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| The Rosebuds (June.07 issue) |
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| Written by Jeff Clark | |
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Page 1 of 3  Love (And Luck) Will Keep Us TogetherThe Rosebuds Continue to Conjure Pop Perfection "We're a lucky band," declares Kelly Crisp. "We have good songs, and we work hard, but we get things presented to us that are sort of like cosmically aligned to work out, in a way that we could've never imagined would work." If serendipity has played a role in the opportunities afforded the Rosebuds - Crisp's band with her college sweetheart, guitarist/vocalist Ivan Howard - it's not like they don't totally deserve it. Working within a refreshingly simple musical format, the North Carolinians craft lovely and often awe-inspiring pop songs that are at once smart, poetic and emotionally stirring. So when Crisp says that "people will offer us things because they wanna make it work for us, and they wanna help us," you understand, because you wanna make it work for them too. That's pretty much how the Rosebuds' visit to Russia came about in February. I don't know how closely you pay attention, but American bands on labels like Merge don't get asked to play shows in Moscow every day. In fact, it's completely unheard of. But not for the Rosebuds. And it just goes to show - especially with the Internet connecting the world and largely rendering the radio-and-retail model of music dissemination obsolete - that the oddest, most wonderful things can still occasionally happen to good people. The Assistant Producer of Russia's first big-budget movie, a sci-fi action flick called Paragraph 78, was listening to Internet-only radio station WOXY one day and heard the Rosebuds' song "Boxcar" from their 2005 album Birds Make Good Neighbors. Entranced, he contacted the band and asked them if they would allow the song to be used in the film. "And we were like, ‘Whoa, that's weird. But yes! The Rosebuds are building a bridge across the ocean to Russia! We can't say no!' But we didn't know things were going to escalate from there," remembers Crisp. The next thing they knew, they were invited to fly to Moscow to perform at the film's red carpet premiere, along with Brett Anderson of Suede and Ian Brown from the Stone Roses. Crisp: "We told some people, and they were like, ‘Oh, you can't go to Russia, that never works out, it's not gonna work out.' It totally worked out. No problems. It went off without a hitch at all. No immigration problems, they flew us over, they put us up in a four-star hotel, the President Hotel, which is where diplomats stay." "I looked over at Justin (Vernon), who was playing guitar with us, and I was like, ‘Man, do you realize I grew up on a damn tobacco farm, and I am walking up these steps in Moscow? Something's just not right!'" laughs Howard. "When we were riding through town, there's these giant billboards all over Moscow for this movie, I mean like, 60-by-40-feet billboards with our name, Ian Brown, Brett Anderson and Paragraph 78, all over the city." "And I love the Stone Roses," gushes Crisp. "When I was growing up, I was a huge fan. I don't know how, I got a Stone Roses tape from somewhere, out of a yard sale box or something. I grew up on a dirt road, so you can imagine this totally weird kid who was kind of a weird loner listening to the Stone Roses on a dirt road. Couldn't be further from Manchester, haha! So we walked in with our gear, I was carrying my keyboard, and I knew that all of the people would be staying in this hotel, and I said, ‘I wonder if when I see Ian Brown I'll recognize him.' And Ivan goes, ‘I think I see him over there.' And I was too nervous to look! We walked just straight to the elevator! And because we had our gear and it said ‘The Rosebuds,' I think he saw us walk in, and he ran over to the elevator, and jumped on it with us! He's like, ‘Hey, what's up? You guys don't have people to carry that for you?'" As for the show itself, "people were on people's shoulders dancing," Ivan says. "We were playing for three or four thousand people." "I don't think that they really knew our music," Crisp recalls. "They knew that this huge event was going to happen, and then they go on MySpace and see what's up. So we started getting a lot of Russian friends on MySpace just before we went and just after. So I think that they knew some of our songs. I could see that some people were singing along, so if they didn't know, at least they were trying to figure it out. We got into one of our first songs, and this guy tore his shirt off and started swinging it around, and this girl got up on this other guy's shoulders and started partying. I mean, it was wild. They came to party." |
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