded it. It got nominated for an Emmy this year so he’s doing a lot of that kind of composing work.
Johnny has been doing a ton of artwork. He designed the front cover of my ‘Pulse’ CD, and I’m sure he’ll be doing the next Rusted Root one. He’s an incredibly gifted visual artist. I know he’s been playing a lot too, doing a lot of guitar stuff and he loves to drum. He’s been with me to a couple of workshops. We have a lot of fun.
Patrick made a record with this band Too Tall Jones, like the football player in Dallas’ hey day. They play considerably harder music. It’s great. Liz has been doing pretty much the same as Mike: isolated dates, working on demos, writing, getting her skills up just like the rest of us. Everyone took the time to have some input and just do something completely different. As a result, now that we’re back doing it, I’ve noticed how much everyone has grown. It’s going to be nothing but good for Rusted Root. I’m hoping that people just continue on doing these things so that they can feel fulfilled on a much larger scale than just being able to do Rusted Root, which in and of itself is wonderful but there’s much more to life than just one thing.
As parenthood will show you.
Absolutely. That’s been my biggest thing, just realizing that being in a band is a wonderful thing and I love it. I love playing for people, but when I put my child side by side, it’s so much more real. Music is very real, but when you have a child, it puts everything into perspective. It makes me realize every choice I make is going to affect my kid and so, by gosh, I better do right, making the best choices I can. It really cuts a lot of the bullshit out. You don’t really have time to mess around.
Why colleges? What is it about the college venues that is good for right now?
We want to go out and try a lot of new music. We don’t have a new record. I don’t know if the fans can relate to this, but we like to save all the major markets for when we’re going to be out doing a much grander tour. That’s our plan. We try to plan ahead and look at our entire scope of a year and how it’s going to flow. Right now, what we need to do is get out in front of people and play some new material. We didn’t want to go out for a very long time. We wanted to make it financially viable and colleges are wonderful for that. It gets you in front of a lot of brand new people. The students don’t have to pay much to get into the shows. As a result, we’ll get tons of new folks coming in. We’ve been around 10 years and every four years these colleges turn over so it’s always good for us to get back in and develop new folks, get a new fanbase and add to the existing one. But we are doing a couple of theaters.
Right. The show in Jersey is in a theater, The Community Theatre in Morristown. That’s my next question for you. Why there?
I think our management (John Scher’s Metropolitan Entertainment) has a lot to do with that one. They’re based in New York City and also Montclair, N.J., so I think they must have known some folks there and set it up. I think it’s a venue that they book often. We needed a place close to that area and they thought that would be a good one. I don’t think we’ve been there before. I just talked to our manager and he said it’s just about sold out.
Other than Jen being back in the band, how is the live set different from when you toured in the summer of ’99 with Jewel.
The great thing about this run, it’s going to be long. It’s not going to be 45 minutes. It’s going to be two hours. We’re going to play a lot of new stuff. One thing we’ve integrated is having folks do songs that don’t involve everybody in the band. One song, Jen and Liz do by themselves as a duo. Mike does a song just by himself. We’re working on some drum pieces that are purely on hand drums, no drumset. They’re just some things to really switch it up, make it different and fun for us and the audience who comes to see us all the time.
No Comments comments associated with this post