The reader’s companion to High Volt Rustler’s debut

High Volt Rustler’s debut album is a mixed blessing. It’s either completely sad or wholly exciting. As with all things, it depends on whom you ask.

For those who knew “Cool” Brad Rozman, it’s going to be hard to get around the fact that “No Longer Blue” is one of the last records the late drummer played on.

Others, like people who just pick up the disc because they dig the Duluth group’s name (an homage to a skit — of sorts — the legendary Les Paul cooked up for his radio show), are in for something a lot more uplifting: an engaging collection of songs.

No matter which category you fall into, you’ll want to hear it. Trusting you heed our advice, we’ve enlisted the help of the group’s frontwoman, Pauline Russell, to give you a track-by-track breakdown of “No Longer Blue”:

1. “Broken Tomorrows”

Within the first minute of our conversation, Russell drops a bombshell: Sometimes she doesn’t even know what her songs are about.

Before I start totally hyperventilating, however — as in, Oh crap, what are we supposed to talk about for 13 songs? — the singer/songwriter puts me at ease by giving me a whirlwind tour of her past: She grew up in Salt Lake City. Big family, not Mormon. Played punk music. Moved to area with first husband. She liked it here, he didn’t. She stayed, he didn’t. Became a single mother for a spell. Managed to have a solo career, though. Made a CD, called “West of Here.” Is a little embarrassed by it, even though it landed her opening gigs for Dwight Yoakam and Richard Thompson. At some point she met local musician Allen Klingsporn. They bonded, got hitched and now make music together. This is their band.

Anecdotes from her life pop up throughout this album’s song cycle. Buckle up.

Anyway, back to “Broken Tomorrows,” which Russell said is about the bond she shares with her five sisters, and how she misses them.

“They’re all still back in Utah,” she said. “They’re crazy, they stayed.”

Joking aside, Russell returned to what she said about not fully understanding her own compositions, explaining that song meanings reveal themselves over time.

“For instance, this is an older song, and now that I listen to it again, it makes sense — where before I just thought it did,” she said. “But now it really makes sense.

“That’s kind of the trick with me understanding what I’m doing.”

Russell moved to the Northland in 1998, so she placed this song’s date of conception around the turn of the century.

“There’s a mix of that on here: songs I did want to get down on CD that are older, that I didn’t want to let go of yet, and then some newer ones,” she said. “A couple of the newer ones are a little bit more angry. But it’s OK.”

Once a punk, always a punk....

2. “Rain”

“Rain,” another former solo song, was written when Russell was making a lot of changes in her life.

“People warned me that I shouldn’t [be making such drastic changes] because everything would come crashing down,” she said. “And I kind of had to say to them, ‘OK, let the rain come down.’

“And the rain did come down and it wasn’t very much fun. [Laughs]”

Speaking of changes, this band’s lineup went through a few before its current identity was solidified: Russell the solo act became a duo when her soon-to-be-husband, Allen Klingsporn, accompanied her with his banjo. That moniker-less duo became the short-lived Wahoo when bassist Rich Taylor joined them. Next, following another quickie outfit, Kettle Black, High Volt Rustler was born when the late Rozman came onboard. (These days, Chris Modec-Halverson hits the skins for HVR.)

When asked if she ever had any reservations about producing creative content with her significant other, Russell said it didn’t bother her.

“He’s starting to give some input,” she said. “It’s interesting, because he isn’t someone who listens to lyrics, really ... so he’ll make up what he thinks I’m saying.

“There was one song that I actually changed the lyric because of what he kept saying. I thought, You know, that does make better sense. Maybe he’s sneaking his input in, like he’s pretending he doesn’t know what’s going on. [Laughs]”

While Klingsporn may not be orchestrating any hostile takeovers, it sounds like Russell’s daughter, Rosalee, is: Not only has the 12-year-old publicly made threats of a similar nature, she’s backing up her fighting words by taking music lessons from none other than Sara Softich.

3. “Cast No Stones”

Russell was having a down day, just sitting around with her dog, when “Cast No Stones” came to her.

“You just kind of make that promise to yourself that you’re going to do the thing that really feels like you. And, in doing that,” she explained, “you can’t go back and say, Oh, the reason why I didn’t get this or the reason I didn’t do this was because this happened to me or this person did this — you just have to go forward and cast no stones, and don’t let anybody cast any stones at you either.”

OK, but what about some practical advice?

“Dodge ’em!” Russell continued with a big laugh.

