A BOLD NEW DESiGN
RHETT FRAZiER iNC. TALKS TO ROCKWiRED
ABOUT THEiR DEBUT CD ESCAPE FROM DEE-TROYT
GOiNG FROM BEiNG SIDE MEN TO CENTER STAGE
AND MiXiNG OLD SCHOOL SOUL WiTH ELECTRONiCS

MARCH 15, 2010

iNTERViEWED BY BRiAN LUSH
Please don’t confuse the story of RHETT FRAZIER INC with the story of JAKE and ELWOOD of THE BLUES BROTHERS! In the 1980 film starring JOHN BELUSHI and DAN ACKROYD, the brothers BLUES are on “a mission from God” to save the orphanage they both grew up in. In the case of RHETT FRAZIER INC, singer RHETT FRAZIER and drummer/producer DONNY GRUENDLER are on a mission to combine MOTOWN and STAX soul with electronic sound bites and “out there” guitar effects. The results of the duo’s four year mission to create and perfect such a sound has resulted in their debut CD ‘ESCAPE FROM DEE-TROYT’. While giving soul music a futuristic finish is as old an idea as EURYTHMICS’ seminal LP ‘SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS)’ back in 1982, there are two ingredients that ESCAPE FROM DEE-TROYT possesses in abundance that the sharply dressed LENNOX/STEWART partnership lacked – balls and reckless abandon.

RHETT FRAZIER and DONNY GRUENDLER of RHETT FRAZIER INC spoke with ROCKWIRED over the phone. Here is how it went.

Now that the CD is almost out there for people to hear, how do you feel about the finished work?
RHETT: It’s really gratifying. It was definitely a labor of love and it represents an artistic milestone for us. We had really labored on other projects and doing other things and being sidemen for a number of years and to have something like this come out which represents an amalgamation of different styles and who we are is wonderful. We’re really proud of it.

DONNY: We put so much into it. It’s really like the culmination of all of the different musical things that RHETT and I have done professionally before this. We happened to meet on a couple of gigs and started writing together with no thought of any sort of commercial success or even wanting. Before we knew it, we had five songs written that we felt very strongly about. Once we had that commitment to one another then we wrote five more songs and that these songs became ‘ESCAPE FROM DEE-TROYT’. In the end, we had realized what we had done after the fact. We didn’t set out to do it. It was more of a natural, organic kind of evolution.

Talk about the genesis of this project.
RHETT: The genesis of our relation started when we were playing on a gig with an awesome guitar player name EDDIE FREEMAN who lived in LA for a number of years and had been on the road with some luminaries of the rock world. The gig was a simple R&B and blues kind of thing. DONNY and I got on the gig and we started talking about different kinds of music. D’ANGELO was mentioned along with different electronica acts that we liked. At that moment, we made a pledge to get together and try our hand at writing some tunes. At that time, I just kind of considered myself being a sort of mercenary soul singer. My idols were people like BOBBY WOMACK and SAM COOKE and FREDDY SCOTT and BEN E. KING. After we got together, the songs that I spent a lot of my free time writing on the acoustic guitar were songs that DONNY really responded to. Through his tutelage, I’ve metamorphosed more into a songwriter and at the same time, DONNY’s background in jazz and his experience with production enabled us to do some really interesting things. It wasn’t like we were doing a facsimile of some other kind of music. It was us. The more we did it, the more we realized that we were onto something that was unique. It’s kind of like a supercollider where you take all of these different kinds of music and you put them in this atom smasher and you just see what happens.

DONNY: Along the way the most important thing about the relationship wasn’t even the tunes or that it might turn into a project. We were kind of cultivating our friendship alongside a songwriting partnership. I think it really happened naturally. Over the course of three or four years, we put our friendship first and have really built a trust for one another in terms of writing and taking chances.

With that being said DONNY, how well do you sit with simply being the INC of the group?
DONNY: That’s a great question! It was my choice in a way. When RHETT and I first started to do this, we were talking about making it a band and I had figured that RHETT is the guy that ought to be out in front. I’m the picture frame and RHETT is the person in the picture. I feel that what I do is frame him in the best possible, most original way that I know how. We were thinking of what we were going to name this project and at the time, I was doing really heavy sideman work and RHETT came up with the idea of calling me INC. because I was making so much money.

