Guster: indie-band Cinderella story
By Rachel Alkon, ArtsEtc. Writer
In their formative days at Tufts University, the Boston-based trio Guster played in numerous battle-of-the-band competitions and never made the cut. “The lyrics we wrote in college were pretty bad,” Adam Gardner, guitarist and singer, told The Badger Herald via telephone. “[In the beginning] I didn’t even feel comfortable calling myself a musician.”
Gardner attributes the band’s success to pure luck and to being in the right place at the right time. “For whatever reason people grabbed onto what we are doing,” Gardner said.
Brought together by fate and a common bond for a creative cause, Gardner, guitarist Ryan Miller and percussionist Brian Rosenworcel met in 1991 at freshman orientation week. Soon after they started to mess around with music, the group hit the streets of Boston and launched their musical careers.
“We busted out on the streets. We played guitar with the guitar case open in front and hoped that people threw in change,” Gardner said. “We were first playing clubs, and by our junior year made enough money to buy a van, and upon graduation (in 1995), we just went on the road, managing everything ourselves.”
In 1996, while on the road, the band stopped at Miami U in Oxford, Ohio, where a student contacted the band and asked where to purchase the record. Because Guster then had no record label and no marketing plan, the band started a “Rep” program, in which Reps would receive CDs, sell them for $10 each, and in return would earn a T-shirt and free admission to upcoming shows.
After touring for almost four years, Guster signed a three-record deal with the AOL-Time Warner mega-giant, Sire Records. Although many record labels have been criticized for stifling artists’ creativity upon signing, Gardner thinks the best thing about Sire is that the label stays out of the band’s music and allows its unique sound to flourish.
“Our music has changed, but it has nothing to do with signing [to] a record label. We have just developed as musicians,” Gardner said.
And Guster has definitely evolved and improved musically. This year, producer Steve Lillywhite, the man most famous for his work with Peter Gabriel and Dave Matthews, helped Guster create Keeping It Together (Warner Brothers). Unlike Guster’s first two decently selling independent albums — Parachute (1994) and Goldfly (1997) — Keeping It Together is a more mature album with stronger lyrics.
The newest record also features famous names like Ben Kweller, Josh Rouse and producers Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Joseph Arthur, Rosanne Cas) and Ron Aniello (Lifehouse, Jude, Shannon McNally).
Okay, so you are probably now tempted to download Guster’s new masterpiece. Well, don’t even try. In trying to access Keeping It Together, computer users on the unauthorized file-sharing service KaZaA unexpectedly receive man-produced meow sounds masking the band’s lyrics.
Instead of deterring music freeloaders in more traditional ways, such as replacing songs with piercing tones, the band’s monitor engineer, Matt Peskie, has sabotaged the songs by mocking Guster’s lyrics.
“We thought we would do something that was funny, that people might actually enjoy” Gardner said. “It will still give them a good enough taste of the record to be like, ‘Wow, that music actually sounds good back there, and I should go get the record.'”
While Gardner wants to deter users from downloading his music, he sees the potential in Internet technology as a huge resource. “I think it is silly for the labels to fight. The IRAA suing 19 year olds and 12 year olds or 7 year olds is ridiculous,” he said.
Gardner thinks that downloading services should offer faster, more efficient programs in exchange for a small fee and unlimited access to music. “If there were some subscription-type service like cable TV, people would say ‘Fine, I’ll pay 15 bucks a month to download what I want’ … I don’t think the music should ultimately be free, because then I’ll be out of a job. People who make music all of a sudden would then have to all become independently wealthy, and I don’t know how that would work.”
For a band like Guster, whose fan base is mostly computer-savvy college students, Gardner cannot be too critical of music file sharing. “Those are the kids that spread music by word-of-mouth, and that is what Guster is about. That’s how people hear of us, generally. I don’t think people have heard of us from radio or TV, necessarily,” he said.
For nearly the same price of their latest CD, come see Guster play at the Orpheum Theater this Tuesday, Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m.
