Brownbird Rudy Relic

Nothing, not even perhaps his love of shoes, can deter this foot-stomping, hollering, kazoo-tooting, acoustic, vegan, atheist, Chicano, subway-playing, blogging, Sylvia Plath-adoring bluesman.

 
What is “Acoustic Holler Blues,” as you call your music?
 
The three words, acoustic, holler and blues have been used frequently in the same context, in the same sentence even, but it really is not a musical term.  I’m a fan of putting things in the vaguest wording so that people can come to their own decisions about it.  But if I’d had to define it, I’d say it’s a synthesis of traditional pre-war blues styles and post-war blues styles sung in a holler tradition.
 
When did you start playing?
 
When I was growing up I basically listened to what my friends were listening to, but I think I ventured out on my own when I heard Chuck Berry for the first time.  I think I was around fourteen then.  I was watching Back to the Future and saw the scene where Michael J. Fox plays Chuck Berry at the prom, and from that moment on I studied his music, bought all his records, and basically learned to play the guitar from them.  That was the sort of droplet of red food coloring for me—now, these days it’s like, I live in that music, I think and read about the blues to the point that that’s what my whole life is about.  It’s like I’m swimming in it. 
 
Sounds similar to the name of your blog, which is “Tangled in the Roots,” although I’ve always thought that “tangled” implied more of a confusion, or being trapped.  Is it also that?
 
It is all those things—I’ve felt caught up and confused, all those things at times.  And the “roots,” part is about yourself a bit, too, like all the droplets of yesterday.  Everything that has made you until this point. 
 
So is “Tangled in the Roots” more an exploration of yourself, or does it also encompass the community, or history, of traditional roots music that you have experienced or learned about?
 
It’s a little of both, when I started it about five months ago, it was mostly about the blues, but talking about the music inevitably leads one to his own place in that genre.  So what I write about has a lot to do with my own experiences, and thoughts.  
 
Why did you play in the New York City subway for a year before playing shows?
 
The reason I played in the subway, and I still do on occasion, is because it was one of my dreams.  So the minute I sat down at a station, put down my bucket, and plucked on a string, I had realized that dream.  Basically, I thought it was the answer to live blues it its purest form, to rid all the bottled frustration,  While I was doing that, I began to learn what stops were the best, how people reacted to my music, what times were the best, and how people around those hours were…and I was able to make decent money, once I figured that out.  Now when I play on the subway though, I don’t play for money. 
 











 

It’s funny, when you’re sitting here talking to me it’s like encountering a completely other being from that which you project while you’re playing.  How do those two align, or do they? 
 
I’ve heard the saying that there’s two types of bluesmen, and that’s bad men feeling good, and good men feeling bad.  I’ve always identified with the latter.  When I’m playing, in the moment, it’s a very cathartic thing, because what’s behind the songs is really awful.  Musically what I create is pretty horrible—so locked into yesterday, the loss throughout life, all the bad things I’ve been through, and I’m not trying to create it, I’m trying to record it.  Because I want to remember it.  I live by the credo that if one does not suffer for art, then art itself suffers.  But I’ve use that in different contexts too, like, for instance, ‘If one does not suffer for shoes, then shoes themselves suffer.’  I love fashion.   
 
Who is this Mamie Smith?
 
Mamie Smith was the first recorded blues musician, whose record became a hit in 1920.  I visited her grave in Staten Island, which is unmarked, and I’d like to go through the process one day, maybe when I’m rich and famous, of having her gravestone marked.  People who were buried on Staten Island around that time period, in the 40s, were completely destitute, and so they all just kind of shoved them off into unmarked graves over there…
 
Okay, going back to the idea of one’s own roots as well as American roots music, does any music of your cultural roots influence your music?
 
I’d say that the Mexican music of my heritage plays a miniscule role in my music, in fact it sounds a little odd, archaic.  But the Romanticos style of music, oddly enough, expresses everything that what I sing is about—hurt, pain, lost love…and there is nothing more over-bearingly dramatic than the Romanticos’ music, like [the music of] Vincente Fernandez for example.  To anybody hearing it translated, I mean, just how literal the lyrics are, it’s saying the most obscene, awful stuff as metaphors for lost love, it would just look laughable.  But for these singers, there is no abandon, nothing is too great or overdramatic to pronounce.      

One more thing.  Please excuse the corniness.  But if you could say one thing to Chuck Berry today, what would it be?
 
If I could say one thing to Chuck Berry, I would probably have these bulbous, loving eyes, and I’d look up to him—because I think he’s taller than me—and I would say, ‘Can I have your autograph?’  Then I’d have him sign his autograph on the tattoo of Chuck Berry on my arm, and go to a tattoo parlor and have his signature tattooed right there. 

Downloads

Stranger Here Blues.mp3
Special Rider Gal .mp3
Sepida Sheik.mp3

Websites

http://www.myspace.com/brownbirdrudyrelic
http://brownbirdrudyrelic.blogspot.com

Photos

Rebecca Winters