CARRYING A TORCH FOR ROCK'N'ROLL
The phrase "once a rocker, always a rocker" rings very true for Rusty Reid. In fact, it seems to describe his attitude towards being a musician perfectly. He's someone who's had a long liaison with music that started with seeing The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Now, he's taken us on a time trip back to the 80s by revisiting the past magic he created a long time ago with a band called The Unreasonables. We've reviewed Mr. Reid's fantastic single "Let's Just Talk" recently and have now managed to get him to talk about his past, present and the future.
Tell me a little bit about Texas and your childhood.
Sure, and thanks for the interview, Tom. I was born and raised in West Texas, in the town of Midland, smack in the middle of one of the largest and most profitable oil fields in the world. To keep such fields pumping and a town running requires lower-middle class families like ours. So that's my background.
Actually, Texas is a little world unto itself; the further west you go, the more insular it gets. So, as a kid you're steeping in this hyper-individualistic, macho milieu from the get-go, with this gauzy assumption that Texas is the best at everything. Then comes along the 1960s with its own emphasis on individualism, but from a completely different angle of peace, love, self-improvement, and creativity. Those were very heady times, after the World Wars, when really anything seemed possible. As a generation we were high on hope. Those two somewhat clashing forces, Texas and the Sixties, largely fashioned my identity and aspirations. I was determined to do something cool... and creative.
Were your parents into music?
Not so much my dad, though he had played in his high school band. But on my mom's side there were musicians and singers galore. She was a very good singer. My uncle Charlie Neill on her side actually tried his hand at being a country-western singer on the radio in Austin back in the 1930s. I inherited his old Gibson guitar. Her sister, my Aunt Bea, was an excellent organ player. She would later encourage me to write Christian music. That didn't fly. Both of my older boy cousins, on my mom's side, were musicians, one who lived nearby in Midland as an oustanding piano player, and the other up in Lubbock, 100 miles north, had his own rock and roll band. He had a Gretsch Country Gentleman electric guitar, just like George Harrison of the Beatles. He let me look at it, but not touch. I would later get one for myself. That cousin wrote a few songs, but there were no other songwriters in the family. That left a space for me to fill.
Do you recall that one all-important magical moment when you realised that you want to be a rock’n’roller?
Oh sure, just like a million other kids. It was the Beatles' performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. For some time I had been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the question, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I looked around at the men I knew, and didn't want to be like any of them. I certainly didn't want to work in the oil fields. I didn't want to work in an office like my dad. OK, I was lazy. I didn't want to work at all. I wanted to ... play! And there before me on the screen were four lads from Liverpool ... playing. I want to do that, I decided then and there.
Tell me about the original Unreasonables. How did the band come together?
I had gone to college in faraway, lush East Texas and big city, Houston. It was as different from Midland that you could get without leaving Texas. Now it's the late 1970s and I've graduated from college but still hanging around in Houston, and have just decided to leave the previous rock and roll band I was in with three singers and songwriters. I wanted to get back to my vision of being a solo artist. But I needed players to back me up. So I scouted the Houston live music scene to hand-pick them. My primary intent was to record my songs. Live gigs could be useful to help us explore and refine the sound, but were of secondary importance. Thankfully, there were some kick-ass players who were available and willing to join the project. The lack of monetary payoff involved inevitably led to comings and goings among the players, but we had a fun time while each unit lasted, then it was regroup and carry on.
Why was the original Unreasonables album never released in the 80s?
Several reasons. I thought of these recordings, at the time, as demos. The plan was we would get a recording deal from a label and re-record them in a proper studio. Meanwhile, we were recording in one of the cheapest studios in Houston, so the quality of recordings from the beginning was not the greatest. The studio did improve over time, as can be heard on the album, which is in chronological order. Still, I wasn't completely sold on the sound we were getting. The mixes didn't knock me out. I thought it should be more "polished." Then, again, "releasing" a record, certainly an album, back then was nowhere close to as easy as it is today. You could pay out of your own pocket to get an LP properly recorded, mixed, mastered and pressed, but who is going to distribute it, promote it, etc.? It was a daunting challenge in those days, particularly with corporate radio syndicates tightening their clench on what could be played on radio stations. At any rate, the final round of Unreasonables' recordings were done after I had officially folded the group, planning to relocate to Los Angeles. At that point, I figured I would pitch these "demos" in L.A. and see if I could stir up label interest. That phase was where I began to lose focus. I was lured by other distractions, and didn't follow through hard and long enough for these songs to be "discovered" by someone who could help take them to the next level.
