Michael Glabicki had a plan. After dropping out of college after freshman year, he put an ad in the paper for musicians and started a band. Nearly a decade later, Rusted Root's music still appeals to a large and diverse crowd.
Their debut album When I Woke was released in 1994. It featured the hit single "Send me on my way" which remains today one of their most popular songs. Their new album, Welcome to my party was released in the spring of this year.
This interview was conducted over the phone this past Wednesday.
News-Letter: When did you know you wanted to be a musician?
Michael Glabicki: I was 18, I had just come back from Nicaragua in 1987, I just got out of high school. I was a little overwhelmed with what was happening down there with the contra war, so I sort of fell into a state of depression and dropped out of college after my freshman year to become a musician because I felt that not only that I wanted to but I needed to at that point, to express what I was feeling.
N-L: How did you learn guitar and what attracted you particularly to the guitar as an instrument?
MG: I think all the rock idols of growing up played guitar, Neil Young, Santana, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. For me, what really got me, was when I really fell deeply into the acoustic guitar and what really felt was a symphony in my hands. It's very percussive, very melodic in feel.
N-L: Do you prefer the acoustic guitar over the electric guitar?
MG: Yeah. I keep trying to find an electric sound that really moves me, and I'm getting close with the electric, I found some old Les Pauls that I like and a couple of amp styles that I'm gravitating towards, but right now it's still the acoustic guitar running through some electric amps.
N-L: You spoke a little bit about the bands you listened to when you were growing up. What were your primary music influences growing up, where are they today and how have they evolved?
MG: I grew up listening to all different sorts of stuff, even going into hard rock and heavy metal, Black Sabbath and Van Halen, and all that heavy fun stuff. But I grew up in my early years listening to the Beatles and the Stones, Cat Stevens. When I first started writing music it was Peter Gabriel and U2, and right now its Radiohead and Neil Young.
N-L: Your music has a very jungle and tribal sort of rhythm to it. Where does that sound come from?
MG: Well there was a lot of African drumming going on here in Pittsburgh, at University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. I had two cousins who had sort of a world beat band who were doing some original music with some African percussionist. Actually one of the percussionists they were working with had worked for the Talking Heads and had helped them incorporate African rhythms into their music. So for me, it was happening all around me, locally up the street from me, but then there was also Peter Gabriel too, who was doing a lot of African Rhythms and such. In that year that I started writing music, it seemed like a very natural thing to do for me, in the acoustic styles that I was playing it worked, it matched, it was the way to go.
N-L: What exactly is your process when you write songs?
MG: Ninety percent of the time I focus in on the acoustic guitar and sort of the repetition of what I am playing and that allows me to reach a deeper state, sort of like a meditational tool to find the lyrics and find the vocal melodies. So a lot of times when the lyrics come out they are kind of like dreams to me, where I'm not quite sure what they mean right away. When you have a dream it might take a month, and then you go OThat's what that dream was about'. A lot of my songs are like that.
N-L: So do you have certain periods when you feel like you are in the zone and really feel like you can write and then other periods when its more difficult for music to come out?
MG: Yeah, definitely. Whenever it's really easy, that's when the best songs come...well maybe not. There's definitely moments where you get into a song and you say Owhat just happened' and all of a sudden you have a song on tape and you're not quite sure how you got there.
N-L: Could you give a brief biography of how you got the other members of your band together?
MG: I got back from Nicaragua and dropped out of college to start a band and had envisioned a lot of African percussion. I wanted a larger band with female harmonies. I started auditioning musicians here in Pittsburgh and I put quite a couple ads in the paper, and started having musicians come to my studio, auditioning. I had known Liz [Berlin], from high school, and I knew that she had a beautiful voice, so I asked her to come down and try out and it went really well. Then she knew Jim [Donovan] and Patrick [Norman] both from an African drumming class at Pitt. They came down, things were going good. We started gigging and a year later met Jenn [Wertz] and John [Buynak]. They photographed us, they were photographers, and I sort of hit it off with them and asked John to join the band, because had been playing some flute, and sung some Rolling Stones songs with Jen, just goofing around over some beers. And they said OOkay'. They came down and practiced, the six of us at that point. Then, later on, I did some solo shows with Jimmy Spirnow, the percussionist on When I Woke and the last two albums. This past record he spent with his family, so right now he is not in the band.
N-L: When you're going on tour, and you're on stage singing in front of thousands of people, how does that feel?
MG: I feel like an animal, a spiritual animal. I try to encompass everything from the animal to the spiritual, where the animal can taste the spiritual and move by sense of smell and taste. The spiritual moves on the energy of the crowd and the overall color scheme of the crowd. I just try to be totally in it all, and move with it the best that I can, but then also make my boundaries to where I'm going to go and where I'm not going to go.
N-L: I know you've been on tour for a bit going around to colleges around the country. What do you like best and hate the most about travelling to different cities every night?
MG: Well, I think the best part of it for sure is playing music and feeling connected with everyone. I believe those events radiate out into the cities, and into the local geography. And then to have days off is great, to have time to go around in the city, meet people, taste the food , that is wonderful. I think the worst of it is the actual being on the bus or plane and travelling. No matter how nice your bus is, if you've got DVD's, CD's, whatever, you're still living out a tin box and it's not really natural.
N-L: Shifting gears a little bit, how do you feel about the exchange of music for free over the Internet? What is your take on that, do you believe people should have to pay for music like they do in the store, or should it be different on the Internet? What is your stance on that issue?
MG: Well, I have a couple different perspectives on it, one being that I did just invest two years of my life into making a recording to put out. And people that then go out and burn that CD, and I don't see revenues for it, I've just invested a lot of time and money into that and I feel that they're ripping me off. A lot of people think they're not ripping off the artist, they're ripping off the record companies, but they are ripping off the artist. Beyond that I feel that the industry has gotten so restricted with the labels they're putting out and what radio allows to be promoted that people are just craving any type of music and I think that's where the hunger comes from. They're not thinking about what they're doing they just want good music and when they find good music they're really excited about it. In one sense, I think the industry needs to change on a lot of different levels for it to be worked out.
N-L: A lot of young people today, when they think of popular music they think of MTV and everything MTV stands for. What do you think is the affect of MTV on the music consumer, and do you think it's a positive or a negative one?
MG: I don't particularly like MTV at this point. I think it's very constricted and economically oriented instead of artistically oriented. If people are taking it, it's their fault. I think people could create something different and to say its MTV's fault or big corporations' fault is ridiculous because people have always changed and always rebelled against that, and for some reason people are slow to do that today. People have to get a little more tune with history and realize they're more powerful than that.
N-L: Since you're coming to Johns Hopkins, I'm curious if anything in particular comes to mind when you hear that name?
MG: Well, I had a relative that went there. [Laughs]. I've heard some good stories about it and I'm definitely excited to go there. I think there is a strong intellectual community there, and it's exciting for me to know that and to know its going to be a little different playing a show there.
N-L: Thank you very much for your time Mr. Glabicki, and good luck with your show.
MG: Thank you.
