mollycoulter.com

The new, new school
The progressive path of Railroad Earth and Hot Buttered Rum
By Molly Coulter
Published on 09/27/2007

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American gypsies: Hot Buttered Rum straight from northern California, by way of everywhere. Photo courtesy of Madison House Publicity.

When the music lover first embraced Napster and the world of file-sharing, the phrase “tickled pink” could be used to describe his or her reaction. Instead of picking through the clearance bin at the record store for a mass of interesting music, he or she could examine lists of artists, songs, albums and live shows at no cost, except for the occasional replacement of a larger hard drive to house the thousands of files that had been stolen, unbeknownst to the naïve fan.
Artists and record labels threw their fists in the air condemning the obvious piracy and copyright infringement. Crackdowns on the techie with 6 million songs on 18 hard drives got rolling, but even the seemingly innocent single mother of three with 250 files downloaded for her children was at risk. The record industry is right to prosecute illegal downloading. The musicians might be destined to make music, but it’s a lot easier to make a lifetime of creativity flourish and reach its captivating potential if that lifetime is supported by a regular pay check. On one hand, if music were free, wouldn’t quality control step into place, eliminate the “looks good” and champion the “sounds good”? But on the other, how could any musician or group ever find the time to sound good if studio time and costs weren’t supplemented with album sales? The live show would have to become the money-maker, a maxim supported by touring professionals like Railroad Earth and Hot Buttered Rum.

    “We are playing larger festivals across the country with 5,000 to 150,000 people going—you’re able to put yourself out in front of a large audience,” Railroad Earth’s fiddle player Tim Carbone says. “Audience taping and trading of live recording, that has really spread the news about the band. Also a great street team recruiting people to come; that’s one of the really key things. A grassroots street team approach always allows fans to feel like they’re involved and gets people involved. The viral marketing on the Internet like MySpace, as well. We encourage it to the extent that we allow them to tape the show.”
     I ask Carbone if trading bootlegs poses the same risks as illegal downloading. He says, “It’s an honor among thieves sort of thing. I’ve never ever run into instances of where people are illegally selling. It’s a part of the culture. It is kind of wild.”
     “Our live show is something that is an ever-fluent thing,” says Hot Buttered Rum’s fiddle and mandolin player Aaron Redner. “We have four songwriters in the band. Every night is a different set list. We draw more from the Grateful Dead, Phish, String Cheese world. We encourage people to follow us around. We try to interpret the scene we’re in. We take runs around the town and try to figure out what it’s about. Even during the set itself, a song will come up and we’ll say, ‘Let’s sing something else.’ We try to be crackling electricity.”
     Typically band members find it painful to describe their band’s sound in a few, short, genre-specific words, and Carbone and Redner do not split from the pack.
     “One term we’re using these days is ‘progressive Americana,’” Redner says. “To us Americana music really signifies American roots music. That would include blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelic music, old time string band music and bluegrass; all these things. We get pigeonholed as a bluegrass band and that’s not really accurate.”
     As for Railroad Earth, Carbone says, “It has bluegrass as the base, but I would call it more American acoustic music or Americana, but even that doesn’t really accurately describe it. It’s always tough to figure it out. But the fans don’t seem to care one way or the other. They just like the music.”
     Carbone continues, “If you listen to traditional bluegrass, it doesn’t have drums, long extended jams; the scene we’re kind of borrowing from for the most part. We’re adding our own element to it, elements of rock, jazz. It’s all just good music, that’s what it comes down to. The fans, they don’t really have an agenda that it has to be this or it has to be that. It just has to be good.”
     Redner says the upcoming show in Flagstaff will let the band’s high altitude acoustic music resonate and “people who come to the show will feel a continuous line of American roots music.” He says the show will have covers of music by the band’s heroes from a range of eras and after meeting up with Railroad Earth a little less than two weeks before, “by the time we get to Flagstaff, we’ll be in full force.”
     “Politically we are a band that has liberal leanings and we are very concerned about the state of the union and the world,” Redner says. “We’re saying things on stage occasionally that we might find important, but not trying to alienate people. We live in such a volatile time, though there always seems to be some of that, now more than ever people are speaking out.”
     Hot Buttered Rum puts its money where its mouth is with practice and influence. The band tours the country inside a biodiesel van and promotes other groups to jump on the bandwagon with instructions and informative tips on its Web site.
     Both Carbone and Redner humbly agree that the groups have picked up displaced music nomads, like Deadheads, Phishheads and Cheeseheads. “Yes, we’re definitely finding more people from that circle coming to our shows,” Redner says. “We’re helping to carry on that legacy while we’re creating our own, but we’re not that big of a band, yet.”
     Railroad Earth and Hot Buttered Rum are coming to the Orpheum Theatre, 15 W. Aspen, Tue, Oct. 2. Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. The show is all ages, doors open at 7 p.m., and it starts at 8 p.m. For more information on Railroad Earth, see www.railroadearth.com. For more information on Hot Buttered Rum, go to www.hotbutteredrum.net. For more information on the show, go to www.orpheumpresents.com or call 556-1580.

Additional photos for this story:

Back in the barn: New Jersey’s golden boys Railroad Earth. By C. Taylor Crothers. Courtesy of Madison House Publicity.

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