Guster is still reinventing themselves after 28 years together. The group met as student at Tufts University, and don’t show any signs of slowing down. We spoke with drummer Brian Rosenworcel ahead of their Boston Calling performance to learn more about their interactive fan base how they crafted a new sound on their album Look Alive.
This interview was conducted on May 26, 2019 by Tori Bedford for WGBH, at the Boston Calling Music Festival.
You guys are from here. You've seen this festival grow and now you're playing it. Is this a real festival?
Brian Rosenworcel: Yeah Boston Calling in my mind is as real as any festival. I'm just super stoked we got invited. After 10 years of not being invited.
You sound like you're not bitter about it at all.
Rosenworcel: [Laughter] No I'm actually just psyched. We're getting to see Rainbow Kitten Surprise right after we play which is really cool for me. I listened to them all the way here.
Within the city, sometimes it's hard to gauge if it's going to be a destination festival where it's bringing in the same kind of crowds as Coachella or another big festival because we're Boston. It's like a small town.
Rosenworcel: It's cool to have a festival in Boston. We're trying our own Guster festival in Portland, Maine and we're going to have our third year of it in August. It's a lot to put on a festival and every year you learn the lessons from the previous year and you grow and you adjust. And I'm sure Boston Calling is the same way.
You guys do a lot — you have a festival, you have a line of mustard, you're working on a dating app. Can you tell me about the dating app?
Rosenworcel: The dating app was conceived of by these German video directors who directed the video for "Overexcited" where Ryan's playing a character in the song who goes on a bunch of really odd dates before he finds his match. It's a really funny video. Then we actually made the app something where our fans could take a picture of themselves and upload it with a little slogan. It was really good branding content from our management and our video directors. But it's also really fun… I've made like 10 different profiles.
So can people communicate with each other on this app?
Rosenworcel: Well that's a good question. No — you can't actually date. You can't communicate. You can only create a profile and put it up like it's a meme or something. So yeah we would probably get in trouble if we actually had a Guster-themed dating app. But there are actually a lot of our fans who probably would only like to meet other Guster fans.
That kind of falls in line with a lot of what you guys do, which is to have these jokes or traditions. Can you tell me about some of those?
Rosenworcel: I think we do a lot of inside jokes. People think of our fans as cult-ish and I don't really know why, but we do sort of just have a lot of fun with our fans... if a fan of ours happens to run an artisanal bakery in Vermont and wants to make Guster mustard called Gustard… Yeah you can do that and we'll sell it at our merch booth. There's just a lot of us saying "yes."
What does that say about your fan base?
Rosenworcel: We have this interactive relationship with our fan base — we pay attention to them and they kind of expect us to answer their emails... there's no fourth wall... But for us it's a pretty natural state. Our fans were never anything but an extension of our friends. We started in college and the people who came to our shows were our friends and it never really felt any different.
There are a lot of bands that have been doing this for a long time and they can start to feel burnt out. How do you guys keep things fresh?
Rosenworcel: That's amazingly something we haven't had a problem with. Sure, there are times on stage where you’re playing a song that you wrote in the 90s... but for the most part we're so motivated every time we write songs and get in the studio to reinvent ourselves. I feel like every time we release an album it's a real achievement. And it's also a shell shock to our fans... mostly people roll with our changes and say "you guys surprised me again." So making new music is really where the motivation comes from. And for whatever reason every time we get into the room together to write songs we reject any idea if it's something that sounds like something we've done before and we just look for the next dimension.
Do you feel like this new stuff is really different from your previous material, and in what ways?
Rosenworcel: I do think Look Alive was a big step forward for us, both as songwriters and as producers. We worked with a guy from England named Leo Abrahams and he came to it from a really different angle than us. He likes cold sounds and we've always been putting warm vintage sounds in our records and we found his angle on music to be really exciting. The keyboard sounds are really out there they're more challenging... For the songwriting, when we go pop, we went really pop, and when we went deep, we went really deep. So far for me the album's a major holder-upper — I haven't gotten tired of any of it yet. And usually by the six-month point I'm ready for the next album.
Where do you pull your newer influences from?
Rosenworcel: We're all listening to newer bands... We had a moment at Bonnaroo a few years ago where we realized all the bands with guitars and beards were playing to smaller crowds and all the bands that just had light shows and laptops were playing to massive stadium-sized crowds... We might see what we like about that music whether it's a drop or just a texture, and try to incorporate that. So we're always just sort of gleaning from everything.
One of my colleagues Meghan who's sitting over there, she is a big fan, and she noticed that you wrap your hands up when you play drums. And she was really curious about your self-care regimen for your hands.
Rosenworcel: Did Meghan ask you to ask this question? Thanks for your concern Meghan. As far as self-care goes, when I made the choice many years ago to incorporate sticks, that was a move for longevity and for my well-being in addition to a move that helped expand our music. I think now I'm in a good place where I mix it up between stick drums and hand drums and the show is eclectic. And I'm not beating myself up as much as I used to. Because there was a good run there where people like Meghan should have been concerned because I was a fairly abusive hand drummer.
But you've changed.
Rosenworcel: I still play those songs and I still play in that style. I might play a little slower and maybe not quite as hard. But over the course of a show I'm going back and forth and mixing it up more.
I thought your Bonnaroo comment was interesting because I wonder if you guys are afraid of kind of falling into a "dad rock" category?
Rosenworcel: Well, yeah... there's nothing nothing wrong with dad rock. I love dad rock and we're all dads. So it'll be hard for us not to be dad rock. That being said we didn't get sleepy. And the lyrics didn't get sappy. We've actually gone the other direction — the music has gotten more exciting. I think the lyrics are more honest but more challenging.
So what's next for you guys? What's going on?
Rosenworcel: So we're putting on our festival in Maine which is exciting for us. And we're talking about maybe some future tours that might be acoustic with strings. We're also talking about writing new songs. — as much as we don't want to turn the page on Look Alive because it's still fresh to us and still needs to find more ears. We've got to keep the writing muscle going.
Are you looking at different genres? What kind of new instruments would you want to introduce?
Rosenworcel: Yeah, I think it's good to get into the room with some new toys and new sounds so you're not just falling back into the same patterns. I have this electronic drum kit and I also have all this new percussion... I'm kind of learning some new world music grooves that — who knows if I can make them work with Guster, but I think as we get together and we search for new directions that stuff could be super useful.
And I think a lot of your recent stuff has been very political. Is that something that you plan to keep going with?
Rosenworcel: It depends if we're feeling political… Certainly we are now and we were when we were writing those songs. Ryan wrote the lyrics on "Look Alive" and I think "Look Alive" is a pretty strong political statement about having some backbone and having some will. So I imagine where our headspace is next time... will be similar just because the world is a strange place right now. But you know sometimes you also want to write a song about how sweet it is to put your child to bed... It's a dad rock joke.
Do you feel like it's important to use your platform to get political and to send a message to people?
Rosenworcel: I never think of us as having a platform because our platform feels somewhat limited to me. Yeah, we'll endorse Adam's Reverb organization, which is trying to green the music industry and green a larger context of getting people involved in their communities. That seems really important to me. I don't think we get on stage and talk about candidates. I feel like people need a break from that, but they can read the lyrics and they can take from them what they will.
Thanks for talking.
Rosenworcel: All right, thanks WGBH and Tori.
(Transcribed and condensed for clarity by Meghan Smith)
