It’s more forth than back for former P.G. resident
The term “back and forth” has about 6,800 degrees of meaning for someone rooted in Prince George but living in St. John’s.
Going back and forth between B.C. and N.L. is an epic procedure that Russians can empathize with, but few others. This is a big nation, Josh Sandu is using just about every last mile of it, but sound travels much faster than a tour van. His latest album is called Back And Forth perhaps with this in mind.
Back And Forth is the first fulllength album by St. John’s duo Rube & Rake, comprised of Sandu and his friend and collaborator Andrew Laite. Laite noticed one night that a stranger had a banjo in hand, which was a conversation starter if ever there was one, especially when Sandu proceeded to play a Hank Williams tune on it.
The two great Hanks – Williams and Snow – were roots of Laite’s musical sensibilities and Sandu concurred. They’ve been stringing each other along ever since, four years and more from then. That old country music influence is evident in their latest social media posting, a rich acoustic cover of Ian Tyson’s cautionary Summer Wages.
They are much more than roots-country, though. There is an aching, windblown modern quality to their sound. It’s been said that if the Everly Brothers or Simon & Garfunkel were millennials who met up in Newfoundland, this is what they’d sound like, especially if half of the duo comes hauling baggage from the other side of Canada, but willingly unpacks it into Maritime drawers.
“I’m here for good, now. Don’t tell my mother,” said Sandu in a phone call to The Citizen with Laite joining in the conversation. “And not that I don’t miss Prince George. The basis for half the record was being homesick. It was a muse for sure.”
He even veered off the topic of Rube & Rake’s new offering to tip his hat back to his hometown. Hearing that a bunch of local players were getting together in a tribute concert to beloved Prince George musician Raghu Lokanathan (Saturday night at the PG Playhouse), he wished out loud he could take part.
“We do some of Raghu’s songs here at our Monday night gigs,” Sandu said. “We try to spread the gospel of Raghu. Andrew’s strumming some right now, in the background. Raghu definitely deserves more recognition and we love is stuff.”
“Half the set list would be Raghu songs, some nights,” said Laite.
Rube & Rake are getting plenty of their own recognition lately. It’s been a four-year build but in the past couple of months they have been featured on the CBC-TV program Heavy Weather (Absolutely Canadian), a web feature by the Newfoundland Herald, they played showcase performances for MusicNL Week, they are one of the featured acts on the FibeTV-1 website Club One: New Releases, and this past week they launched the Back And Forth album in a set of performances in and around St. John’s, which were moments to treasure for the fans on the rock.
“We try to make sure we don’t play a lot around here,” said Laite, who was born and raised in St. John’s, and knows the music scene well. “As Rube & Rake we aim at being strategic about our live appearances, so we don’t saturate our local market, but we do need to stay sharp and get better at our live performing.”
To do that, Laite and Sandu form two-fifths of another act that goes by the name The Old Contemporaries that main- tains a busier live performing schedule but front a distinctly different sound than the Rube & Rake material.
“We are a minimalist duo. We like to do as much as we can just the two of us,” said Laite. “One of the reasons we gravitated together, I think, is because we don’t do the same things musically. We complement each other. We are not at all the same kind of musician, but when we combine our strengths, it really works.”
In short, Sandu and Laite each play guitar and share vocals, Sandu adds some banjo, and they emphasize harmonies and vocal interplay. For the album, some collaborators came out of the plentiful musical woodwork of St. John’s to add some touches: Matt Hender provided some bass and Carole Bestvater contributed some fiddle.
It would be hard to determine who the primary songwriter is for any given tune, they both melt their parts together so thickly. It’s literate, layered, contemplative stuff, the kind of music that quiets a rowdy bar so the patrons can hang on their every word.
It’s the kind of music that sounds great on a train and correspondingly it was Via Rail that brought Rube & Rake into Prince George their one and only appearance in Sandu’s hometown. That was at Art Space in 2014. They have no set dates for a Western Canada tour in support of Back And Forth but “it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when” the duo gets back here to Lheidli territory, Sandu said.
“I think we can safely say 2018 looks promising for getting out there for some shows,” Laite agreed.
For album download information, go to the band’s Facebook page and official website.