packed myself into Brick’s last Thursday, standing squashed between my 15-year-old brother and my father, listening to what should have been Guster frontman Ryan Miller’s voice. But instead, he had stopped singing for a few moments because the crowd of more than 800 fans was singing so loudly that you couldn’t hear him.

Praise God, the audience got the hint and toned it down a little—but they never stopped singing.

Which is exactly why every time Guster comes through town—which is as often as it can, as promised after its first tour through the Land of Zion in February of 2000—it stands bewildered in front of its screaming Utahn fans and asks why Utah loves it so much.

The RED Interview
When asked, the audience only screams at the top of its lungs, but still they don’t answer.

Adam Gardner, the band’s lead guitarist, called me the day of Guster’s Thursday show to chat about the love affair Utah has with the group.

“We don’t know what it is in Utah, but Utah and Guster is a good pairing,” Gardner said.

However, he has hatched a bit of a theory on the matter.

“I think happy people like happy music, and people in Salt Lake City are happy. That’s why when we play shows in places like Seattle, they aren’t nearly as fun because those people are depressed from all that rain.”

Another reason for the excitement may be Guster’s upcoming album, due out in June. The record, called Keep It Together, took nearly two years to create, mainly because the band’s label, Sire, folded when Guster was halfway done recording its fourth album.

“Fortunately, Warner Brothers Reprise, which is a better label, picked us up almost immediately. But they, like all record labels, wanted to put their stamp on the album,” Gardner said.

After the label ordered the band to re-record the album, an upset entry from the band appeared on Guster.com for a few hours before the band members took it down, but Gardner says the band realizes the label was right.

“Maybe we were in denial at first, but we wouldn’t have been happy with the record if we had released it the way it was originally, and our fans wouldn’t have been happy either,” he said.

Gardner describes Keep It Together as having some immediate songs and some “growers.” He says the overall sound is different from previous albums.

“In Lost and Gone Forever, even though I’m really proud of that album, every song was treated the same way. This album, it’s different. The new record is all over. We have a country song and then we have full-on blaring electric guitars on another,” he said.

The creative process for the new album was also different. On previous albums, Miller and Gardner would get together and have a verse and a chord progression together, but this time around the band started with a rhythmic feel and a tweak with a drum or bassline and go from there. Gardner was surprised that Brian Rosenworcel, the band’s drummer, “came out of nowhere” with some great lyrics, he said.

Rosenworcel, aka the Thundergod, usually plays with his bare hands on a bongo set, but he has been jumping over to a drum kit throughout this tour.

“He’s doing it in part to protect his hands, but the switch makes more sense for Keep It Together. We all decided we shouldn’t limit ourselves,” he said.

On the new record, many of the band members played multiple instruments or parts throughout each song and they wanted to keep that same sound on the tour.

“Most people think of us as a live band, and so we needed someone to fill out the sound,” he said.

This is why Joe Pisapia is the honorary fourth Guster member on their Spring Tour. Pisapia plays guitar, bass, keyboard and banjo, which definitely lends itself to a fuller Guster sound. The Guster boys and Pisapia met when Pisapia’s band, Joe, Mark’s brother, opened for them a few years ago.

“Joe’s only on stage for about half of the show, but, frankly, he’s a better musician than the rest of us,” Gardner said.

While some die-hard Guster fans may be confused as to why Rosenworcel is holding a pair of sticks or some guy named Joe is on stage, the show is still as lively and energetic as ever.

“We’re only sneaking in four or five new songs, and most fans have heard the two on the Web site [“Ramona” and “Long Way Down”] so they can sing along with those as well,” he said.

But Guster fans may be in for a bit of a shock when they spin the new album in June. Gardner says the two Internet songs are bridges from the band members’ old work into their new.

But that didn’t keep me and 800 other Utahns from singing great tunes at the top of our lungs last Thursday—and it won’t keep us from doing it next tour, either.
sheena@red-mag.com