On this week's Laura's Good News podcast, Laura takes herself on a little field trip behind the scenes with the Midwest's most popular Rolling Stones tribute band, the Rolling Stoners.
From sound check to hanging out in the greenroom, Laura spent an entire day with the band, talking with them about their musicianship, art, and expression of what the greatest rock n roll band in history means to them. The Rolling Stoners are at the Cabooze in Minneapolis April 16th, where they’ll be doing the Stones’ entire 1972 Exile on Main Street record. Tickets are still available.
Its sound check before a nearly sold-out Rolling Stoners show and front man Joe Gamble guzzles honey from the bottle after the previous night's show left him a little hoarse. But not too hoarse for some preshow shenanigans.
Gamble breaks out into a hillbilly-style, twangy ditty as the engineer sets his microphone level. He’s the ringleader of this band of nine, running sound check, booking gigs, making sure greenroom lounging time doesn't go on too long and they hit the stage when promised.
What the audience sees is pure swagger. A sweaty, confident, constantly-in-motion performer who they swear could be Mick Jagger himself.
“It just is the show,” Gamble explains. “It's the same reaction that I think of anyone in the crowd were willing to let themselves go would have. And my job is to let myself go first. And so it's just a matter of getting out of your own way.”
Gamble says part of the magic is that electric, all-encompassing, shared experience when the audience and the band are one, a sentiment shared by bassist Brian Bruzek.
“I've done this for a lot of years and I played in a lot of bands and I played to a lot of tables and chairs, and I played to a lot of indifferent audiences. The people that come and see the Rolling Stoners are not indifferent,” says a laughing Bruzek. “I savor her every moment of it. We soak it all up and, and just enjoy every minute because it's, it's amazing.”
A big reason the Rolling Stoners are as tight and good as they are sits at the back of the stage. Drummer Joe Call has a big job job - without a lot of wiggle room.
“It's the down to the millisecond, and if I move my wrist wrong, hit the hi-hat wrong, that has a trickle effect down to my other hand, hits the snare wrong, and then the really loud noise of the kick drum with my foot gets off. And then it's like, oh yeah, you can screw everybody up,” says Call. “You can screw everybody up and then you got to recover. We've all been playing together so long in this particular project that we're really good at when there's a minor blunder, it just gets absorbed and we organically morph and flex and flow and most people never can tell for the most part.”
Backup singer and percussionist Carrie Deans has plenty of experience with that audience relationship. She also plays guitar and sings in at least four other bands when she's not studying Japanese beetles in her job as a research etymologist at the University of Minnesota.
As she finished her makeup before the show we chatted about being able to truly let go and share that feeling with the audience.
“I always kind of look at it like we're all kind of there together,” explains Deans. “I mean, obviously we're on the stage and it's a totally different perspective, but we're into the songs just as much as the audience is. So it's kind of cool. And I just sort of thing it’s like we're all partying together, we're in it together and just appreciating the songs because with tribute bands that's what it's really about.”
The Rolling Stoners play the music of the Rolling Stones of course, but there are no costumes or wigs. Just a pure love of the music and a legendary band that hits you viscerally. It sure does that to guitarist Dustin Tessier, coaxing Keith Richards' signature style out of each and every chord as he saunters across the stage or plays a blues lick lying on his back.
“There's a feeling that I've gotten from the Stones ever since I was a kid, before I knew what it was all about, but it felt like it came from the Root Chakra,” Tessier says. “It felt like there was something very pelvic and sort of sexual, like primal to what they did with rock and roll music. I guess, you know, originally with the blues and then with rock and roll music, they sort of just created a vibe that, I don't know what it is. It’s kind of a thing that defies description, but there's a certain magic to the simple rock and roll. It's full of flaws but it's so perfect at the same time.”
The Rolling Stoners are booked across the Midwest throughout the spring and summer where they'll continue welcoming their fans and spellbound groupies into those few hours of magic, appreciating every last second of the ride.
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