Out of the Shadows: Rogue Wave

“It’s feels colder here than it did in, like, Minneapolis,” says Rogue Wave’s drummer, Pat Spurgeon on an icy night in December when we sat down with the band in a noisy, yet warm, diner shortly before a Denton, Texas show. It was a sight the band based out of the generally mild San Francisco Bay Area hadn’t expected from the Southern, and final leg, of their latest U.S. tour.

It’s been a busy year for the band, from both touring and recording the release of their sophomore album, ‘Descended Like Vultures’, which hit shelves here in October. And while it has only been out a short while, it’s been getting rave reviews Stateside and even making some of the requisite “Best of” lists for 2005. Their sound has evolved from the Zach Rogue led one-man show of their first release, ‘Out of the Shadow’, due largely to the addition of a full band in the recording process. “What a lot of people don’t realize,” pipes in the band’s jack-of-all-trades, Gram Lebron, “is that most of the songs on the new album have been played live for more than a year.”

For example, their track ‘Bird On A Wire’ was one of the first songs that Rogue collaborated on with Spurgeon, his first official band mate for the project of turning the band from a solo effort into a group endeavor. Lebron adds that it was one of the songs he remembers hearing at the first Rogue Wave show he attended, before becoming a member of the band and that it “stuck in his head” for a while afterwards.

Their first single, ’10:1’, has also been around for some time, having been recorded shortly after the ‘Out of the Shadow’ sessions with Spurgeon and producer Bill Racine. Incidentally some fans were immediately turned off by the keyboard driven riff and distorted vocals. It left some wondering if the band had changed, without realizing that the song had been recorded before many of the other songs on the album. Not only that, but it had also been played live in the band’s shows since they were on tour supporting their first album.

That’s not to say that ‘Descended Like Vultures’ does not have a wealth of new material, however. Many of the new songs were written with the current lineup of band members and several other songs have made it onto iTunes and the ’10:1’ single. In fact, Rogue has enough material from these sessions to release another album right now. ‘Vulture’ ranges from the soft and somber in tracks like ‘Temporary’, to the upbeat ‘Catform’. In fact, the band each has a different favorite new tune to play live. For example, Pat likes to play the softer ‘California’ because with the addition of a soundboard operator, Jamie, the subtle sounds made on the drums transfer well. Gram said he gets excited seeing ‘Medicine Ball’ on the set list. And Zach chimed in with a simple “Publish”, which is ‘set list speak’ for the soon-to-be-released UK single ‘Publish My Love’. Evan Farrell, the band’s bass player was unable to attend the interview but sent a text message over to the band stating his favorite new song to play live was ‘Are You On My Side’.