Interview: Rubblebucket Orchestra

What was your first gig like? Kalmia Traver: It's always been like a really intense group vibe with Rubblebucket, even since the very beginning. We started out doing a four-day rehearsal with everybody [who] was going to be in the band or play in the first few gigs. It was in Burlington, or wait, maybe it was in Boston. I know we've had epic rehearsals in a bunch of different places. We had this one gig at the Wonder Bar in Boston that we were going to get totally ready and prepared for, and we were just crammed in my old house in Boston last summer. We were all crammed in the basement practicing, just like practicing like seven hours a day, and getting really cranky, but then we would make these big band meals and everything would be okay. At that point we were writing a lot of the material in the rehearsals as well and just trying to make the music that would be really, really fun for people and dance-able and feel like a party, and that would also be fun for us to play at the same time, so it could be this project that could be sustainable and gratifying for all the musicians.

How have your ideas of what the band is, or could be, changed? I think that we've definitely focused in a lot more on what we want the music to be, because when we were first starting out, it was like, 'Anything if we can get people dancing!' and it was focused a lot more on Afro-beat structures where you would have these long like ten or twenty or half-an-hour jam-out sessions with a million solos, and we've really, really reined that in and turned that into much more of a rock or pop structure. Although, in the live show we'll still spread out a lot, but we've been writing songs that just have like verses and choruses, and not strictly, but we've found a lot of delight in that as well, but still keeping some of those polyrhythmic textures that we love so much that are more African-influenced.

So how would you describe your live show at this point? Let me think. It's a party, for sure – onstage and offstage. And we like to do interaction with the crowd. We do call and responses sometimes on a few songs and then at least one time per show we'll come out into the crowd and run around and like dance with everyone. I'd like to get that going more. This past weekend was our first weekend playing as a band in like a month, because we had like a break, and that was one of the first things that really struck me as an overall impression of the weekend was that I want to be doing more interaction and more dancing around, and I don't know, we'll see how that evolves, but that's a really important part of our show. There's such a give and take, like with the crowd, we depend so much on the energy that the crowd gives us and it obviously goes the other way too, that I just want to show that and do it more concretely.

What's it like touring with such a large group? We've been shaving down our band as time has gone on. We started out with ten and we're down to eight. And eight is a manageable number, and that's what John Brown's Body was touring with; they had eight musicians. It is a huge band, for sure, but we've gotten used to it and kind of gotten to depend on that many people for, like, diversity and stimulation when we're not onstage, and when we are onstage. But, yeah, it's pretty wonderful. There have been difficult moments, but I think we're to a place where everyone's mature and experienced enough to know when to give each other space and when to just like rage and be crazy together.

How wide of a variety of music do you all listen to in the van while on the road? How much music have you been exposed to just by spending so much time together? That's an awesome question. Well, yeah, I've been exposed to so much awesome music that people have brought in. For example, I had never listened to a full Phil Collins album, and people kind of make fun of it and joked about it, but I think it is important as a musician to [be exposed that kind of thing]. And before Michael Jackson died I was getting more exposed to him than I ever had in my life through Rubblebucket, and then, obviously, after he died it was everywhere in our culture. But yeah, we've got some huge MJ lovers. I don't know if you've ever heard of this band Deerhoof, but they're really awesome, and someone brought in all of their albums, and they're really cool. And yeah, our whole group really loves The Dirty Projectors who are another Brooklyn band who has gotten a lot bigger just in the past year, which is really awesome, and we listen to them a lot.

How different is it taking things from your interactive live show and then heading into the studio? For me I've really gotten so much pleasure out of recording things, even when I'm just in my room on Garageband.com. It's cool and it's satisfying to do it. I think for bands that's a pretty common struggle or maybe just a really important aspect of their identity is their recording versus their live show. We came from the live show standpoint and that's always been our biggest form for creativity, so I think there were definitely worries that with the recording we would definitely lose something. And people, even like fans or whatever, had said that 'Rose's Dream really fell short, it does not do you justice; you guys are way cooler than that.' So we wanted to be careful with the new album. So yeah, the studio is a place where you can do things you could never do onstage, and we tried to do that and not to do that. There's some cool sampling and lots of overdubs. Like, I did some voice overdubs that were fun, and we had fun with it too. One thing that we did to try was to capture the party vibe a little was to really have a party in the studio a little bit and to record it. Like on the song "Bikes" you can hear it a little bit at the end, like all these shouts and screams and we're all playing kazoos and clapping and things and that was pretty fun.

I've read that one of your biggest influences personally is Bjork. How did you feel when people started comparing your music to hers? Oh, man. I think it's kind of a double-edged sword because I think it's flattering, but I think that Bjork has such a style of singing that I wouldn't want to like copy it. I guess that I would hope in like an ideal way that people if they were sensing like a Bjork spirit in what I was doing it would be in more of her spirit of creativity and freshness and less of the actual tones. I don't know. People have complained on that before. But yeah, you hit it right on the head. She's definitely a huge influence, not just her voice but her whole approach to putting herself out there in the world is really inspiring. But it's not true that she was one of my first influences. I only really found out about her in college and at first I couldn't even listen to her because it affected me so deeply. Like, my roommate would play an album by her and then go out of the house and I'd just be sitting there listening to it in tears going, 'Ahh! What's happening to me?! I need to turn it off!' But yeah, I've gotten into her a lot now, and I really like her album Volta. That's by far my favorite.

Since you have so many members and each of you have such broad tastes and influences, does it frustrate you when people try to pinpoint one or two elements of your sound when they try to approach or describe it? Yeah, frustrating definitely could be a word to describe it, but it's understandable because we can't even really classify who our exact influences are and what makes us who we are. But I guess it's important to have those categories and constraints just to fit into the culture around you, but I think we'll just keep doing it as we are and let people figure out for themselves, and some people will be able to hear into it a lot and enjoy it on a different level than some other people and that's up to them.

What else do you have planned or hope to do later this year? Well, Alex and I are moving to Brooklyn in March, so that will be... we've been in Boston and New Jersey, so being in Brooklyn will be a huge event and I'm really excited about it, because three of our guys are living there now, so I think we'll be pretty much based in Brooklyn after that. And then, yeah, we've got a lot of new songs, and I think we've worked five new ones since our latest album into the live sets and we've been having a lot of fun with them. And we definitely want to hit the studio at our next possible chance, and I'm not sure exactly when that will be, but I'm thinking this spring or summer we will be recording again.

Rubblebucket Orchestra will play The Strutt March 12 and Founder's Brewery March 13. For more, check out rubblebucket.com.