Talk about how music got started for each of you – especially you RHETT. Oklahoma isn’t the kind of place that brings to mind STAX soul music.
RHETT: That’s a good point. Anyone who has been through Oklahoma knows that it’s full of criminals, miscreants and rednecks and Indians. It’s the last place in the continental United States to have people settle it other than the Indians that they forced to go there back in 1837. It’s a little off the beaten track but at the same time it’s a crossroads because of the land run and everyone that came there came from someplace else. There was an influence of a lot of different kinds of people, whether you had the white people who came along or the Indians that were right there with them and were from all different parts of the country. Because of it’s proximity to Texas, it was a part of the jazz band circuit for a long time. It’s a unique place that forges unique voices like LEON RUSSELL. CHET BAKER was from there as well. For me, I grew up around music in the church. My grandfather was in a western swing band and my cousin plays bluegrass and is a country and rock musician. I came from a musical heritage and I found myself gravitating more toward things that were gospel and blues-based. It was like I had a lucky coin in my pocket that had BILL MONROE on one side and JAMES BROWN on the other. For me, that kind of music came naturally.

DONNY: Growing up, I originally wanted to play saxophone. I wanted to join the fifth grade band and at the time, it was a twenty-five dollar rental. To make a long story short, I was awful. I couldn’t even play ‘MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB’. Eventually, I tried my hand at the drums and that was even cheaper. That was ten bucks for a pair of sticks and a practice pad. I played drums all through school in the jazz band and while I was growing up, I had lived near this place called BAKER’S KEYBOARD LOUNGE – which is a very famous jazz club in Detroit up by 8 MILE and WOODWARD. I met JOE MESSINA and all of the different FUNK BROTHERS that played on the MOTOWN label. At a very early age – sixteen and seventeen – I was very lucky to be able to play bars. My dad would drive me to different bars and I would play at night and go to high school the next day. The deal was that if my grades were decent, I could keep playing with these guys. At a young age, I learned to play soul music and blues music and jazz music. I wasn’t playing the music of my peers. I wasn’t playing rock music or things like that. I was turning into this old soul and I wanted to pursue music. All of the guys around me were telling me to go to school and I ended up getting a scholarship to BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC in Boston. I got my Bachelors and my Master’s degree in Music and then went back to Detroit and started touring out of there with different jazz groups. That opportunity led me out to LA to do an album with another artist and once I was out in LA I decided that this was where I wanted to live. In moving out here, it was kind of odd at first because I didn’t feel anything that I did was that special, to be honest with you. Everybody else out here played this very polished, commercial music and I was really into soul music like MOTOWN and STAX. I was really able to exploit that out here and that was how RHETT and I had met. He and I were doing all of this sideman session stuff and I gave all of that up when RHETT and I had decided to do this. I don’t accept other gigs as much anymore. This is a full time thing now.

RHETT, what do you think DONNY brings to the table that makes this thing work for you?
RHETT: DONNY and I are as close as brothers. I don’t have a brother but the relationship that we have formed is definitely on that level. I like certain kinds of music and I default to them – the great soul singers and gospel singers. I love that stuff and I get lost in it. What DONNY does is challenge me to grow – to do more than just make things that are derivative of other kinds of music. He has nurtured things in me throughout this entire process that I didn’t see at first. I remember there was a funny exchange that we had a long time ago where I kept giving him things to listen to like obscure seventies funk singles. DONNY was already hip to it and he didn’t want to make the same record twice. He didn’t want to make a record that somebody already made. He gave me a CD and said that this was who he felt that my music was along the lines of. It was a JAMES TAYLOR record and I was like “This motherfucker! How can you do that to me? I’m a bad ass soul singer!” I listened to it and gradually I found that there was a lot of commonality between JAMES TAYLOR and BILL WITHERS or even a JIM CROCE in terms of just trying to communicate and not trying to be obscure. I might be laboring in obscurity and being a bad ass but being able to reach out to people and to be inclusive is something that DONNY had a big hand in.

The same question goes to you DONNY but about RHETT.
DONNY: I think RHETT has brought out things in me that I didn’t think were possible. RHETT has a sense of honesty and integrity that you find in very few musicians and artists. There are certain things – no matter what I say – that he’s not willing to do and for that I have this tremendous amount of respect. He keeps this whole boat anchored in and it hasn’t strayed and that really helps. He knows what he does best and he does it so well and he challenges me to meet up to his standard of integrity. He encouraged me to be the best ‘me’ that I can be and not merely a side man.

How do songs get written between the two of you?
RHETT: They can come eight ways from Sunday. I never get tired of hearing my idols answer this question and I never really feel like I get an answer that I can hang my hat on. Different people have different processes but for us, DONNY can come up with a sample that he’s created in his lab or we can hear another song and in our process of figuring out how that song works we will come up with something that isn’t related to it. Sometimes it  can start with an acoustic guitar. We’re getting to the point now where DONNY can lay down a drum track and I’ll sing a change that I hear on the spot and we’ll construct the other electronic loops and samples around that and record it live. I carry melodies around in my head and I carry lyrics. Whenever we get in the studio they just come out.

