In support of their debut CD Rusty, Rodan visited the Cat's Cradle in May. Jay Murray and I talked to the Louisville sluggers about touring, their music, Louisville, bicycle thieves, Jason Noble's good looks, and a few other way-off-topic subjects. Unf ortunately, the lengthy discussion wasn't recorded in its entirety, as even the best technology was overcome by certain initial conditions on which the interview was sensitively dependent. So I wound up paraphrasing several statements in order to bring t he following interview together. No big deal. (Tim Ross)
SF! = Tim Ross, Jay Murray
J = Jason Noble, guitarist/singer
K= Kevin Coultas , drummer
Ok, lets start with the basics. How long has Rodan been in existence?
J Well, let's see . . . July '71? No, wait . . .
Ah, the date of birth of your youngest member?
J Actually we're coming up on our two-year anniversary. It was summer of 1992 that we started playing together.
Then the Simple Machines song must've come soon after.
J Yeah, we did a show with Tsunami and that kind of led to our song ("Darjeeling") on the Simple Machines compilation (Inclined Plane 7"). We recorded that around September 1992, I believe. The Simple Machines thing was really good for us - it g ot us a lot of exposure.
And eventually the 1/4 Stick/Touch 'n' Go deal came along?
J (much talk about the best label in the world; lots of complementary things also said about Bob Weston, who engineered Rusty)
I've been wanting to ask you this: the first song on the album - "Bible Silver Corner" - how did that develop? It's so beautiful the way it just unfolds instead of building up to something. . .
J We did that song in our house. Kevin played guitar instead of drums and the rest of us played guitar, guitar and bass. It turned out well; we liked the idea of starting off the album with something quiet and pretty. You know, you're supposed to start out your album with something really rockin' and powerful.
Yeah, I love the way the first song is so beautiful and intricate and then the second song is so fast and heavy. The rest of the album is almost like a combination of the first two.
J Oh, exactly - that's the way we wanted it. We really like the total contrast between the first two.
Yeah, that single snare tap comes in, and then . . . boom. Off everything goes. The album only has six songs on it - that's pretty rare as far as rock bands go.
K Well, that's just the songs we had to put on the album. If we put more on, it would've been really long.
So it's more a case of the songs being a certain length anyway and six happened to be the right number to fit on the album.
K Yes
You guys get the Slint comparison a lot, people say "Slintacular," stuff like that. Obviously that's a bit too easy, especially with the Louisville connection, but there are some definite similarities between the two bands. How do you feel about the "S lint" tag?
J We don't mind. They're nice guys; they're friends of ours. We're both from Louisville, so I don't know. It's no big deal.
K We are both very dynamic bands, musically. I think that has a lot to do with it.
A friend of mine was suggesting that Louisville bands seem to be short-lived. Somewhat of an over-generalization, maybe. What's your take on that?
J Oh, I don't think so. Crain has been around for about five years. Bastro was around for a while. Antietam . . . ? It might seem that way simply because Slint broke up right when they started getting popular.
So it's just an outsider-looking-in misconception? It just seems that all of the bands in the Squirrelbait family have put out a couple of albums and then called it quits.
K Well, Bastro just kind of evolved into Gastr del Sol.
What's Louisville like? Is it a college city or . . .
J No, not at all. There's really nothing to do, no regular club to play at. There's a lot of old people in Louisville and a lot of kids that will come out to shows. There's just a large group of people and friends that don't really have much to d o, so they make music.
So when are you guys going to play bluegrass?
J Man, I'd like to, but that stuff is really hard. You have to really cook to be able to play bluegrass!
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