4. “Fall to the Bottom”

“Fall to the Bottom” chronicles another sour moment in the High Volt Rustler singer/songwriter’s life. Russell was feeling particularly helpless and overwhelmed on a New Year’s Eve a few years back: “My husband at the time had left, so my daughter and I were just having a tough time, paying rent and buying food,” she said. “It was just a really, really tough time. I wondered a lot about how I was going to get through it. And I had to take jobs where I could take my daughter with me, which was fine, but I did gardening jobs, I did snow shoveling ... I used to go out with friends and we would ‘Sawsall’ the big oil heaters and haul them out of people’s basements — just anything. [Laughs]”

She felt like she was “falling to the bottom.”

“And we all hear, Oh, you’re supposed to do that in life — like fall, have a hard time and feel good again or whatever,” Russell continued, before delving into a quasi-religious concept about tapping into the energy that surrounds us. (For the sake of not conveying it properly, I’ll let Russell explain it to you sometime.)

However, the High Volt Rustler ringleader trotted back from her philosophical aside and explained how her current outfit compares stylistically to the short-lived Wahoo and the also-short-lived Kettle Black.

“The main difference is that we have more electric guitars,” she said. “And we’re all getting a little addicted to pedals; it’s becoming a problem. [Laughs] But it’s fun, just experimenting more with those different sounds.”

Needless to say, the former SLC punk is a big fan of the Windy city’s premier rock ‘n’ roll export, Wilco. Russell said she loves what Jeff Tweedy and company do with layers.

“I’m not saying we’ll ever be able to reach that, but I just love playing with sound and different things you can have going on in the background. That’s why I love this band: they’re good at taking care of that for me, so I can just sing and relax a little bit.

“When you’re a solo act, you have to fill up all the sound all the time, and it is tough.”

5. “Liar’s Loans”

“This is the one really angry one I always apologize for,” Russell said. “It’s a little bit of attacking the big issue we had with subprime mortgages and [collateralized debt obligations]. The fact that Alan Greenspan didn’t even know what these CDOs were — it was just greed that happened so fast that, people at the top, some of them didn’t even know what this was.

“They were sold this idea that subprime mortgages meant more people were going to be able to get homes, so they thought they were doing the country a favor, but really what was behind it was all that money and it just backfired on us.”

How mad is she? Here’s just one line: “All of your money is a knife in our back.” Yep, “mad as hell” is probably an accurate assessment.

6. “Motorcycle”

Russell rode dirt bikes around Sandy, Utah, with her brother as a kid, and she hopes to own a motorcycle someday, but the song’s not actually about that. “Motorcycle” refers to a particular passage from Robert M. Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (which is really inconsequential as what one takes away from a philosophical argument varies greatly from soul to soul). And its lyrical content somehow incorporates both “The Age of Mankind” and “The Heart of the Sky,” two anthropology books Klingsporn had left in her creative space.

We’ll just let its author explain it, as best she can: “It’s about how we’re in this intense age of mankind right now, and we forget that there’s other life that’s going on,” Russell said.

7. “Pieces”

“Boy, I still don’t know what this one is about,” Russell said, laughing out loud. “I guess, in the way that I’m singing about running away, like we can all do sometimes, we have fragments of good and bad memories — it’s those pieces and how do you deal with them, how do you put them together and not run away from things. I think that’s what it’s about

“But let’s talk about it again next month.”

At this, she laughed heartily.

“My sisters all think it’s a love song, but I don’t write love songs — I just don’t,” Russell said. Again, a laugh. “But I can see where it could be a nice love song.”

One uncontestable truth about Russell is that music was a big part of her childhood. Her father, who sang songs by the like of Hank Williams and Hank Snow, seems to have been quite the guiding light.

“One thing I remember doing a lot of was laying my ears against our stereo’s speaker and listening to a live Emmylou Harris record,” she said of her dad’s C&W influence. “I grew up in the age of big cabinet record players — we didn’t have headphones.”

8. “Spinning”

Unlike the two tracks that precede it on the record, Russell was quick to delve into what “Spinning” is all about.

“It’s just a song about moving too fast in life and how you gotta slow down a little bit — go inside and figure out what the heck you’re doing,” she said.

And some say life moves a little slower up here in Duluth, Minn. Nope — not for this musician at least. Not only did she recently start a new bookkeeping job, but Russell is also finishing up an accounting degree.

“Yep, I’m spinning again,” joked Russell, who always thought she’d be a teacher in some capacity.

Wait, hold up ... bookkeeping? I know the Boom Chucks’ Jamie Ness was at one point a house painter, but this seems even less rock and roll than that.

“I guess the reason I really like bookkeeping is that it makes sense to me,” Russell contended. “With music and art, you can think yourself to death. What I like about accounting is that you have your debits and your credits, and you have this and that, and this fits there — it’s like putting together puzzle pieces. It exercises my brain in a way that really grounds me.