DONNY: I can give you a more concrete example. Take a track like BELONG – which is predominantly electric guitar, drum loops and vocals. At the time, each of us was touring and we were FED EX-ing demos back and forth. RHETT had these great lyrics and the song was starting to have this hip-ity-hop-ity ROOTS-esque vibe.  Initially, we tracked it live with a rhythm section and the result was reminiscent of a 1968 soul song. We listened to it after a month and we hated it. We loved the lyrics and we loved the melody but we hated everything else so we went back into the studio and kept the vocals and pulled everything else. We got to thinking of what it would be like if we combined BILL WITHERS with NINE INCH NAILS. We’re always pushing each other to pull that extra four percent out of a song.

RHETT: We’re such musicologists that if something smells of a cliché, we run away from it. We’re good bullshit detectors when it comes to figuring out what’s going to work and what won’t.

What songs off of the album resonate for each of you the most and why?
RHETT: It changes for me. Some songs are personal like IF I SAID. Sometimes, the textures within a song can strike me in a certain way like ‘AM I GROOVIN’ U’, which is a song that kind of snuck up on me. Sonically, the song is a powerhouse and DONNY and I were able to monkey around with the dynamics on that one. I would have to say that ‘FAULTINE’ and ‘IF I SAID’ resonate for me because they’re more soulful and ballad-y. Another song that stands out for me is ‘U CAN’T STOP’ and I honestly don’t know how that one happened so I feel blessed that we were able to get that out there. Sonically and thematically, that one resonated for me.

DONNY: It’s different for me as well. All of the songs are like my babies. I tend to relate which song I dig the most with how we constructed it s opposed to the end result. I could tell you where RHETT and I were when we finished a song and the arguments and rough housing that ensued. ‘U CAN’T STOP’ was probably the most effortless. ‘BELONG’ is more introspective and had to be wrangled out. ‘AM I GROOVIN’ U’ happened when RHETT was at my house for dinner and we had decided to rack a song. As far as my favorites are concerned, ‘U CAN’T STOP’ definitely resonates for me. I also have a soft spot in my heart for ‘HEAVEN’. I really like the chorus. It’s a dark song and it says what most people in relationships don’t ant to say even though they’ve thought it before.

RHETT: He wrote the chorus so he should have a soft spot for it.

How have audiences responded to the music in a live setting?
RHETT: I always hear that we sound just like the record. The recording has a lot of textures and a lot of background vocals. I didn’t realize what an undertaking it was going to be to do the record live. I think people who come to see us are surprised that we are able to pull it off. The conceit that DONNY and I have from having played so many live gigs through out the years really comes through and demonstrates our chops.

DONNY: The reaction is better than I expected. I live 4.2 miles from Hollywood and there is a rock band within every six feet.  When you are playing clubs you expect to get responses like “It sounds just like the record! Nice job!” It’s not much of a response at all really and that was what I was expecting until we got out on the road. The crowds seem to be getting bigger each time we go out.

What would you like a listener to come away with after they’ve heard the album?
DONNY: I hope they are nodding their head and shaking and dancing. If they don’t remember every texture or every horn line or every lyric, I hope that they are dancing and moving and smiling. Joy and reckless abandon is something that we want people to feel as we are playing and hopefully they’ll want to listen to the music again and again.

RHETT: I’ve got lofty goals. We’re going through an era where music is disposable. They rip it, borrow it or buy it for a dollar. I want people to come away with the feeling that this music is something that they can really sink their teeth into - that it’s something that they actually want to hear. We worked hard to make this music and I want people to think that it’s tangible and real.

BRIAN LUSH holds a BA in Creative Writing from  the UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO. He established ROCKWIRED on New Years of 2004 and hasn’t looked back since. From January 2005 to March 2009, LUSH was the host of the weekly internet radio show ROCKWIRED LIVE. He produced the program for the AMERICAN RADIO NETWORK. As the editor-in-chief for ROCKWiRED MAGAZiNE, LUSH is hands-on when it comes to interviewing and building a lasting rapport with the artists that come ROCKWiRED’s way. As a youngster, BRIAN LUSH had no idea what kind of seed was being planted by reading magazines such as HIT PARADE, HIGH TIMES, SPIN, REQUEST (remember that one?) and even ROLLING STONE (but to a significantly lesser degree). “Those were the days before the internet and being a rock journalist looked like the coolest job imaginable.” says LUSH “But reading these magazines had me imagining that one day I’d be the artist giving all of the clever answers to some poor guy with a tape recorder. Well, life has a way of surprising you. Now, I’m the poor guy with the tape recorder and asking all of the questions.”