It’s difficult to hear “Walk” and not fall head over ears in love with Red Rooster.
If you go
Red Rooster with Little Bigheart
Where: The Red & The Black, 1212 H St. NE
When: 9:30 doors, 10:30 show Thursday
Info: $6, tickets sold day of show; redandblackbar.com
The band members call it a folk collective. That’s as good a moniker as any although don’t be surprised if you find the sound less difficult to peg. Yet the mix of alt-country with electronica, folk, of course, and some rock offers a fresher sound than you might ever expect. Raise the experimentation a few notches and you have an idea of what the group’s concerts are like. “There were lots of lessons learned,” lead vocalist Jay Erickson, the band’s co-founder, said of the latest release. “I want to carry that sound forward now.”
When Erickson and bandmate Nat Zilkha, who handles lead guitar for the band, started Red Rooster a decade ago, they were a duo. But they slowly built the band so as to follow their artistic vision of merging various formats.
They’re clearly not done walking that artistic path even though “Walk” received both critical and popular kudos.
“It feels like looking back at something,” Erickson said of the latest album. “It’s almost like a graduation. You are proud but it doesn’t feel like the present. We’re ready for the next thing.”
You’ll certainly hear some of that during the band’s latest concert, Susannah Hornsby (yes, she is Bruce’s daughter) said.
“I think that’s one of the thing that happens with us during the performance aspect,” she said. “We have so many different iterations [of songs] … you always hear something different.”
The sound, she said, juxtaposes old-fashioned and contemporary sounds. That means the band spends plenty of time paying attention to specific details — such as track order — when it records and performs. Not that anyone would call either venture restrained.
“For me, I want to continue to explore the tension and make it more stark,” Zilkha said of the band’s new music, though he is keenly aware of the adherence to format any record company executives and some fans prefer. “In terms of genre and the promotional cycle, you can be warmly accepted by a lot of different genres. We won a lot of traction with the jam band scenario. Come one and come all. … It’s about a synchronization of spirits.”
That type of melding of sounds not only boosts players’ creativity but also keeps the sound fluid.
“Without taking it too seriously Jay and Andrew [Green, the banjo player) and I love to sing together. Some of our songs have three-part a capella church harmonies that use vocals as a bedrock … we can put layers on top of,” Hornsby said. “One of the fun things … [of being] lumped in with jam bands is that it means our music is fun to play and I hope that it’s fun to listen to.”
