RICH RUTH IS TELLING MOJO THE STORY OF HOW HE MOVED TO NASHVILLE. “I’d played in bands in high school in Toledo,” he explains, “then in college I was in a group called Kansas Bible Company with 12 people in it. We started to take ourselves seriously so we moved to Nashville. It was cheap. Jack White had just moved there. We stuck at it for a solid six years. We made a record in a studio with the producer, we went out on the road for 120 days a year…”
At a certain point he starts laughing at what, in 2022, now sounds like the most unsustainable business model for a band. He’s talking to MOJO from the lobby of a hotel in Langenthal, Switzerland, on a solo tour, a few days after Animal Collective cancelled their European and UK tour due, they said, to, “Inflation, currency devaluation [and] bloated shipping and transportation costs.” It’s also funny because the Kansas Bible Company model is so far removed from how Rich Ruth makes music these days – mostly by himself, in a small home studio.
After having his head turned by seeing Chicago electronic three-piece Bitchin Bajas at “a shitty little house gig” in Nashville in 2017 (“It was mindblowing, these three weirdo guys making this down to earth, really powerful music”), Ruth has been making his own home-grown music. 2019’s soothing Low/Eno-influenced electronic LP Calming Signals, was followed this year by the euphoric, hypnotic trance-jazz of I Survived, It’s Over – Number 16 in MOJO’s Best Albums Of 2022) – created with remote contributions from music friends.
I want some of this chaos in my reality.
“The time I spent in Kansas Bible Company really informed I Survived,” says Ruth, “because it taught me how important it is to work with people, give them ownership and creative licence over this music. But at the end of the day, I’m the one who’s in control.”
I Survived is a work of dense, rich collaboration, but it’s also, like Calming Signals, a deeply personal work borne of personal trauma. “In 2018 I got carjacked at gunpoint,” he explains. “Then we had to move because the kids that robbed me, their older brothers threatened to shoot up our house. I had to find a new place to live with my wife, my dogs and everything.” Calming Signals became a means of channelling Ruth’s angst to stop, as he says, “my whole world unravelling.”
Then came the pandemic, Trump, the tornados of March 2020. “Our neighbourhood looked like a post-apocalyptic war zone,” says Ruth with a dark laugh. “I just found myself listening to harsher music, specifically [John Coltrane’s abrasive, 1966 free exploration] Ascension and thinking, like, This music is how I feel. I want some of this chaos in my reality.”
If the chaos of Ascension exists in I Survived, It’s Over, so does that album’s sense of euphoric release. If reviews (including MOJO’s) have drawn comparisons with such ‘spiritual jazz’ LPs as Pharoah Sanders’ Thembi or Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, Ruth is reluctant to make the same direct comparisons himself. But he does admit that there’s a similar blend of the soothing and the stirring in I Survived. As to where he’ll take his sound next, “I’m probably 60 to 70 per cent of the way there with a new record. I’ve been working with a tabla player, I’ve got a few new musicians in the mix. I don’t know what the story will be yet, but I’ve also been working on playing with bigger bands. The solo thing is good for the time being, but taking it out live with a big band is the ideal.”
FACT SHEET:
- For Fans Of: Pharoah Sanders, Brian Eno, Harold Budd
- Ruth lives in Nashville but is not part of the session musician scene there. “The calibre of those people is insane.”
- Ruth signed to Third Man Records thanks to co-owner Ben Swank. “Releasing Calming Signals became his passion project. Ben initially wanted to put it out on his own little label but had too much going on with Third Man. Plus, we’re both from the same shitty bland part of Ohio so I think Ben took a liking to this other weirdo kid from Toledo.”
KEY TRACKS:
Taken Back
Coming Down
Older But Not Less Confused
I Survived, It’s Over is out now on Third Man.
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