What made you revisit the old tapes and also reform The Unreasonables and even add to the canon? Whose idea was it?
With the advent of digital recording and home studios and distribution services like CDBaby, I was able to, finally, release my first album, NWXSW, in 2001. That album actually included four songs from those final Unreasonables' sessions. So if you're interested in more Unreasonables, check out "If You Were Me," "That's the Thing About That," "Miss Independent" and "I Want to Believe." The band never reformed. All of these recordings are from that same era. Still, there were a couple of Unreasonables' tunes that I felt might be worthy of release. Songs like "Attitude Change," "Let's Just Talk," "Piece of the Action," and a few others. I thought maybe someday I would re-record them. All the rest of the Unreasonables' collection I considered throw-aways. Why bother with them ever again? But then I heard from a few old bandmates, who had a different opinion. Those weren't throwaways, they insisted, they were fun, catchy songs. Release them all, they demanded. Who am I to argue with that? So I began mulling the idea of an Unreasonables album. I had the rest of the tapes transferred to digital files, brought them up in my studio, and began to re-live that epoch. To my surprise, we were better than I remembered. And with some of the studio tricks we now have available, I was able to clean up some of the cheap studio nastiness. It's still not "polished," but turns out, that's part of its charm.
What is ”Let’s Just Talk” about?
Ha. It's quasi-autobiographical. It actually stems from my recollection of a teenage affair one summer when I was in theater school. Thus the "I don't know if I've learned my lines to this play yet" lyric. There was a girl, and I was a boy who didn't have a clue about how to go about dealing with this novel attraction. So it's kind of interesting songwriting, focusing in on that peculiar, ripe-with-potential moment in time when you are getting closer and closer, and wonder, what's going to happen next. Is this going to be wonderful or a big turn down?
Who are your top-five artists?
Gosh, hard to pick. But if I'm stuck on a deserted island, I'd probably go with the Beatles, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, the Doors and Joni Mitchell for their excellent, large, varied and endlessly interesting catalogs.
Going back forty years, what were the eighties like for an up-and-coming rock artist?
We thought we were in pop music heaven. Most of us had come up through the Sixties, so we had that colorful, soulful and wildly creative background, then came the 70s with 24-track studios and recordings getting more and more aurally perfected, then came cassettes and CDs, so you didn't have to fool around anymore with messy reel-to-reel tapes so much. Guitar effects pedals of many types arrived. The proliferation of FM radio in the early 70s would be a huge boon for music. Vintage gear that now sells for a fortune was cheap (though we didn't know that was going to happen or I would have stocked up on 60s Strats and Les Pauls). You had the hey-day of the singer-songwriter, country-rock, heavy rock, metal, disco, rap, glam rock, punk, New Wave. With the 1980s came cable TV and MTV, which changed the trajectory of a lot of acts, for better and worse. The synthesizer became as much the sound of the decade as the guitar, maybe more so. And the first glimmerings of computer-based recording arrived. There were more toys than ever to create with. All the while, however, we were still stuck in the record label era, through which you had to go to achieve any non-local or regional success. The labels were the key gatekeepers who determined who would get a chance to "make it" and who would not. Their ironclad control of the music industry has considerably lessened, and that's a damn good thing.
If you could go back in time, what life advice would you give your younger self?
Well, I'm not sure I would want to say anything. I'm pretty pleased with how my life actually went. I wouldn't want to knock myself off that course. I would be tempted to maybe try to hurry the process of my evolution into a more socially, politically and spiritually (not religious) oriented human being who is in love with the world, not just obsessed with my own selfish musings. I might tell that Rusty, "Hey, if you are really serious about this music career, then you have to get focused, practice, get out there, persevere, don't let negativity affect you, push, push, push, don't get sidetracked by distractions." The actual me didn't do any of that. And I still ended up with a great life... but not one of music, for the most part. I'm only belatedly getting back to that aspect of my creativity after an adult lifetime of pursuing truth and goodness. Thing is, I think I could have done both. But I didn't. So no big deal.
What’s next? Will The Unreasonables return?
No more Unreasoanbles. That band was a time and place phenomenon, to be and then not to be. I'm happy we left a record of our passing, and it's encouraging that people are liking our music forty years later. But now it's on to the future. My next project is another unusual one. It's an album of all cover tunes... all written by Texas songwriters. It's titled "Lone Stardust: Masterworks of Texas Songwriters." Hope to have it out early this year. Working with these magnificent songs has been a real hoot. Can't wait to get the first single out.
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