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deaconlight.com/todd
Essential Rungren
Note from DD: This is a piece I wrote for the 4/14/2005 edition of goTriad. This is reproduced here by permission from the News and Record.
GREENSBORO -- When Todd Rundgren comes to Greensboro's War Memorial Auditorium with Joe Jackson and the string quartet ETHEL Wednesday, check your nostalgia at the door.
While this isn't a rock show, it's no oldies act.
Of course, you will hear piano ballads and familiar pop tunes. There are no big sets with special effects. But the charismatic combination of these artists stands to create a one-of-a-kind musical evening.
Rundgren has been a player in the music business for four decades, but he has not lost his edge. A year ago, he released Liars. This album of textured material explores new musical avenues while incorporating the musical imprint recognized by his fan base. His recorded catalogue includes a prolific amount of solo material along with his work in the 1960s with Nazz and the band Utopia since the 1970s.
Rundgren remains relevant behind the scenes as a record producer for a slew of artists too numerous to name (including the New York Dolls, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith, and the Psychedelic Furs).
All the talent that has pushed Rundgren to be such a musical innovator both in front and behind the production room control board will be embodied on stage in its most stripped-down form. The show promises to be an intimate event between the performers and the audience.
What can we expect from your set?
I will principally be playing guitar and piano. My own set will be about an hour max so there's less necessity for me to incorporate a lot of other stuff. I pretty much play guitar, piano, and ukulele. There should be enough to keep everyone entertained.
How did this collaboration with Joe Jackson and ETHEL come about?
Last spring, I did a revival at a place called "Joe's Pub," which is connected to the Delacourt Public Theatre. We got a call from Joe [Jackson's] manager asking if there was any little part that Joe could do, he'd like to participate. That was the first time I'd ever worked with Joe.
After the gig was over, we were approached again by the people who run the Theatre to see if we wanted do a double solo bill in Central Park in the summer along with the string quartet Ethel. In that sense neither Joe nor I nor Ethel had anything to do with conceptualizing this show.
None of us knew what to expect. We did agree to get together during sound check and try to work out a couple of numbers together just to see what we would sound like. We were only hoping to entertain. After the show was over, the audience went so nuts over it that we thought we should see whether there is more interest in this kind of show and - lo and behold! - now we've got 10 weeks of touring.
It was more or less a happy accident - something we only expected to do once.
What mix of music will you be performing?
I'll likely do a couple of songs from Liars if I can. I'm still working on them to see if I can play them with effectiveness. But the usual basis of the solo show is a broader chronological range of material, which a lot of people like.
When I go out with a band, I usually am doing the newest music so the shows are heavily loaded with whatever the most recent stuff I've created is. But for these solo shows, the foundation is not the production. It's the songwriting and finding the material that is most complementary to my voice in that context. So it all tends to be the more familiar songs and the older songs.
What do you want people to come away with when they leave the show? =
A T-shirt! Well, you certainly hope to satisfy people and leave a lingering good flavor in their musical palette. What I expect people will get out of this is a fairly unique musical experience. By the time we get to the end of the show, all the musicians will have played together in various combinations. I've never been out with a string quartet before so for my fans it will be the first time to see any of that.
What motivates you to continue pushing the boundaries of musical experimentation, as in your last record Liars, as opposed to sticking with the pop formulas that have worked for you in the past?
I've discovered that for myself the most important aspect is solitude. It's the ability to shut out outside voices so that you can hear what's going on inside. And so when I get serious about a record, I usually find someplace where I can just be alone with that.
It's hard to say it's (Liars) a rock record or it's a soul record or it's a pop record or some other kind of generalized classification. What I've always had to say is don't expect something that necessarily that can be pigeonholed easily. I'm a musical experimenter, and what you're going to hear is essentially the results of my experiments.
This page was updated June 21, 2008.
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