Housh: “Bobby is the connector. He knew everybody and he knew I was looking around for something. We had talked about songwriting, so he asked me to come over. We got together and it worked out.”
Rubin: “It was during the pandemic, but we were all vaccinated. We decided to quarantine together and be part of a circle of people. We spread out and started working on songs. I originally wanted to do ska. Billy might have been on board with that, but Matt and Kellen weren’t.”
Housh: “Ska wasn’t my forte.”
Rubin: “I’m glad it didn’t work out that way. There are a lot of ska bands and sometimes they can sound alike. I bring in some ska influences but a lot of ‘80s new wave too. You can hear that in ‘Whispers in the Mist.’ I like that we have a sound that’s hard to describe.”
Housh: “Yeah, it’s eclectic. It’s got a lot of parts from all of us. We have similar tastes but there are some differences.”
Check out Rude Scholar’s cover of the Specials “Fearful,” one of the local band’s four appearances on compilations by the Specialized Project in the United Kingdom:
Brown: “We all bring our own influences and passion, and the sound just naturally comes out. I’ve always wanted to be in a band like this. It feels good as a musician to be creative and come up with something unique.”
Rubin: “We’ll be releasing another single. We’re slowly plugging away, recording our songs. We do it all in-house. Billy has to mix it and come up with a scratch track, then the first draft, the second draft, the 100th draft.”
Howard: “It’s a process. We started recording ourselves because we wanted that control over everything. If we’re doing that, we want to get them right, so we really dug in on that.”
Brown: “Billy’s the recording guru. He’s on point. We record the parts and he puts it all together. We usually start with a drum track, you know, playing along with everybody. Then these guys lay down all their magic. I usually go back and perfect my drum parts. I might go through it again to get it exactly where I want it.”
Housh: “That process makes the songs so much better and that’s made us better players and better collaborators.”
Artist info: rudescholar.bandcamp.com.
Contact this Contributing Writer at 937-287-6139 or donthrasher100@gmail.com.
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