RDGLDGRN performs tomorrow night at U Street Music Hall.
By DCist contributor Christina Smart
In 2013, Reston, Virginia band RDGLDGRN created massive buzz by collaborating with music heavyweights Dave Grohl and Pharrell Williams on their first album.
Now, having recently wrapped up a headlining tour in Germany, bassist Andrei Busuioceanu took a break from RDGLDGRN’s songwriting session in Los Angeles to talk about putting their sleeping band manager on the cover of their album, t-shirt choices, and other topics. The band will play a homecoming show of sorts tomorrow at U Street Music Hall.
DCist: You worked with Dave Grohl and Pharrell Williams a few years ago. What other artists are on your wishlist for collaborations?
AB: I think we exhausted that. Both Dave and Pharrell are Godfathers of their genres; Pharrell’s a pop star now and Dave’s the spokesperson for rock. They helped us and held our hand when we first got started. We’ve been focused on building that buzz up again through our new recordings that we have and just having a different approach to the songwriting and the crafting of everything that we’re putting out. I don’t think we’re necessarily looking around at who we can work with but who can help us spread our message and continue to build. We’ve been super happy with building this die hard fan base of people that truly know and love this music and they just come to shows and they know everything—every step, every word. For us, it’s not something we think about at all because we still can’t wrap our heads around the fact that we’ve worked with Dave and Pharrell, you know? (Laughs). We’re not going around looking to work with Paul McCartney right now. I think we want to make some noise on our own.
DCist: But if Paul McCartney calls, you’re not going to turn him down.
AB: Yeah, we’re not calling him up. But if he happens to call we would gladly tell Sir Paul we’ll meet him at Abbey Road Studios immediately.
DCist: Let’s talk about RDGLDGRN’s EP 2 and, more importantly, the man who is pictured asleep on the cover of EP 2. Who is that guy?
AB: (Laughs) That’s actually our tour manager, Reggie. That cover to me is one of those covers where I love how there can be simple photos that are kind of iconic. That just happens on tour. Green falls asleep like that all the time. Red does too. Reggie just gets in the craziest positions when he passes out. It’s really, really funny and everyone has a photo of him sleeping because that’s just the thing to do. For us, it’s awesome because we got to have our tour manager on the cover and he’s a big part of what we do. It makes us laugh and it’s also an example of us being tired from being on the road. It’s all encompassing and even deep. It’s funny because some people are like “How can you guys do this? This is so wrong!” They don’t get it at all.
DCist: What I love about that photo is that it sums up what life on the road is really like. Most people don’t realize the amount of work involved.
AB: I think that’s very true. There are so many people who see who we’ve worked with or what country we’re touring in and the reality is, it’s not an easy business by any means. There are certain times where if you can get 5 minutes rest before the next interview, it can be amazing. There were certain trips in Germany where we were doing interview after interview after interview. We did the Good Morning Germany show, it’s called Moma, and we got up at five in the morning and had to perform shortly afterwards. It can be so brutal. It’s not the most glamourous job but if you enjoy it as much as we do, or you love performing live, it ain’t a thing.
DCist: When the band first came out, there was a lot made of Red only always wearing red, Green only always wearing green. Be honest, there has to be time when you’re home alone walking around in a black concert t-shirt. You can’t possibly be Gold all the time, can you?
AB: I think Red and Green are way better at that than I am. I do have some shirts that are black. If you ask them that question, the answer’s “No” but with me, I put up pictures and stuff and I get shit for it from our fans, so I’m the only one that cheats.
DCist: Given the recent terrorist events at The Bataclan, I was curious, has RDGLDGRN played Paris before and if so, which venue?
AB: We did but I couldn’t tell you the name of the place. It was squeezed into the tour and it was the smallest crowd we ever played for. It was a really tiny venue so the most we could play for was, like, thirty people or something. But it was streamed on some website as well so my parents saw it back home. But obviously everything’s that’s happened in Paris is just kind of a shock and I can tell you where we were at the time. It was the day after our last show. I remember that same night, we were getting a ton of messages from people asking us if we were close to France and in actuality we were in Switzerland. We were leaving and our tour driver was taking us to the airport in Zurich.The reality is, it didn’t affect us in any way except for when you got to your gate, the TSA formed a couple of lines and were stopping people with French names. Green noticed that because the people that they stopped along with him, they all had French names and [the TSA] were asking them questions. Obviously for us, that was incredibly scary. We were all talking about it in the van and how it’s like “My God, now they’re going to concerts to get people.”
DCist: For me, it’s very sad because when you go to a concert, it’s ninety minutes to two hours of escapism. If there’s a really good band onstage, you forget all the troubles in your world and you just go and have a good time. For someone to violate that, for me, is just mind boggling.
AB: I’m glad you said that because I can tell you for me, it’s still complete shock. I felt a strange, not like a fear, but this pressure that people need to do something. It’s pure evil but to me, it’s unreal. It’s unbelievable because I don’t understand why anybody would ever go to a concert, of all places, and do this.
RDGLDGRN performs at U Street Music Hall on Friday, Dec. 18. 7 p.m. doors. Tickets $18.
