Sludgy Richmond newcomers Rube made an immediate impression with their self-released EP Angry at the Missus (reviewed here). With just five tracks, the unhinged four-piece made a definitive debut, popping pills of?Eyehategod and Acid Bath but cutting them with a hunger and drive only possible among the unsigned. One of the glories of this technological golden age we’re living in is that bands of this caliber can afford to make a recording and have it not sound like shit. Guitarist Adam Kravitz, vocalist Ryan Kent, drummer Pat Caine and bassist Big John have done precisely that. The anger carries through, the budget not so much.

Full of Southern aggression and Jim Beam, Rube display an early mastering of a sound it’s taken other bands years to come to grips with and/or tame. As such, I was curious to find out the back story of the band, how they came about and what their plans are going forward. Fortunately, Kravitz and Kent were available to illuminate. Interview is after the jump. Enjoy.

Describe how the band came together, how you first met and how the idea for Rube came about. It’s easy to imagine there was liquor involved.

Adam Kravitz: Hahaha, lots of alcohol! Jim Beam and PBR, son.? [Bassist Big] John and I were sitting around over a year ago, talking about what type of band would be cool to create. We both love Eyehategod, Crowbar, Kyuss, Skynyrd, etc., so we pulled off of our influences and came up with Rube. We are a bunch of drunken rednecks anyways and have been listening to heavy music for years, so it was a natural progression, you know… We came up with the concept of the album and the songs before ever playing a single note.

Ryan Kent: I was the last to join and in my opinion the weakest link, to use a trite phrase. I’d never been in a band but had a lot of the same interests as the other guys. It just took some time to get to know them. They have a lot more time on this earth under their belt than I do so there was a lot to overcome. New people. New ethic. New everything. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.

Your bio talks about drug addiction, suicide attempts and going to jail. What are the stories there, what was learned and how does it affect the band?

AK: Nice question! Do we have enough time and space to answer this one, haha? All of us have had drug addiction issues, from heroin to speed, alcoholism, pills, etc. I believe that most music comes from a place of familiarity, if it was from a drunken stupor, to a nodded experience, so be it. We have all grown from our lives and experiences and wouldn’t trade them for anything! It’s what makes us and Rube what we are today. I’ve been in jail, John has been in jail, Pat has been in jail. It’s just stupid shit that happens when you aren’t the clearest in thinking, you know? John has lived though two suicide attempts in his past. He will tell you that the worst feeling is coming to from an attempt and still being alive, knowing fully that you were happy to feel your life slipping away… but in the same breath he has a different outlook and awareness on the life around him.

John being a Buddhist has an incredible sense of the world we live in. You would need a whole new interview for that story, hahaha.

RK: Suicide. Drugs. They’re gone. It really has nothing to do with the band besides what we’ve learned. No whiney shit. No sudden enlightenment. Just experience.

Ryan, you have a couple collections of poetry under your belt, as well as doing journalistic work. What’s the relationship for you between poetry and lyric writing? You list Bukowski as one of your favorites. How did you discover his work and what do you take away from reading him?

RK: I actually was turned onto Bukowski by Jon Pettibone from Himsa. He told me the dude was worth the time to read and I checked him out and never, ever looked back. The guy has no time for metaphor and that’s one thing I love about practicing and playing shows with the guys in my band, we always say, “Let’s do this, let’s be done with it.” That really has always hearkened back to Bukowski for me. Too much time for other things life has to offer. Let’s play some notes and do something else. I took a lot from Bukowski. He has become my tragic hero. I have a tattoo planned with him on it and underneath it says, “Don’t try” because that is what his gravestone says and that’s a good mantra for me. A belligerent drunk who was king of skid row made it. That deserves everyone’s respect. I feel I can relate on a bunch of levels with him and I hope that when I croak I’m buried with Love is a Dog from Hell, which is a collection of his poems. I owe a lot to that man for making me who I am today. Afraid of little and remorseful for almost nothing. The relationship between my songwriting and poetry is not really related at all. My poetry has usually a lot to do with death and heartbreak and it’s not something I’ve wanted to involve in our songs. My poetry is about me. Our songs are about us. There’s no other way to do it. Big John and I write the lyrics but it’s a group effort. If Adam or Pat had something that twisted their tit or hurt them bad than you know it’s going to be somewhere in a song.

The Richmond scene has birthed a lot of quality Southern metal bands and has always struck me as one of the tightest-knit in the country. Are there bands rube is especially tight with?

AK: Yeah man, Richmond has a pretty fuckin’ awesome music scene! So many bands use RVA as a home base and tour all over the place. It’s cheap, people like loud abrasive shit. Everyone drinks! Look at some of the bands who are friends of ours who have made it: Lamb of God, Avail, Municipal Waste, Alabama Thunderpussy, Birds of Prey, Sunnshine, Suzukiton, RPG, Gwar, to name the larger ones, haha. Richmond has always had this weird mix of North and South from as far back as I can remember. Being close to D.C. gives us the hardcore influence, but being south brings in the heavy humid sweat box metal… I would say kinda like Nola! Also there is a very large group of musicians that try to one up each other. Outplay each other. They are cool, but I am all about just making the music so fucking heavy it shakes your ball hairs, haha!

RK: I’ve never scene a metal scene like Richmond. Camaraderie is a big thing down here. We all support good music and fortunately a lot of our friends play really great music.

Adam, how did you get started playing guitar and what’s your writing process like? What equipment did you use to get the tone on Angry at the Missus?

AK: Eeessh, I started playin’ the guitar when I was 13. Couldn’t play shit but loved the sound. My dad took me to see Van Halen in 1984. I had never seen a live concert or anyone play the guitar live. After “Eruption,” I was hooked. I had to learn how to make noise like Eddie. Haha, no solos of course. After years of playing and a lot of bands, here we are.

The writing process can really vary. Sometimes I’ll write out an entire song on the computer, sometimes we will write out a whole song at practice. It just really depends on the vibe at that moment, you know. Sometimes we can’t even come up with a riff, then other times I’ll write like nine of them back to back, and we record them and save them for a later listen. It’s awesome — music is and always will be the shit!

For the album I used a Peavey XXL head through two Hartke 4x12s, a hot rodded ESP Viper loaded with dimebuckers, Boss Super Octave, Boss Super Overdrive, Boss Noise Suppressor, and a Boss Metalcore pedal. We downtune to B and then tune the guitar to a weird tuning I have kept using since an old band I was in 10 years ago. I don’t really know what it is, but I like it, haha.

What does being a rube mean to the band?

AK: Expression, PBR. Jim Beam, the south, metal, the front porch, redneck, trailers, trucks and chicks in short jean shorts.

RK: Sweat. Booze. Back pain. Cigarettes.

What’s next for Rube? Will you guys tour, or is it a more regional kind of approach for now? Is there any new material in the works to follow up Angry at the Missus?

AK: We are talking about doing a small tour in the fall. For right now we will play mostly regional. The northeast down to Nola is also in the works. We are gonna try and play SXSW next year as well as some of the metal festivals. We have just made Angry at the Missus available on iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, Amazon and Napster. I love the digital age we are in, it’s fuckin’ awesome! And we are currently writing new material for a follow-up EP. Should be done by the end of the summer! More heavy-ass riffs and Southern fuckin’ metal you know!

RK: More shows. Playing live is where we thrive. We feed off of each other’s energy and I love that energy. It makes 40 hours a week not seem so bad.

Tags: Richmond, Rube, Sludge, Unsigned bands, Virginia

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.