Rudy Love and The Encore have just released the album “11,” a collection that has been 11 years in the making, spotlighting the group’s eclecticism and broad vision.
The band is also playing Somewhere Fest and Conference this weekend, with Love also performing in 2ŁØT and in other capacities.
“11” is also part of a new initiative, Buy Before You Stream, which encourages music lovers to purchase physical copies of recordings as a way to bolster support for artists and encourage focused listening. (Rudy Love and The Encore have also recently issued a single, “Flex,” as part of this initiative.)
Love and vocalist MJ recently visited the KMUW studios to discuss the album, the continued influences of Love’s father, Rudy Love Sr., and the Buy Before You Stream initiative.
The full schedule for the Somewhere Fest and Conference can be found at https://somewhere-fest.com.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MJ, you moved out here too as we like to say the middle of somewhere to join this band. Did you have any worry about that?
MJ: Zero. Zero percent. I missed them for a couple of years. We’ve been friends for a long time; we’ve worked together a couple of times [in the last few years] but for the most part I haven’t seen a lot of them in over six years. I was living in Arizona at the time [when] they called me. They had a show and said, “Hey, we’re gonna be here on this day;” it was actually my birthday. I said, “Absolutely, I’ll be right there.” We did a show. It felt so much like home. I had been working a lot more in songwriting than I had in vocals, so it was terrifying, but it felt extremely comfortable. It just was a reminder that when there’s magic to be had with the right people, it will always happen however it needs to.
I remember telling people about that day in the weeks and the months after. I said, “That was the best day of my life” and then it felt really foolish not to chase that as often as possible. So, I moved. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.]
MJ: We’re doing good. We’re having fun. We’re celebrating this new album, but we’re also excited to [be doing new things]. We’ve grown up in the last couple of years, I hope. We’ve got stories to tell and a new perspective. It’s really cool to see and hear both versions of ourselves.
Tell me about this first single that’s out.
RL: “Burnin’!” Yes. That’s MJ on lead.
MJ: That’s me!
RL: I think I wrote that in Orlando, Florida, about 11 years ago. You go ahead.
MJ: I had this situation. It was the coolest thing. I was working in a production house with DJ Buddha. Essentially it was two stories of maybe six bedrooms, and he turned every bedroom into a studio. What we would do is fly artists out and say, “Hey, do you want to spend two weeks with MJ?” [Laughs.] “You can work on whatever you want.” Eventually he asked if I wanted to do stuff for myself. I did. I was working with some incredible producers that he has on Therapist Music, but I feel like I needed something that I connected to a little bit more in the sense of musicality and how Rudy listens to people that he works with. So, we flew Rudy in once. You drove out once.
RL: Yeah, yeah.
MJ: It was horrendous.
RL: It was fun.
MJ: He traveled the world to come to Orlando, Florida. [Laughs.] It happened I think in a couple hours. I don’t remember what you watched or what inspired you in that moment, but it was very dark, rainy Orlando, smells like frogs, and then Rudy came out with this crazy, driving bass and then these vocals about the world ending. I don’t know if that was a reflection of how you felt at the time. But, yeah, it was just this super high-energy, extremely fun song to sing. Really challenging, but it’s been a good departure from some of the …. I don’t want to say that it’s not deep but there’s a lot of deeply lyrical, emotional songs on the album as well. So, it’s nice to have that balance as well.
RL: And she tears those vocals up.
MJ: Oh, thanks!
RL: It’s always fun to perform. We’ve played this song hundreds of times at this point, all over the country and every single time it gets to a point where she belts out at the very end. I just wait and look at everybody in the crowd, and they always have the same reaction.
MJ: [Laughs.]
RL: It’s amazing. It’s the same live as on the recording, which is really amazing.
MJ: That’s very nice, thank you. My favorite thing is when Marrque [Nunley] throws is drum sticks at me. Then I know I’ve done it.
RL: [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] There’s so much diversity on the album and there’s this other thing, which is … the way that it’s sequenced. I feel like it’s one long composition.
RL: Very intentional for that part. We struggled with song selection because we did record an additional nine or 10 older pieces. Some of them might have been more woven together had we chosen those songs, but we wanted to make sure that no matter what we were adding, whether it was written last year or 12 years ago, we wanted it to feel like the same journey. But, also, from different perspectives because the way it’s always been for us, is that I’ve been the songwriter and I’ve come to the band and said, “Hey, here’s these ideas,” and then they’d take it and make it into the magic it is. This time, we wanted to take advantage of being in a studio together, not have to look at the clock and count every single minute and be able to use our live instruments.
[In the past it was sometimes a matter of], “We can’t really record drums on this, so I’ll just add a couple claps and clicks here.” We really got to feature Marrque and DJ [Breathett] on bass a lot, so I think the intention of the connectivity is to hopefully tell the story from a few different perspectives [within] the band. We want to acknowledge everything we came from. Not just our generation but the previous generation [too]. We all learned from Dad, so that’s always at the core of what we’re doing.
There’s also a lot of cool Easter eggs that feature Dad on there. There’s a song on there, “Move Slow,” that has his vocal from [something from the past]. Midtopia, the studio that we recorded it in, we did a session with Dad in that room, and I got to record vocals in that same room [for this record]. To your point, the album does represent us in all our different, weird, eclectic influences.
After this album, we plan to get a little more free than before, so we have some cool ideas about synth-funk stuff; we love rock music so we’re going to do a rock project. We’re just going to keep it going with never getting stuck in a box.
MJ: I think the exciting thing for me about this album is that it’s as close to the way our live shows feel that the band has put out so far. It definitely takes you up and down and through some weird turns that you might not expect, but it does feel very fluid. I think that’s something that’s very difficult to capture without putting out a 46-minute track and calling it an album. I think having all the different moods and the genre blending is so perfect.
You also have this new initiative with Buy Before You Stream. I think we’re at a turning point. Twenty years ago, people were excited to have music for free via file sharing, and it took a while, but I think younger people are willing to pay for music.
RL: With streaming, I can just put something up online and that’s awesome. The downside to that, obviously, is that 100,000 songs are uploaded onto Spotify each day. It’s hard to cut through the noise. If you really step back and think about it, what it means is that our group and Taylor Swift are fighting for the same thing, which is the person who cares deeply about what they listen to, and they internalize and they identify with the music that they play for themselves and for others.
They will automatically support in a way that is substantive to artists. What we’re fighting for is a super listener, an intentional listener. Passive listeners are great. It’s good to have a bunch of streams, but what we want to do is get something that’s physical, that you can hold and you feel attached to it. Buy Before You Stream is not about no streaming. It’s saying, “Hey, if you care about this group, invest in them, and they’ll keep trying to make the best thing that they can.”
MJ: It’s also cool to be able to say, “I’m an artist and here’s a physical piece of art.” We had a fantastic graphic designer work with us and figure out how to make the images match the sounds and then people can go buy it, put the cover on their wall. It’s better than saying, “I’m an artist” and then having people say, “What’s your Instagram?”
