“I’m gonna be doing yoga in here later,” he tells me, makes a face.
“Someone’s been on the road too long,” I suggest, gesturing at the life-size drawing.
“I’ve been on the road for a long time at once,” he says, “and I’ve never quite come to that.”
A long time, and far away. Home for Rudd is Australia – some 8,176 miles from where he is now, in Seattle, Washington. Yesterday, Rudd was in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where the temperature dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Today, he talked to his wife, who just got back from the beach with the kids. It’s summer where he’s from, but this is his job. For a guy who’s been that far from home for that long, he’s full of good humor. After all, he’s packing rooms across Europe and North America, and his stateside debut, Food in the Belly (Anti), is set for release in January.
Kim Ruehl: What are your thoughts about Food in the Belly being your American debut?
Xavier Rudd: It’s cool, you know, that whole world is sort of new-ish to me, all these new places. Because, when I first came to America, I didn’t have an album out and I was really lucky. People would record my music and stick it on the Internet. I could come to tour, the shows would sell out anyway, in these places where I didn’t know there were people that were into [what I do]. I was really lucky; but to have an album out will be cool, too. It’s a whole new world of stuff.
Do you enjoy the recording process? I know some people prefer to be in the studio, some people prefer to be on the road. Both are kind of necessary…
Essentially, I’m a live player. I spend about 95% of my musical time playing and touring, not a lot of time recording. But this next album, I’m going to spend a bit more time on it. I like playing music, anyway. I love playing live. Everyone’s energy is involved when it’s live. I record live, but it’s more of a personal reflection, rather than when you have everyone’s personal energy involved in the expression. It’s different. But I just love playing. I’m just really lucky to play and to do this for this part of my journey. I don’t have any complaints when it comes to music.
So how did you come up with that setup out there? It’s pretty impressive.
Well it’s just time, you know. I’ve always been interested in fiddling with instruments and teaching myself to play things. Over time I’ve just sort of built that world around me. I never planned it. It’s just sort of become part of… my instruments have found me over time. The whole thing has just been built over time.
What was the first instrument you learned?
My voice was always the first thing I used that I can remember, you know. I was always kind of an emotional kid. I expressed myself just with myself, through song and melody and singing stories about what I felt. So I’d do that, and then I guess that was kind of the start of songwriting [for me]. I’ve always just played instruments and taught myself to play things, so everything I do is self-taught. I can’t remember what the first instrument I learned was. I was just, in my memory, anytime a musical instrument was around, I’d kind of fiddle on it, play it in my own kooky way.
How did you get interested in music? What was the first show you saw?
I think the first show I saw, which was a blast, was Leo Kottke in a small room in Australia. He was incredible. He’s an acoustic slide player, which is a sound I always love. So that was really cool. I played with him at Red Rocks in Colorado last year. It was probably about 20 years ago when I saw him [for the first time]. I told him that story [last year] and he remembered that show because it was a sleepy little town in Australia. My dad was a Leo Kottke fan and he took us to that show. So it was cool. [Leo Kottke] wrote a note to my dad.
Oh wow.
Yeah, so I went to see my dad when I was home and I saw he had it framed on the wall. The note from Leo Kottke So that was really cool.
That is really cool. Have you seen a change in your audiences through the years – I know you’ve been doing this for quite a while – but now that you’re getting known around the world, do you see a difference in your audience?
I think there are different energies in different places. I think the human nature is basically the same. I’m really lucky the people that are coming to the shows bring good energy, and I notice that everywhere I go. It’s really beautiful. Every show I play is fun. In different places in the world there are different energies, a different spirit passing through people. Whatever that land is, the story of that land is something I notice. But generally the core of people is pretty similar.
Do you consider what you do folk music?
[laughs] There are aspects of folkiness to it, but it gets heavy at times, gets funky or gets kind of a world [music] quality to it, I use a lot of world beats and instruments and stuff, so it’s hard to pinpoint it. I always get different … I play a lot of different festivals. I don’t really get pigeonholed. You know I play folk festivals, world music festivals, rock festivals, jazz festivals. I play all sorts of festivals. So it’s kind of cool because I get booked for a lot of different stuff. It’s great because I can see a lot of different types of music and draw inspiration from different types of music; but I don’t know how to describe [what I do].
Page 2: Xavier Rudd talks about practicing yoga and being on tour
