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Turning The Train Around: Roundhouse

Roundhouse is a band that defies the idea that blues is always a preset notion of song structure. Their music runs the gamut from slinky grooves to outright jazz swinging without ever getting bogged down in the sedentary I-IV-V pattern. They also buck the “lets make money” idea. Roundhouse is five guys playing together to have fun. They have won the Maine Blues Society’s Road to Memphis contest giving them a chance to compete in the International Blues Competition in Memphis, TN.

 I met with drummer Joe Rogers, Mike Rogers (harmonica and vocals), and Buddy Shute (guitar) of the Berwick Maine band Roundhouse during a freak October snowstorm.

How long has the band been together?

Buddy Shute [BS]: February of ‘03

Mike Rogers [MR]: Buddy and I have been working together since around 2000.

BS: We met at an open mic one night. I remembered him and called him about six months later. I called and asked him if he wanted to do something…..

MR: …and we been doing something ever since.                                                                                                                                                        

In my research I found that you, Mike, and Joe are father and son. How is it working together?

MR: It’s great, I think. Joe and I really wanted to start a band for a long time. We always talked about it. Joe was always playing with local bands and he got out of it. He started to get back into his drums and I was looking to get back into music and we said, “Well, let’s do it together.” We had Buddy in the mix and we found ourselves a bass player and went from there.

I think it would be great to work with my family.

BS: Part of the reason that we are still having fun is that the band was never looked at as a business venture. It was for fun.

MR: Yes, let’s do some music.

Yeah! That is the bottom line.

Joe Rogers [JR]: The nice thing about it is we are not focusing on making money. We are doing what we want to do. If people dig it, it is all the better. I mean that’s why you play music, to have people dig it but it also gives us the freedom to explore the things that we want to do and not have to worry about any commercial viability.

MR: Joe grew up around music, but it was folk music because I always played folk blues. He was interested in the drums, so our music didn’t always come together too often, so this is really a nice chance to do something that we both like.

Mike, you said you were into folk music. Joe, what kind of music were you into?

JR: I played in a lot of rock and roll cover bands. I played for a year and a half in a Motown based band, then I did the Boston original band scene dragging my drums down to TT the Bears to play for ten people on a Tuesday night….

Yeah for no money either!

JR: Exactly. I did that for a couple of years and that burned out. After that I decided to go back to college and not do the music thing anymore because it wasn’t any fun.

It gets to be a job.

JR: Yeah, but now it’s going to be fun.

It seems that the two of you, Joe and Mike, have musically met in the middle. Folk and rock  share the common thread of the blues. To me, the blues is folk and rock music at the same time. Buddy, how about you? Where do you come from musically?

BS: I grew up in Memphis and the blues was all around me. I didn’t pay attention to it but I must have picked up something. I played with a band for a while before I moved to New Orleans. I lived there for ten years. It’s like the “University of Music” down there. I played in just about every kind of band you can imagine and some you can’t imagine. Most music is based on the blues concept anyway.

Do you agree that the blues is the first real American music?

JR: At its true root it has a big African influence. It was down in New Orleans where the blues kind of took its modern shape. Musicians that were trained classically brought in a level of musicianship that you wouldn’t associate with earlier rural blues. They started to mix it in and jazz came out of that and some of the more modern jazz stylings that you hear in blues came through that. It’s definitely an American thing.

MR: It really just came out of that African flatted scale I think. Also, the call and response congregational thing that really came from a tribal thing, but the music itself is American. I think.

where did you record your CD, Roundhouse (see Nomasonha review)?

JR: In my basement.

What kind of recorder did you use?

JR: A sixteen track digital Fostex. A desktop unit. We had a mid ‘90s effects unit, a Yamaha multi-effects unit. Not that advanced. I bought a decent ART 2-channel pre-amp. I bought a decent condenser mic, a Sennhieser, some SM-57’s… basic stuff. Nothing really fancy at all, just a lot of time spent.

That’s surprising. When I looked at the cover I expected some thing very amateur but upon listening I was amazed at the complexity of the sound. It has a sparse, but rich sound. What were you aiming to do with this recording?

MR: We were thinking, you know, less is more!

JR: We were trying to grab our parts. The creative process is pretty loose with this band. Somebody brings in a tune, which for the most part is Buddy or Mike, and they basically say, “This is what I had in mind”, and they lay it out and leave it up to the rest of the players. The song “Close That Window” was kind of like a swingy blues tune until we started recording it. We must have recorded it about a dozen times and never got a take that felt right so the bass player who was in the band at the time, Joe Harding, and Buddy and I were in the basement and Joe said, “What about more of a bass line like this?” I heard it and added those “jungle’ sounding drums and it took maybe two takes after that to get the version that is on the CD. Buddy was saying that is exactly what he had in mind when he wrote the tune.

That song drew me in. The CD has a wide range of sounds on it. For instance, “High Class Man” starts of with that Tommy Dorsey drum beat. Mike your harmonica playing is subdued. You just play without going overboard.

BS: I think that is one of the things we have going for us. We are not your typical blues band.

MR: Yeah, yeah we are not trying to copy anybody. We’re trying to make it a new thing.

What was your goal when you put the band together?

BS : Get together and have a good time!

MR: That was the basic thing. To have fun. We all like to play. Let’s just get together and play what we like to play. If people like it, fine.

Were you shooting for a certain sound?

JR: There was no goal. No intent. Buddy has a huge library of not just cover tunes but his own [songs] as well. We all knew all these old songs. When we do a live show we are just as libel to throw in an old swing standard like “My Blue Heaven”, as our own tunes. It was, and is, just whatever. The original bass player lived, like, a mile from my house. I asked him if he wanted to come over and jam. After that we started talking about making it a band. I was worried that I was misleading him. So I called him and told him that we were thinking about making a band out of it. He stayed for about a year. It was great. No goal. We just put some tunes together and had some fun.

MR: I would like to mention the rest of the band. We do have a new bass player, his name is Doug Green; and Dave Graf on second guitar.

BS: We have no boundaries. We will try anything once. (laughs)

MR: There is no real leader to the band. We try to keep everything as democratic as possible. Everyone has input and we want us all, as a whole, to be happy.

JR: There is still no goal sound wise. We are just five guys with different sounds getting together to have fun and in the end we hope that people have fun with us. www.roundhouseblues.com

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