WASHINGTON — Their music has sent us on our spiritual way for years.
This week, Rusted Root performs at AMP by Strathmore in North Bethesda at 8 p.m. Friday.
“We’ve been out [touring] for about a month and a half and it’s going great,” frontman Michael Glabicki told WTOP. “We cycle through material and ways to communicate and create on stage, and we’re in a pretty good spot right now. It’s one of my favorites of all time, so I’m pretty happy about it.”
Each live performance is different due to the band’s organic approach each night.
“We’re not trying to be exciting; we’re not trying to be interesting. We are just taking the energy of the crowd and whatever happens happens,” Glabicki said. “Once you get out of your mind and you get into this inspiration, this intuitiveness, the crowd can create something that I would never think of creating. Five times a night, I start laughing because I’ve never heard us, Rusted Root, sound like this. It’s an original experience, it’s a unique experience and it’s one that might never happen again.”
Born in Pittsburgh, he dropped out of La Roche College his freshman year to pursue music in 1988.
“I was writing for about two years and playing with different people here in town, getting my songs and ideas and vision for the band together,” Glabicki said. “Then in 1990, we started coming together through auditions. … Everybody knew everybody from African drumming class at Pitt University. My vision going in was to find people that knew something about African drumming or world beat music.”
The band formed as Rusted Root in 1990, blending Afro-pop, Latin and other musical influences.
“I was seeing African percussion ensembles coming through Carnegie Mellon and Pitt University,” Glabicki said. “Then I saw my cousin was in a band, which was also an African drumming band, so it was all happening at once. Just seeing the energy of the music at these festivals and stuff, just feeling it, I was immediately drawn into it. So when I started to write songs, that kind of energy, that kind of rhythm on the acoustic guitar started to come out. It was as much intuitive as it was being around it.”
Around that same time, Genesis alum Peter Gabriel released his unique solo album “So” (1986).
“I actually immediately had an adverse reaction to it because it wasn’t how I would want to use the sounds,” Glabicki said. “But at the same time, I was very intrigued because he was the only person doing it. Then as I started to listen to more of it, I really got into it. … There was a certain feeling that I wanted and needed out of the arrangements of my songs. But he gave the green light as far as we can use these sounds and it can be successful, not just in an interesting way but in a mainstream way.”
So, Rusted Root went to work making the style its own for its debut indie album “Cruel Sun” (1992).
“We had sold 40,000 copies of our first record out of the back of our truck,” he said. “We recorded it in 1991 and by ’93 we had sold 40,000 touring. That’s when the record labels started to take notice.”
In 1994, the band signed with PolyGram to release its first major-label studio album “When I Woke” (1994), featuring a reworked rendition of “Send Me On My Way,” previously featured on “Cruel Sun.” Glabicki says he will never forget his moment of inspiration at their downtown Pittsburgh studio.
“I walked in and there was just this feeling in the room,” Glabicki said. “The sun was shining in these warehouse windows. This sort of energy filled the room. I ended up writing it within maybe like five minutes. It just sort of came out. I could feel this energy in the room, these other entities around that were sort of playful and joyful. I was just overcome with that feeling. So the song, when it came through, I was just giggling and laughing about it and having a good time with this energy.”
That night, the band arranged almost the entire song in one night, adding the bridge a week later.
“Songwriting … is like life,” Glabicki said. “You really don’t know what’s happening until it’s years later and you look back on it and start putting things together. I had been playing those chords of ‘Send Me On My Way’ for like eight years and was very intrigued with it and was always trying to write songs with those chords. … Then one day, it all makes sense and you find what those eight years meant.”
The result was commercial success, as the “When I Woke” album went platinum and “Send Me On My Way” reached No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. The radio hit gained even more exposure when it was featured on soundtracks for “Party of Five” (1995), “Pie in the Sky” (1996) and “Matilda” (1996).
“People were immediately like, ‘That’s your pop hit,’ and I was like ‘Whatever.’ That wasn’t my scene at the time so I was just laughing it off,” Glabicki said. “But it grew and grew and had a life of its own. … It keeps growing even now. It’s like the kid that went off to college at this point. You get messages that so and so is doing this now or doing that, and you’re like, ‘Oh, OK.’ It’s out of our control.”
To this day, the song is ubiquitous, showing up on countless commercials, trailers and soundtracks.
“If I try to go out and write a pop hit, I guarantee you’ll laugh at me. It’ll be horrible,” Glabicki said, laughing. “Music to me is the practice, the meditation, the guide through life for me. It’s connected to my dreams, it’s connected to my spiritual feelings. … That’s sort of been my domain. Any time I’ve tried to go out of it, I’ve failed miserably. So it’s all I really have and yet I don’t want anything else.”
After touring with the likes of Dave Matthews Band and the Allman Brothers Band, Rusted Root has picked up valuable live lessons, most notably from Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Carlos Santana.
“Most influential would be Carlos Santana,” Glabicki said. “Again, it comes down to intention. Artists’ intentions can be, ‘I’m gonna work really hard on this, I’m gonna project some image of myself, I’m gonna boost my image out this way and this way and look really cool.’ And then there’s artists that are continually learning and deepening in that spiritual realm … and Carlos is definitely all of that.”
He’ll never forget Santana’s freewheeling stage mentality and transcendent advice.
“We played five songs with him and two of them his band didn’t even know,” Glabicki said. “He had studied my guitar-playing to the point that he pointed at me, walked offstage and lit up a cigar. I had to solo until he came back. I literally was soaked. … He was a teacher first and foremost. He wasn’t trying to put on the most successful show, he was trying to put on a show that projected evolution of us as humans, as spirits. His phrase to me was always, ‘It’s not about success, it’s about progress.'”
Today, Rusted Root carries on this spiritual connection between band and live audience, which is all the more reason to come out to AMP by Strathmore on Friday. Glabicki promises a healing exchange.
“In that union with the audience, it becomes a ritual,” he said. “It becomes more than entertainment, more than a show. The audience becomes literally energetically involved. They’re passing energy, we’re passing energy. … It’s like you go through life and maybe become hardened, then this music comes that has this deeper meaning. Once it comes through you, it starts to open up these little blockages in your system and at the end of the night, you feel like something has healed you.”
Listen to the full conversation with Rusted Root frontman Michael Glabicki below:
