Thu 1/7 @ 8PM
Pittsburgh’s Rusted Root made a big splash with their second album When I Woke in 1994. Their breakout tracks, “Ecstasy” and “Send Me On My Way” detonated under the pressure of often-frenzied rhythms and reeling take-me-higher melodies.
One of their strongest assets was a percussive world music influence that they so totally transformed that you couldn’t always identify what part of the world it was from. Their communal, hippie vibe and open-ended songs attracted a following in the jam-band scene.
The group’s gone through more or less active periods since then (they didn’t do much during the ’00s) and of course they’ve had a few personnel changes surrounding the core of lead singer Michael Glabicki, percussionist vocalist Liz Berlin and bassist Patrick Norman. But they’ve hung in there. Their most recent album, 2012’s The Movement, on Shanachie Records, combines two of the band’s strongest assets: its deep spiritual core and the music’s boundless, sometimes almost trancelike sense of elation.
Rusted Root will be back in northeast Ohio to play at the House of Blues. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door.