“Maybe I hide in accounting. [Laughs]”

9. “Words”

“Words” began as an acoustic song, but that all changed when Russell’s friend John Ward gifted her a “little gold Fender.”

“It was funny,” she started, “when he first came over with the guitar, I was thinking, What are you doing with this? Because he’s a bigger guy.

“And all he said was, ‘I just have a feeling this is going to change what you’re doing with music.”

It proved to be quite the fortuitous move.

“Allen always says I have this blues queen deep down inside that wants out,” Russell joked. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle that, but I kind of am a sucker for some of that blues stuff.”

10. “Brooklyn”

“I have not stepped foot in Brooklyn yet,” Russell admitted off the bat.

The song’s feel and structure actually derives from a phone conversation her husband was having with an old friend. This friend was in Brooklyn for a job and was struggling with some things, so he called up Klingsporn for support.

“While they were talking, this guitar part came up, and for some reason this guitar part just makes me think of Brooklyn,” the little eavesdropper said. “... And that’s what the lyrics are about too: when you’re calling a friend in desperation, and you just feel like you’re really struggling.”

Speaking from personal experience, then?

“I don’t call, I just deal. ... And then I tell them afterwards about the crying,” she admitted with a laugh.

One episode she admitted to struggling with was the death of “Cool” Brad Rozman, a coworker of hers at the Whole Foods Co-op who became a member of High Volt Rustler after she said point-blank, “Brad, I need a drummer.”

“When the [‘No Longer Blue’] CDs finally showed up and I looked at them and saw his picture on the back covers and realized I wasn’t going to be able to call him and say, ‘Hey, Brad, they’re finally done’ ... I didn’t want to deal with the CDs anymore,” she said. “So it was just a week of being sad.

“Really, I only knew him for a year, and that breaks my heart, because he was so fun and so intelligent.”

On the bright side, Russell is able to share the album, one of Rozman’s last works (along with the recent Equal Xchange release), with his friends and family. She’s been able to make meaningful human connections because of this bridge to his passion.

“He knew some really great people — just interesting people — so that I’m really grateful for,” she said.

11. “Backslide”

Like many of the selections on “No Longer Blue,” Russell found inspiration for “Backslide” from another not-entirely-cheerful source. (Perhaps a theme is emerging?)

“I was watching a documentary about Gram Parsons and how his friends stole his body and then went and burned it in Joshua Tree National Park,” she said. “I lived just outside of there for about a year when my daughter was a baby. I hiked through that park a lot, so I really became interested in that documentary because I would wonder if I had ever walked by where they burned his body.

“What struck me is that he was doing better near the end of his life. He was learning more about his songwriting — and Emmylou Harris was a big part of that, as she pushed him to do so — and then he went on what’s called a ‘backslide.”

For those unfamiliar with the influential Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers guitarist, he overdosed in a hotel room at the age of 26. In other words, he slipped back into his previous self-destructive ways.

12. “Dry Run Creek”

“Dry Run Creek” is the sole song on “No Longer Blue” whose lyrics were not written by Russell; they belong to Larry McPeak. Russell discovered the piece in an old folk book after writing the song’s music on an Irish bouzouki.

“I was looking for something because I was lazy and I didn’t want to write any lyrics, but I really liked what I was playing,” Russell admitted.

Hey, at least she’s honest.

McPeak’s composition is about a group of Civil War-era soldiers involved in an unnecessary battle. Russell immediately found parallels between their plight and what some of our men and women are going through overseas.

“It seemed to fit,” she said matter-of-factly.

The best part about the whole situation, however, was the contact between the song’s author and High Volt Rustler.

“We were able to talk to him, and he was pretty excited that we were doing this song,” Russell said. “Being able to communicate with him made it really meaningful to me.”

13. “Snow Walk”

As heavy as some of its chapters are, “No Longer Blue” ends on an ordinary, almost-simplistic note.

“It’s really just about how we’re living in Duluth, where it gets really cold, and sometimes you don’t want to go outside and walk. But you have to, otherwise you’ll go cuckoo,” Russell remarked with a sense of glee. “It was a day where Allen just said, ‘Come on. You need to go walk on the river.’ And I didn’t feel like it, but we did, and it was wonderful.”

So, basically, it’s just a song about staving off cabin fever — and, not say, about depressing holidays, the charred remains of legendary musicians or, perhaps, pulling out your hair follicle by follicle because you’re struggling to make ends meet.

NEWS TO USE
High Volt Rustler will play a CD release show for “No Longer Blue” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27, at Fitger’s Spirit of the North Theater. Cost is $5. Lee “Colorblind” Johnson is also on the bill. See www.highvoltrustler.com for more.

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